Cayman Trip - Day 3: Hell and Turtles

Chrystie did some research before we left Utah and found out what cruise ships would be in port in Georgetown on what days. We used this information and decided to go into Georgetown on Monday, when only one ship would be there. We wanted to go on a Semi-Submarine. What is a semi-submarine you ask – think Disneyland. Yep, it is a boat with windows under water that make you feel like you are in a submarine, when really you are just in the bottom of a boat. This was going to be really fun for the kids to be able to see the fish under water, since they were not able to snorkel.

We loaded in the cars fairly early and drove to Georgetown. I do have to say that Matt did a crazy good job driving on the wrong side of the road. We were in a backward Corolla, so it was just like our car at home, but backward. The steering wheel is on the right, and the hand controls are backward (the windshield wiper is where the turn signal should be!) Getting around seemed easy until you got into the city – then there were roundabouts everywhere; and not just regular backward roundabouts, but 2 lane backward roundabouts. But he did awesome and we never even had a close call.

Our car followed Chrystie and Preston in their SUV until we found the submarine place and parked the cars. We excitedly went inside, ready to purchase our tickets – and were told that they were not running the semi-sub today. They were running the real sub, but it cost 3X as much and the kids couldn’t go on it. Total Bummer.

Now we had to decide what to do. Since we were in Georgetown, and since Georgetown is where all the shopping was, we decided to shop. We hit some of the little gift shops there. I have realized that the stores in all port towns look the same. They have different names on the products, but they are essentially the same. But that doesn’t make it any less fun to look around. We went through several shops, and people bought stuff, then we decided it was time to eat. The submarine people were kind enough to let us park in their lot for a couple hours, but they wanted us to move our car by 1. So we hurried off to find a place to eat.
Some people in our party had seen a restaurant on the ocean not too far away, so we walked to it. They quickly seated us and we placed our orders for drinks (diet coke for me please!) only to have the waiter come back and say that their water was turned off and they didn’t have any coke or diet coke. OK, I will settle for a bottled water (I still don’t know if they charged me for that). Then we ordered food. Most of the fam happily ordered fish. Yummy ocean fish. I would have ordered fish except - see - I hadn’t met a fish I liked to eat, so I ordered Chicken. Matt got a hamburger. That turned out to be a rather big mistake.

The food came out and we all started eating. My chicken was yucky. The seasoning was good, but the chicken itself, just not good. But I had lots of fries, so life was OK. When Matt ordered his burger they asked how he would like it done. He clearly told them he wanted it well done. So we were both a little shocked when he bit into the thing and it was BRIGHT RED inside. Yucky! He was a trooper and tried to eat around the edges, but finally he couldn’t stand it and sent it back with the waiter to have it cooked some more. Meanwhile everyone else is done eating and getting ready to go. My Dad takes the kids to go pick up souvenirs they picked out while we were browsing. We wait for the burger to come back, it comes back nice and heated through, but still bright red! I don’t know what that hamburger was, but I have concluded it wasn’t hamburger. Happy to say Matt didn’t get sick even though he ate it. We hurried back to the cars and headed West and then North. Since we didn’t get to do the submarines, we were going to go to the Turtle farm.

Driving to the Turtle farm we went past 7 mile beach (which is 5 ½ miles long). This is where there are a ton of huge hotels. I guess most people stay along this part of the island.

We reached the North point of the island, and since we were there we took a stop in Hell. Yep, you heard me right, Hell. There is a place with these interesting back rocks that look like Lava (though Val tells me that they are not). Some guy built a gift shop there, and they opened a post office. So you can have your letter officially postmarked from Hell. (which we would have done but I forgot to bring any addresses with me on this part of the trip. Oops!) We took a quick stop in the gift shop and listened to the store owner and his puns, all dealing with Hell. Nice. It wasn’t a place that we were going to stay for long, so we quickly bought some stuff and moved on to the turtle farm.

The turtle farm, as Val (who stopped here on a cruise before – that is why she was our expert) remembers from a tour, was set up to help the sea turtles from all getting wiped out. They release some of the turtles into the wild, and use some for (gulp) eating. I was a little disappointed to find out that the entire thing was outside, because I was hot and still not used to the humidity at all! We paid our entrance fee, got our fancy bracelet, and went in. I was expecting a tour guide, or at least for there to be workers around, but we were pretty much on our own. We looked at the big turtles. We saw big iguanas crawling around (and climbing trees). My cute nephew Daxton liked the iguanas, and would say “Hi Guana” when he saw one. Very adorable.
We looked at the younger turtles, and these are the ones they let you touch. I helped my niece Arden with touching the turtles. She mostly liked to touch them in the water, rather than have them picked up for her, but I think she liked it. We spent a lot of time petting the turtles, then going around and looking at the other sizes of turtles. Some were really big, then there were little tiny baby turtles (sigh, so cute). It was fun. But it was hot – and so it was time to wash our hands which were covered in turtle water and head home to the blue house.
Coming Soon – Day 4: Sailboats and Stingrays