Living in Grand Cayman

I had the opportunity today to do something I had wanted to do for a while. I doubt many locals actually do this : walk the whole 7-mile beach from one end to the other.

This morning, along with Julie & my in-laws, we started just north of George Town, near Treasure Island condo’s where the beach starts all the way to West Bay public beach. We were armed with plenty of water and sunscreen lotion.

Below is what we walked ; from the lower point to the one near the top.

Most of the beach is pristine sand, simply a gorgeous beach. Near West Bay it gets rocky sometimes.  Its actually quite pretty if you ask me.  Beware though, its slippery! My years of playing ice hockey came in handy on one particularly slippery bit.

I definitely liked this place and the “staircase to the beach”!

Reminders of Hurricane Ivan and its destructive forces.

The end! West Bay public beach. Very pretty place.

It took us 2h45 minutes from one end to the other walking a “medium” pace with two short stops for swims to cool off and to drink water. Very easy to get dehydrated in this climate.  At a brisk pace and with plenty of water it could probably be done in +-2h, but what’s the rush … such a pretty beach.

One final picture I took in West Bay … an orange Iguana. I had never seen anything like this one and quite frankly though it was fake/plastic when I saw it at first.  Somewhat camera shy, it only allowed me one picture and darted into the bushes.

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope that you are all enjoying time with family and friends as we are here in Cayman.  What a great place to be at this time of year.  Nice & breezy, not too hot, no hurricanes, etc.  There are lots of Christmas lights on homes and businesses, so people are in the festive mood. I even wore my amazing Christmas tie to work and saw someone with antlers on their head.  Speaking of antlers, here is Aipa with hers …

Christmas eve dinner was amazing and something you cant do back in Canada.  Sunset supper at the beach.  My mom in-law was taking the picture so is not in it, but as you can see it was pretty neat to dine like that at Spotts beach!

Later that evening we went to Crightons place on Shamrock St.  Very popular this time of year for the lights & all.  Its open to all and free admission.  Regular readers will remember pictures of this from last year.  Its so nice, that it deserves a second posting! 🙂

Here you can seen a general overview from the other side of the street and the traffic in the area due to many people stopping and parking their cars along the side of the street.

His house amongst the decorations.

One of the many very pretty theme displays.  The picture does not do them justice. They are hand crafted and have mechanical movement.  Very impressive.

More lights!

The path in/out of the property.

A final note.  While we were leaving the lights show, I saw a guy and he said “Thats Micho”. I had no idea what that meant or who he was!  Then, the guy and his wife introduced themselves as Damian & Traci, two of my blog readers who just recently moved to Cayman and who used my blog for some help. We had also exchanged some emails a few months ago!  How cool is that! 🙂 

It was great to meet you both and thanks for introducing yourselves to us!  My wife still cant believe that because of the blog you “picked” me out of a crowd!  Looking forward to seeing you again for drinks/dinner sometime in the new year!

In the last week or so, Christmas lights have been showing up all over the place.  Notably some of the roundabouts in the main roads.

Here is the main roundabout on the island.

A smaller one, yet very colorful!

Christmas trees at our local warehouse store ; a sort of Costco!

Note the price.  Ouch!  40$CI = +-49$US = 63$CAN

Not Christmas related, although I have been asked about this a few times recently.  Here are pictures of the masses of wild bush chickens that we see every time we go for a walk in our neighborhood.  They are island wide, so if ever you come to the Cayman Islands, expect to see them a lot.

Here they are just roaming around from property to property looking for food & whatnot.

More Christmas pictures in the coming weeks as more shows up!  Have seen some light on palm trees … will try to get some of those 🙂

In a few hours that is!  As of December 1st, the 2008 hurricane season will be in the history books and finished.  It was rough!  Here in Cayman we had four systems to deal with; two of them being serious threats, one quite far away and one passing as a tropical depression before becoming a Hurricane and hitting Texas.

So to recap :

1. Dolly in July

2. Gustav in August

3. Ike in September

4. Paloma in November

I think I speak for all the residents here when I say that we are very pleased that its over.  Its extremely stressful!

On the home front and because of the hot weather we have here, we have to shave our Husky mix since she is used to the snow and cold of the Canadian winters.  So every 2 weeks or so we shave her to take off a good amount of her coat.

Here she is before today’s visit to the “Micho salon” 🙂

15 minutes later ; the small mountain of fur I shaved off.

After ; a lot lighter color.  Not a huge difference visually, but she definitely seems to appreciate it when we do it.  Also, whatever we take off there will not end up on our floor since she sheds a LOT.  She is very easy to shave; she lies down on the ceramic and lets me do it.  I “flip” her over when I need to do the other side.  Great dog 🙂

The inlaws arrive next friday for an extended Christmas vacation and Christmas lights seems to be going up around the island!  Pictures to come in the next week or so.

Immediately after Paloma, we had some guests over. Yves (a former co-worker of Julie) and his gf Jennifer were scheduled to arrive on the Friday but their flight was canceled.  So they arrived on the Monday following Paloma.
On the Wednesday, only 5 or so days after the passing of the storm they went to Stingray city. For those who have seen our past pictures of stingray city or who have been, you know that the water out there is clear and blue.  Well, this time it was different, big time.

Below you can see Yves & Jennifer definitely having a great time with a friendly ray, but the storm “churned” up the bottom and turned the usually Cristal clear water to a muddy brown that is not unlike the Thames river in London!  Sorry guys … next time you need to come outside of hurricane season! 😉

Two more days until the “official” end of hurricane season ; not a day too soon it you ask me! According to a web site I read, hurricane season is set to encompass 97% of all tropical activity.  That website also had some interesting wisdom about hurricane season:

June- too soon.
July– stand by!
August– look out you must.
September– remember.
October, all over.

Not sure why they do not include November!