Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

It's only what, 9 days since we actually finished our trip to Grand Cayman? And I've just finishing catching up on my blog backlog. I would've caught up sooner, maybe only 2 days late, except that I've had two other trips in the meantime. And now one of them, the San Antonio trip, is getting backlogged. At least that one should only finish 36 hours behind. But now that I'm caught up on travelogs from Grand Cayman it's time to do a trip retrospective. Here are Five Things:

• Our choice to extend the trip 2 days was a good one. Yes, it was expensive. Those extra 2 days on our dime cost over $1,200. That's a lot of dimes. But much as we expected, the 3 nights paid for by Club would have been too brief of a stay on the island, especially considering the travel time there and back.


• Our choice to book flights that allowed an overnight in a hotel on the outbound trip was a good one. It turned out that with a flight delayed 2 hours we didn't get much sleep. But that was better than flying a redeye— or worse, missing a redeye connection, which happened to a few of my colleagues.


• I've said many times before that every trip I forget one thing. That's not a hard-and-fast rule, of course, Some trips I don't forget anything. This trip I almost forgot one biggie: the hotel overnight in Houston on the outbound leg. The day before the trip I was reviewing plans for Sunday and tried finding which hotel I'd booked to see what dinner options would be available at/near the hotel. That's when I realized that I hadn't booked a hotel. 😱 I'd looked at options and more or less picked one... but I didn't actually make the booking. 😧 Well, I did get around to it... one day ahead of time. 😅 Lesson: always recheck your plans 24 hours before you leave.


• Our choice to travel with only carry-on luggage was the right one. It meant not taking dressier clothes (e.g., trousers and loafers for me) but we absolutely didn't miss dressing up. We also considered checking a bag just to not have to lug carry-ons around the airports, but the time we'd have lost checking and reclaiming that bag 4 times would've made every airport more of a hassle.


• Finally, the good experiences we had with guided tours on this trip, particularly swimming with the manta rays and snorkeling (even though it was a bust for me), make me more interested in looking for guides on future trips. One of the reasons I've been reluctant is that outfitters are hit-or-miss. We've had a few flops when we've hired tours. I feel more comfortable traveling by my own wits than outsourcing it to someone who may take my money, a lot of money, and give me a shit experience and not care— wasting, at that point, not only my money but also my opportunity. Maybe I need to be more willing to take that risk.

Grand Cayman Travelog #26
Back at the Westin - Sat, 20 May 2023, 9am

As I mentioned in my previous blog, "Crabs!", today is our last day— nay, our last few hours— in the Cayman Islands. And as I also mentioned, we are not going quietly into the night. Er, midday. We went out for one last walk along Seven Mile Beach.

It was similar to our Thursday morning walk, the one where we saw a live conch, except we walked north from the hotel instead of south. And we didn't see a live conch. But walking in the surf and sand for 60 minutes was vigorous exercise. We got back to our room all tired and sweaty.

Starting our days off early for the past week, generally getting up between 6-6:30 and eating breakfast right after 7, paid another dividend today. We were able to get in this solid time on the beach and get back to our room with time to shower, change, and finish packing for our trip home. It feel nice have a bit of time to just relax in the room, cleaned of sand and wearing clean clothes, before heading out to the airport at 9:30.

Grand Cayman Travelog #24
Seven Mile Beach - Fri, 19 May 2023, 9pm

Tonight's our last night in Grand Cayman. We celebrated it by going out to a nice(r) restaurant. But first, after finishing up with our driving tour around the island this afternoon, we went out to the beach and the hot tub. Well, I went to the hot tub after the beach. Hawk was feeling a bit ill from wave motion while we were wading in ocean together and opted to go back to the room and lie down. She wasn't ill enough to need attention so I stayed out for another hour or so. After a while I joined her upstairs until she felt well enough to try dinner.

"Where shall we go for dinner?" is often an impossibly wide-open question. We decided quickly on Mexican food as the cuisine we wanted. That narrowed our choices substantially, to about 3 full-service restaurants. We picked Casa 43. It was a tad spendy for Mexican food but had chicken tortilla soup— which Hawk wanted because it helps settle her stomach.

We drove over to Casa 43 and couldn't find legal parking. We looked up and down the street twice. We bailed out to try another Mexican restaurant half a block away. It had tons of parking in its patrolled lot— not exactly a good sign! Still, we figured not dealing with crowds would be preferable to having the best food possible. Except once we looked inside Hawk wanted to nope out of there. We went back to Casa 43 and parked in a questionably legal spot on the street. Other people were doing it, too, so we figured there might be some safety in numbers.

I'm glad we chose to deal with the parking, the nearly full restaurants, and the somewhat spendy prices at Casa 43 because it was amazing. Hawk changed her mind from chicken soup when she saw that they had a fried avocado taco. She loves avocado, and fried avocado is something we've never seen before. She paired a grilled cauliflower taco along with it. We got a guacamole appetizer that tasted better than what we make at home— I was both impressed and slightly frustrated by that— and I got steak fajitas for dinner that 100% hit the spot... even if they were $30. The one thing I didn't do was order alcohol. Holy shit, beer was $12 and margaritas with quality liquor started at $23. Some spendiness is just too spendy for me.

