Living in Grand Cayman

Looks like we are in for a hurricane this week-end.  I just spent 1h putting the shutters back up … in the rain 🙁

This system went from a disorganized system to a potential category 2 storm in very little time.  The projected path is just south of Grand Cayman.

As I mentioned in my previous post, its been raining a lot recently.  I took some pictures with my Blackberry this afternoon. Here is the street we use to go to the shopping center near our place.  Flooded with a few inches of water.

Here is a guy  building a house. (not the one next to our place)  He’ll have to stop that for a while until all the water disappears.  May take a while!.

This should give you an idea of how much water there is on the street! A good 3 or so inches at that location.  To take this picture, I actually leaned out of the car with the door open, trying not to drop the Blackberry and also making sure I did not fall in.  Anyone watching must have though I was crazy!

More updates probably in the morning!

Just when I though the coast was clear, this thing shows up on the radar scope!

According to forecasts, the Cayman Islands may be in for a Tropical storm or Hurricane this coming week-end. It currently is still an “invest”, less than a tropical storm, but that may change soon.

I may just have to put the shutters back up in a day or two and my guests arriving on Saturday PM (since you are traveling, if you are reading this, call us!) may be in for some bad news 🙁

In the last 10 days or so we have had nothing but rain here.  Lets hope this is the last of it since the earth is saturated with water and the weeds are growing at alarming rates ; my garden equipment cant keep up!

When Julie & I were in Canada a few weeks ago, we went to the wedding a childhood friend of mine and I was one on the best men 🙂

Well, fast forward 10 days and my buddy was getting off a cruise ship for the day with his new bride Caroline!  Only a few hours in Cayman, where to take them?  Such an easy question to answer : Stingray City.

Here is my friend Pascal ; obviously enjoying the boat ride.

His wife Caroline (left) and my wife Julie! Lucky guys we are! 🙂

In the water at Stingray City.  Notice that I am gently holding a very large stingray. After so many visits, I have gotten quite good at handling them.  They are so gentle ; you just let them float on your arms, making sure they are always in the water.  This one stayed a good 5-7 minutes with me.  Considering all the rain we have had recently, we were really lucky to have such great weather.

Not a great sunset, but great colors on Seven Mile beach.

Today from my office!  It basically rained all day.  There is a tropical depression in Central America ; we are getting a small part of it.

Lots of guests coming up in the next few months!  Stay tuned.   Also, hurricane season is almost over ; our hurrican shutters are 2/3 down.  Many homes still have them up, on an almost daily basis you can see them coming down from house to house. Oh … and its getting cooler!  YAY.   Compared to the steamy months of August & September, the last 10 days or so have been great ; high 20’s, not too hot and no 24/7 A/C.

I was gone from Cayman for just over two weeks.  Of course, before leaving, the house was in top shape and outside was taken care of ; hedges trimmed, grass cut, etc.

Well, during those two weeks it rained a lot and it was hot.  What happens then?  Things grow like mad.

Here are two pictures of my front lawn after two weeks of being unattended.  Usually its cut nice and short.  Now its a mess and needs to be cut ASAP … as soon as it stops raining and dries up a bit.

To give you an idea of the rain we are having, here is one episode we had this morning.  Its been like this on and off pretty much all day.  This afternoon it was nice and sunny so we went to do some errands.  When we got to the cash register at the supermarket, I looked outside and noticed it had started to rain like mad again.  Store clerks were escorting clients to their cars with large umbrellas.  However, 5 minutes later it stopped just as quickly as it started.

No hurricanes in sight.  Looks like the season may be over for us … lets hope!

I got lots of emails about the mosquito plane that i filmed at night a few weeks ago.  Before going home today I went for the final two dives for the open water diver certification.  All done and passed the exam! 🙂 I really enjoy diving ; very relaxing.

Upon returning home, I noticed that the mosquito plane was out and was “buzzing” by our house repeatedly. So with my digicam I went outside and he passed again a few moments after. He is passing again right now as I type this! I assume its some sort of training or a massive mosquito that just wont die.

On another note, a lovely couple that I met earlier this week has started to build a new house in the vacant next to ours.  As you will see from the pictures below, the base of the house is very different from what I have seen in Canada.  Remember, there are no basements here, so they dont need to go deep.

First, they dug a trench that is about 12-18 inches deep at most and then put in steel rods.  In a few days they will pour concrete to make the initial foundation.  Nothing is poured outside of that trench.

Once the concrete is in place, these concrete blocks (see below) will be “threaded” into the steel bars ; from what I have seen in other constructions there will be 3-4 high.  Then inside those blocks they will fill with compacted earth and cover with more poured concrete to make the floor and complete the foundation. After that they will start to make the interior/exterior walls with more concrete blocks.

Nothing on the weather front … nada!  The Atlantic is very calm.  Great news if you ask anyone living in the Caribbean.