Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Grand Cayman Travelog #10
Cayman Crystal Caves, Grand Cayman - Wed, 17 May 2023, 10:30am

Today we're on another group tour with colleagues from my company, similar to the group trip we took yesterday to hop in the water at Stingray City and Starfish Point. Today's trip is all on land. We're visiting a set of natural caves and then a big flower garden. Today's group is also smaller, 11 of us on the excursion vs. yesterday's 26.

The Cayman Crystal Caves (CCC) are a complex of over 100 natural caves. Most of them are prohibitively small for a person to enter; but there are several large caves that have been improved for touring. Our tour guide took us through 3 of them.

As we drove the last bit of the way to the cave complex on a dirt and gravel road we climbed over a small hill.

"I didn't know this island had mountains," I said jokingly.

Apparently I played right into one of the guide's little stories.

"The hill we've just crossed over is 42 feet above sea level," she explained in a Caribbean accent, her pronunciation of 42 sounding like farty two. "It's the second highest point on Grand Cayman. The highest is just a bit higher, though it's a manmade hill. It's a garbage dump locals have named Mount Trashmore."

But hey, it's time for caves— and pictures.



Some of the caves are completely below ground. This one has a few "skylight" openings— through which roots from the trees above descend. Decades ago neighborhood kids would drop ropes down through these openings, tying them around stout trees above, to shinny down & back up to explore the caves. Today there are spiral stairwells (visible at the lower right of the pic above) to make the caves fit for more tourists.

One of the caves is called Lake Cave. Its name is pretty obvious when you see this....



This underground pool is formed entirely by water dripping into the cave from above. It has no outlet; it drains only by evaporation. The water in the pool is highly alkaline yet also very clear because so little disturbs it. The spires that appear to be below the pool's surface are actually reflections of the stalactites overhead.



The guide encouraged our group to take pictures near the water as long as we didn't touch it. We did... as did almost everybody in the group.

Touring around the caves was a bit of a snooze for me except for that amazing pool. Limestone caverns have largely the same set of structures. One thing different about these caves from nearly all the others I've visited, though, is that they are not cool. In most caves the temperature drops to about 57° F even a short distance from the openings, even when the temperatures outside are significantly warmer. These caves are hot. Hot and humid. All of us were perspiring and sucking down bottled water.



The last bit to share about these caves is bats. Fruit bats nest near openings in these caves. Unlike other species of bats in caves I've visited they are not too timid around humans. I mean, they're not attacking us or anything; but they're perfectly happy going about their business of zipping back and forth over our heads eating bugs like mosquitos. Yay, mosquito eaters! They should have named them Annoying-Bug-Killing Bats instead of Fruit Bats (they do also eat fruit) to make it clearer to laypeople why this animal is a desirable part of our ecosystem.

Grand Cayman Travelog #8
Starfish Point, Grand Cayman - Tue, 16 May 2023, 4pm

After swimming with the stingrays we got to the part of the trip I had most been looking forward to this afternoon: snorkeling. Except by the time we got to the snorkeling reef I already knew I wasn't going in the water. 😱 I'd donned a snorkeling mask back at the stingray scrum to practice snorkeling, and I got something in my eye. It was so painful that my eye was watering constantly and I couldn't deal with anything being placed on, over, or near it for at least a few hours.

I stayed on the boat while everyone else went in the water. My consolation prize was the guides opened the bar for me. There was a bar on the boat, and the rule was "No booze until ya're done wit' snorkeling". Well, I was done.

I did get a chance to get back in the water at our final stop, Starfish Point. The boat anchored within about 50' of shore, and the water was only 2' deep. There were bunches of starfish in the shallow water. We also found a sea cucumber and a friendly jellyfish. "Friendly" in this case was that it was sort of floating upside down, its stinging tentacles on top. We took turns holding it from underneath. While we were exchanging expressions of surprising at how we could touch it without being stung, a colleague of mine who speaks several European languages explained that in every language he knows except English, a jellyfish is called basically a Medusa. That is... way more apropos and far less stupid than jelly fish.

As for the starfishes? I took video of a few other people and myself playing with them. My videos turned out damaged, though. It'll take me a while to see if I can salvage anything worthwhile or get a better quality pics/video from a friend.

Update: we went back to Starfish Point Friday, on our own. I posted a new journal entry with great pictures and video from Starfish Point.

Grand Cayman Travelog #6
At the Westin, Grand Cayman - Tue, 16 May 2023, 12pm

Today's our first full day in the Cayman Islands, and we're looking to make good use of it. We set our alarms for early this morning then enjoyed shutting them off and sleeping until 8am. For us that felt luxurious. 😅 We dressed and went downstairs for breakfast at the hotel restaurant.

We're normally not breakfast people. I tend to do light, small breakfasts in the room with a protein bar and a bottle of Coke Zero purchased at a convenience store. I do have a bunch of protein bars from home and a can of Coke Zero bought at a store yesterday... but thanks to my elite status with Marriott hotels I also have a fist full of free breakfast vouchers. Hawk and I went down to the hotel restaurant and enjoyed a fairly nice breakfast buffet, comped. With a full breakfast we'll likely eat a snakc lunch (protein bars!) then go out for dinner. Remember that fist full of dollars we got yesterday? Yeah, that's going to last a lot longer thanks to these breakfast coupons.



After breakfast we changed into our swimsuits and headed out to the beach. Again we went for a dip in the water. Again it's not quite bathtub warm but doesn't need a lot of acclimation. We more or less walked right in.