On the way home we gassed up the car so we don't have to deal with it while driving to the airport in the morning. We also bought dessert from the gas station's well stocked convenience store. It was 1/4 the price of buying dessert at Casa 43. Now we're back at the room, enjoying our dessert. I'm finishing off my last beer from buying a six pack a the store earlier in the week. Yes, that's the 6-pack I bought for the price of one glass of beer at Casa 43. Don't get me wrong; I loved Casa 43 and I'm glad we went. It's just that tradeoffs are necessary vs. eye-watering prices.

Grand Cayman Travelog #23
Barefoot Beach - Fri, 19 May 2023, 1pm

As one of the stops on our driving tour around Grand Cayman's remote East End we stopped near Barefoot Beach to see a spot marked as thermal vents. Ultimately we didn't find the thermal vents— they're offshore in the water and are more of a thing for divers or maybe snorkelers— but we did enjoy our exploration near the inaptly named Barefoot Beach.

Why is the name inapt? Well, here's one of the trails to get to it:



Beach access via narrow trail is common on Grand Cayman. The laws are that beaches have to be public, and land owners often provide only the minimum of accessibility through their property. This trail is tougher than most as it's very rocky. The trail passes over very sharp eroded limestone (similar to Hell). In addition there is smashed glass from people leaving trash. This is definitely not a trail you want to walk barefoot!



Embedded in the eroded limestone are corals. There are also loose corals washed up on the dune at the edge of the beach. We found several "brain" corals like the one in the photo above.



We also found a few conch shells. At any beach I've been to before a shell like the one in the photo above would've been an amazing find. Here it's kind of "meh"... because while it's a shell in overall good condition, there's not a living conch still inside it.



Ultimately we made it down to the beach. Beneath one final layer of sharp rocks is soft, soft sand. Perhaps this is what they meant by barefoot beach. It's pleasant out here... though you absolutely have to put good shoes back on to leave!

Grand Cayman Travelog #21
Starfish Point - Fri, 19 May 2023, 11am

Today we're taking a drive around the far side of the island of Grand Cayman. Our first stop this morning, Rum Point, was kind of a bust. Just down the road from that is Starfish Point. Although we visited Starfish Point on Tuesday as part of a boat tour it seemed like a fun place to come back to on our own— without the crowds from the boats.



We had the beach mostly to ourselves for a while. It's beautiful in an unspoiled way. Soon the first tour boat arrived, though. With only about 20 people aboard it wasn't so bad.

While Hawk went looking for coral and shells near the shore I waded out into the clear, shallow water to look for starfish. Sure enough, I found them— and other fish, too. Here's a video montage I put together:


Link: view video at YouTube

In the video are a few starfish, a tarpon, a jellyfish, and a sea cucumber.

Grand Cayman Travelog #19
Out for dinner - Thu, 18 May 2023, 8pm

Something I've noticed on a number of tropical islands is wild chickens. On some islands it's just a few, on others it's overwhelming. For example, chickens are seemingly everywhere on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Grand Cayman has... sort of a medium?... number of wild chickens running around. We can hear at least one rooster from our room. Occasionally we see a few in the grass near the parking lot. Chickens are more prevalent elsewhere around the island. For example, when we visited Hell today we saw a cluster outside the post office:


Link: view video on YouTube

Yesterday one of our tour guides explained to us that the wild chickens problem on Grand Cayman traces back to Hurricane Ivan, in 2004. While people reinforced their houses as best they could for the storm, things like chicken coops were not protected. The hurricane blew them all over. The freed chickens quickly went wild. Nobody claimed them, and now they're just pests.

The guide says the government considered a bounty on wild chickens. It wasn't without precedent; they did have a bounty on green iguanas, which were preying on the island's native blue iguanas. But the iguana bounty wound up being costly as locals quickly turned in way more iguanas than the government figured.

I'm thinking about the wild chicken problem again tonight because we have one dining with us. We're sitting outside a restaurant, and one's here waddling around our table, waiting like a dog for us to drop some food. She's even cooing softly to ingratiate herself to us. Shooing her away with our feet does nothing more than elicit a few squawks of protest before she's back to begging for scraps from us.

Oh, the guide also said that locals can be fined for feeding wild chickens. Tourists are exempt, she said. But we're not going to feed this damn pest. I hope she hangs out here at the restaurant until someone orders chicken nuggets. 🐓🪓🍗

Grand Cayman Travelog Ω
Back home - Sat, 20 May 2023, 10pm

I'm jumping ahead in my blog series to post one in real time. As of my previous blog, about going to lunch after going to hell, I'm about 48 hours behind.

Tonight's Saturday night, and we've just gotten home from Grand Cayman. We walked through our front door at 9:30pm. As always it feels good to be home. But I won't be here for long.... 17 hours after getting home I'll be heading out to the airport for my next trip! I'm headed to Las Vegas for 3 days for a business conference.

