Cayman Trip - Day 9: the last day

Saturday was our last full day in Cayman. We wanted to pack into it all the things we hadn’t done yet on the trip. Our first order of business was to drive into Georgetown and see about taking a glass bottom boat ride. We had tried something similar on Monday with the semi-sub, but it wasn’t going that day. We were sure the kids would like it, so we all drove to the city. One of the hardest things about this little adventure was finding a parking spot. We lucked out on our first trip to Georgetown because we parked in the parking lot of the submarine place. But this time we were not so lucky. Matt pulled a great move and found a little side road with no one parked on it. Very nice.

My brother in law Preston found the place to make reservations and let us know that it would be a semi-submarine ride and that it had a snorkeling stop. We ran back to our car and got our snorkeling gear. Then we loaded up onto the boat.

A Semi-submarine ride is very similar to the submarines at Disneyland. You are sitting in the bottom of a boat, but there are windows cut out so you can look out into the water. They had fixed it up to look like a sub also, with a big wheel in the front and everything. There were only 2 families on the boat, so they took the front, and we took the back.


We all had a good time looking at the fish. The sub went over some ship wrecks in the harbor and that was pretty cool too. I do think some of the kids got a little bored and were happier to spin the wheel than to look at fish, but we all had fun. The boat put a diver in the water and he swam across the windows feeding the fish, so there were TONS of fish that swam in front of each window. That was pretty cool, made sure that everyone saw a lot of fish. They say that the fish they fed are scavengers anyway, and would eat whatever. I guess that makes it OK.

It was here that we were able to get out of the boat and snorkel around a little. It was fun to get in the water (I was getting a little motion sick in the boat) and to just swim around. There were a ton of fish, especially the Sergeant Majors (the yellow striped fish) and the big gray ones. They were everywhere. There were also some Tarpon. I saw one swimming toward us and I thought it was a shark. These are some BIG fish. Luckily they stayed along the bottom so I never had to freak out too much.

We got back on the boat and headed back to the dock. Then we wanted to eat. We couldn’t find a place right there in Georgetown, and everyone was too hungry to wait, so we grabbed some Burger King and headed to the beach at Cemetery Point to eat it, picnic style.

After eating we headed out to snorkel again. It was a beautiful day and we went out and saw some amazing fish again. I was lucky and didn’t have any close encounters with Jelly Fish this time. Matt took me out farther than we had been before and we saw the beginning of what I think is an artificial reef, though at first I admit I thought Mines.

 The kids were tired and so Preston loaded them up and went back to the blue house. He left Chrystie with us because we had one more objective for our last full day, and that was shopping! We wanted to stop in Georgetown and see what kind of stuff there was to buy for our last souvenirs. Unfortunately the town was shut down! We went driving in the same way we had a few times and the road was shut off, right before we got into town, they forced us to turn left and drive inland. We followed the detour. I frantically tried to find where we were on our little tourist map (which only labeled about ¼ of the streets, which is OK, because only about ¼ of the streets had signs). Every time I would come up with a way for us to get back to the main road, the way was blocked. A few crazy roundabouts and some stop lights later we made a good and we were headed in the almost right direction. Matt made a great choice to turn onto a nameless road, and we were back!

Tragically this little safari into the city had cost us some time and now it was after 4. See, in Georgetown, and probably in most cruise port cities, things shut down after 4 when everyone gets back on the boat. We had to walk past a couple of closed shops before we found one that was open. Luckily this little open shop had a nice variety of things for us to get, and soon we were all a little lighter in cash and a little heavier in t-shirts and other tourist stuff (I bought a cute little rock turtle. Yep, I like it).

So now we were hurrying back to the house because we knew we had taken a long time up to this point and we wanted to save Preston and my dad from being alone with the kids. What should happen? We got stuck in a funeral procession! It took us FOREVER to get back to the house.

We decided since it was our last night we would go out to eat. We called the Kaibo to see if they could fit us in that night, and soon we were set with a reservation. We quickly got ready and headed over. It started as a nice quiet time. We all ordered our drinks and just started to relax when a boat arrived from the other side of the island. This boat was filled with people who had obviously started drinking hours ago. Very loud, very drunk people. They descended upon the place and took it over. We were still able to eat our food, which was good, and there was a beautiful view of the ocean from the table, but it was loud and crowded.

Then we went back to the blue house for the last time (so sad) to pack for the next day’s trip home.

Coming Soon – Day 9: The long way home