Unlike yesterday we saw none of my coworkers today at the beach. We did see a few at lunch... but nobody else was out on the beach yet.



After a while I'd had enough of wading in the surf and relaxed on a lounge chair while Hawk continued wading and digging for shells. After a while she came in from the water and we headed back across the sand to the hotel.



We washed the sand off our legs and feet at the beach shower then headed up onto the hotel's pool deck. The hot tub was our next stop.



The hotel has two hot tubs. The one we used yesterday felt only "really warm", not hot, and the jets also would shut off or turn on every minute or two. We tried this one today. The jets work well and... the water is hot. Like, so hot it's pretty intense to sit in it when the air temperature is already probably 90° with humidity that pushes it to feel like 100°. We bailed from the hot tub after maybe 10 minutes and headed up to the room to shower and reset for the next part of the day. At 12:30 we're due downstairs to meet a group going snorkeling!

Grand Cayman Travelog #4
At the Westin, Grand Cayman - Mon, 15 May 2023, 2pm

We're settled in at the Westin on 7 Mile Beach on Grand Cayman. The drive over from the airport wasn't long. It's not even 5 miles. The view in the lobby as we arrived was nice.



In this photo you can't make out the pool and beach outside the doors at the far side. Trust me that it looked a lot nicer in person.... Even though the weather this afternoon is not exactly great. It's cloudy out like there might be a thunderstorm this afternoon.



Westin is part of the Marriott portfolio of properties. I have Lifetime Titanium elite status with Marriott, which would ordinarily get me some preferred treatment at hotels. The agent who booked us didn't put my number through so we got a rando basic room with two double beds instead of a king and no upgrade. Once I gave them my number they said they'd see if they could upgrade us later in our stay. I'm not holding my breath.



Our basic room isn't quite the bottom rung. We do have a partial ocean view. In other words, from our balcony if we crane our necks to one side we can sorta see the ocean. Getting an upgrade with a better view would be awesome... but like I said, I'm not holding my breath.

Along with checking in at the hotel we stopped by a desk in the lobby where a colleague was passing out gift bags for us president's club winners. The gifts are pretty nice.



The main gift is a JBL bluetooth speaker. That's nice because I have an older model, a JBL Flip 2, that I've been using for, like, 9 years. I considered bringing it on this trip but didn't as one of the comprises necessary to travel with only carry-on bags. Now I'm glad I didn't because we have a new replacement! Of course, fitting it in the bag to get home may be tight.

Let's see, what else is there.... Oh, right, that pile of cash!! Typically on these president's club trips the accommodations are all-inclusive. Meaning all meals and drinks (to a certain extent) are paid for as part of a package. Here there either isn't an all-inclusive option, or the organizers chose not to pay for it. Instead they gave us a cash stipend to cover meals and drinks aside from the two catered events the company is hosting. The stipend is $400. Each.

For the 3½ days of the official trip $800 is a lot. But that's because we don't have expensive eating/drinking habits. For example, we're about to head out for lunch, but instead of eating at one of the pricey, fancy restaurants in the hotel we'll walk across the street to a strip mall and try one of the sit-down places there. It's half or less what food costs here. We expect we'll be able to stretch the money to cover all 5 days we're on Grand Cayman.

Update: the $800 not only covered our food for all 5 days but also the car we rented the final two days.

Grand Cayman Travelog #2
SFO United Club Lounge - Mon, 15 May 2023, 12:15am

Our trip to what I hope will be an amazing visit to the Cayman Islands starts with a not-so-amazing night in Houston. We planned it that way..... Getting to Grand Cayman from California requires taking an overnight at some point in the trek. We chose instead of having a redeye flight to take a mid-afternoon departure on Sunday, stay in a hotel near Houston airport and get a real night's sleep, and continue onward in the morning. Alas, after what seemed like a good start to the trip at SFO early this afternoon everything else has sucked.

Our flight SFO-IAH was delayed. The delay was only 20 or 30 minutes, which wasn't so bad. With thunderstorms in Houston this afternoon other flights got delayed worse. But when we landed 20-30 minutes late so many flights were still stuck there that there wasn't a gate open. We sat on the tarmac for over an hour waiting for a gate to become available. And once on the ground we waited another hour for our hotel's pokey shuttle to come around. If we'd known it was going to be that slow we'd have taken an Uber. End result, instead of getting to our hotel around 9:15 and having time to grab a late dinner at a restaurant nearby before settling in for a reasonable night's sleep, we only got to the hotel a few minutes before midnight and had to make dinner from the prepackaged crap sold from the "pantry" next to the checkin desk. And it'll be a struggle to get even 5 hours of sleep tonight.

As we were waiting outside in the muggy evening air for the hotel shuttle it occurred to me, this is kind of how our last beach vacation started, too! Except then we got stuck in the airport overnight and had to fly to an airport 3 hours from our destination the next morning. The failure in common here is thunderstorms in the midwest. What this tells me is that we shouldn't rely on midwestern connections anytime near the summer when we actually want to get there. I'm thinking, fly nonstop or don't bother.

Will this trip get better soon? I sure hope so. Chances aren't looking great, though. The hotel's pokey slow shuttle is already booked up around the time we need to go to the airport tomorrow. I flat out refused to accept a 6am shuttle ride for a flight that's not 'til after 9:30. I'll call an Uber instead. Let's hope that isn't fucked up tomorrow. Oh, and there are thunderstorms in tomorrow morning's forecast, too. This may be yet-another beach vacation that gets off on the totally wrong foot.

Update: an hour after I posted this, things started slowly turning to shit.