Grand Cayman Travelog #16
Hell - Thu, 18 May 2023, 12:30pm

This morning we picked up a rental car so we could do some self-guided touring today and tomorrow. But where would we go? One of the tour coordinators we'd chatted amiably with the past few days, who was still at the hotel because now he's working with another company that's running a president's club (there are signs), offered a suggestion when he saw us walking through the lobby to our car.

"Make sure you go to Hell," he suggested.

"Yeah, that's our plan," I answered. "We're going to Hell now. Then we're going to lunch."



Hell is a spot a few miles north of our hotel, on the northwest end of the island. It's an officially named place in the Cayman Islands. How official? There a Hell, CI post office here.

But what draws people here isn't just the post office, with its ability to send postcards officially date-stamped "HELL". That is only part of the allure. 😅 It's the jagged rocks in this area that gave it name that people come to see. Thus we pulled our car into the small parking lot aside a few families and minibuses to see it ourselves.



Don't remove Hell rocks! ...What are they going to do, though? Send you to hell? You're already there. 😂



So, what is Hell? Hell in the Cayman Islands is a small field of very jagged rocks. They look a bit like volcanic rock, which is one explanation for how the place got its name. A British official visiting the island long ago is said to have exclaimed, "My God, this is what Hell must look like!"

Actually the rock is limestone and dolomite. It was eroded into these jagged shapes not by wind or rain but by being eaten away by algae. The algae dissolves the calcium in limestone (limestone is calcium carbonated, CaCO3) leaving mostly dolomite. Scientifically this process is called phyto-karstification.

After touring the relatively small field of rocks we walked back out to the gift shops and post office. We bought a few postcards with pictures of Hell and mailed them to religious relatives so they'd be date-canceled as officially from Hell. 🔥😈🤣

Grand Cayman Travelog #14
Westin, Grand Cayman - Thu, 18 May 2023, 9:45am

Our choice to get up early this morning wasn't just so we could enjoy a fantastic breakfast at the restaurant's 7am opening, it was so that we could enjoy a fantastic breakfast and then go walking on the beach and be back by 9:30.

Our hotel is on Grand Cayman's famed Seven Mile Beach. It's full of soft, almost white sand in both directions. Waves are very gentle, and the water is warm enough to walk right in. Seven Mile Beach is an amazing beach, likely one of the best in the world. One of our tour guides yesterday let us in on a little secret, though. It's not really seven miles long. 😱 It's not even close. Maybe it used to be 7 miles, but a hurricane several years ago tore away part of it. The guide says it's less than 4 miles long now. 😕



We decided to walk south from our hotel this morning, get as far as the (now truncated) end of the beach, and turn around back to the hotel. We'll walk north from our hotel another time, perhaps tomorrow morning.

Off in the distance we could see 3 cruise ships moored the port in George Town. "Uh-oh," we thought, "Stuff's going to be crowded later today when we go out." We were glad we were getting an early start on the day.



One thing that made this walk on the beach special was finding a conch. Well, we didn't find the conch; a family wading in the water found it. They were talking excitedly about it as we passed and shared their find with us. To date I've only ever seen a conch shell, a dried and empty shell. This conch shell still has the conch in it!

Grand Cayman Travelog #12
Westin, Grand Cayman - Wed, 17 May 2023, 9pm

After a nap of a few hours this afternoon I was feeling... well, if not better at least less bad. I frittered around the room doing quiet things for a while (like catching up part-way on blogging) then changed into my swim trunks to go downstairs for the hot tub. En route to the hot tub we stopped at the pool bar for a pair of piña coladas, Hawk's a virgin (no alcohol) and mine... experienced. 😅🍹😋

After a pleasant soak we headed back upstairs to shower and change for our evening soirée. The company had another catered group dinner this evening, this one on the beach.



We all arrived as the sun was setting over the Caribbean Sea next to us. The food wasn't quite ready (servers were still setting things up) so a bunch of us took turns making photographs with the sunset.

Dinner began as the sun dropped below the horizon. Food-wise it was quite a big spread of various meats, virtually all of them overcooked and dried out. I give them an A for effort and D for execution. But there was an open bar. That can make up for a lot of culinary shortcomings. 😂

As dinner wound down our head of sales and CEO spoke. The head of sales recognized each person who joined Club this year and said something nice personally about each of us. The CEO spoke, too, and kept his part brief, mostly just "Rah, rah, let's go out after this and have even more success this year!" It was kind of a wrap-up dinner as club ends officially tomorrow morning. A few of us are staying on, though, on our own dimes.

After dinner there was dancing with a DJ playing music. I noted with some amusement that the music was all "Greatest hits from the late 1980s". It's almost like most people here are as old as me. 🤣 I didn't dance, though, as I wasn't really feeling it. We left the party somewhat early, just before 9, and headed up to the room to wind down.

Tonight I'm going to get to bed early again— I'm still a bit tired— and hopefully this time sleep the whole night through. Tomorrow we aim to get up early and fill the day with activities on our own.