Living in Grand Cayman

Today & yesterday were big days for us.  On tuesday, we received the 20ft container from Tropical Shipping.  On wednesady, the movers came to pack the container & at 3pm the trucking company which delivered the container came to pick it up again. Once the movers left, then I had some running around to do.  I had to print & fax a bunch of documents.  DOH, all my stuff including my printer is in the container (I am using a laptop lent to me by my sister ; thanks sis)  So I went to see my friends at KPMG to print my inventory and then fax all the required documents to Tropical Shipping for the container. Then, off to BFL, an insurance broker to pay for the insurance & give them once again all the required paperwork. Then back home!

The last 3-4 days Julie & I had been going to bed really late making boxes & packing stuff.   Unlike a regular move where all you do is pack your stuff, we had to also make a detailled inventory with prices of everything (spoons, sox, etc.) for the container insurance & Cayman customs. Our inventory was 5 pages long …

  Here comes the container

 In front of the house.

 The night before I put almost all the boxes in the garage to make things go swiftly.

 There goes all our stuff.  It now goes to CN in Montreal.  Takes the train to New Brunswick on the weekend and then on the boat on sunday the 14th. It will be in Grand Cayman on the 25th of January barring a massive shipping incident. 🙂

Well, house No. 2 fell thru.  We were 200$/m away from the owner and both parties did not want to budge.  No sweat, No. 2 was not our 1st choice anyway.  We should get news monday for house No.1.   If that does not work, still no sweat. 2-3 more homes came to the market last week.  However, unlike the two homes I posted a few days ago, these new homes we have not visited.  If No. 1 does not work, we will probably go to Cayman without a lease in hand and sign one once onsite.  In case you are curious, all the homes we are looking at, including the ones I posted a few days ago go for about 3000$US/month.  Thats to rent, not buy!  Ouch!

Happy new year everyone.  All the best for 2007.  Now with the new year, we need to do some really detailed planning.  Today, I did 3 critical things. 1) Booked our plane trip from Miami to Grand Cayman. 2) Booked a car rental from Albany, New York to Miami, Florida 3) Booked hotels along the way down on Interstates 87 & 95.

Flight from Miami?  Car in Albany?  I figured you would wonder what that is. Well, turns out that flying with pets (yeah, those guys again) is not simple.  Either the dog cage is too big, the weather is too cold in the cargo hold or some airlines dont take any pets at all.

So the only workable solution we found for january was to have someone drive us to Albany NY, pick up a rental car there since renting a car in Canada & dropping it off in Miami was not practical, and then drive all the way to Miami airport.  We plan to stop in lower NY state, Virginia (Near North Carolina), Georgia (near Florida lines) and then in Miami.  The flight is the next afternoon.  That gives us enough buffer time in case we have car troubles, snow storm or whatever. I am actually looking forward to driving down. It will remind me of when I was a kid & my folks drove the whole family to Naples Florida.

Should get news for the homes very soon.  Stay tuned!