Living in Grand Cayman

In my recent trips, I had a few days in the lovely British Virgin Islands.  Great place!  Well, in BVI there is a fabulous wreck dive to be done.  Its the wreck of the RMS Rhone which sank in 1867 during a hurricane.  Along with the 310-ft ship, over 100 people lost their lives in this maritime disaster.

For more information on this fascinating story, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Rhone

Today, she is one of the most popular wreck dives in the world.  The movie “The deep” with Nick Nolte was largely filmed at this wreck.

Here are some pictures of two (the wreck is so big that it takes two dives to see the whole things) dives I did.  The stern is in +-80ft of water and the bow in +-50ft. Thanks to Jen & Mark for these underwater pictures.

From inside the bow

A school of fish hanging around an engine part of some sort.

Very weird looking fish. Anyone know what this is?

A very large Barracuda named “Fang”.  He has been around for so long that he now has a name. There is even mention of Fang in the Wikipedia page. When we saw him, he was just hanging under some wreckage.

A porthole with the window still intact after 150 years. Impressive!  The legend is that if you (the diver) rub your hand on it in a circular clockwise motion it will bring good luck. I did it, have not seen any additional luck yet 🙂

Below that diver is one of the propeller blades.  HUGE!

Returning to base after two amazing dives.

On the road again … I just got back from a trip to Frankfurt Germany. First of all, I am certainly counting my blessings that I actually made it out of Germany. My flight out on Thursday afternoon was less than 12h before German airspace was closed due to the volcanic ash that is wreaking havoc on air travel all over Europe.  Since I had a Frankfurt-Chicago flight, they were able to fly a more southern route and avoid the cloud.  I have some friends stuck in London, Frankfurt and even one in Qatar ; I hope they all can resume their travels soon.

Off course, I took time to check out the city,  have some excellent German food and take pictures to report back on this blog! 🙂

On the Sunday, I took a  2h bus tour of the city.  It was a good choice to be able to see the main features of the city. In all honesty, there is nothing spectacular about Frankfurt, but its very clean and also very modern.   I enjoyed visiting this city and found it to be very safe.  Below is the city skyline. Frankfurt is the financial capital of Germany and most banks, including Deutche Bank occupy the buildings in these pictures.

Romerplatz, typical German architecture (I think …). Very nice place to walk around.

This guy on the bus tour seemed somewhat less enthusiastic about his visit than I was!

Of course, what would be a visit to Germany without Weinershnitzel?  (which is a sort of breaded veal for those not familiar with the dish)  I ate everything here 🙂

Finally, the beer! I innocently ordered “ein bier” (one beer …) and received this bad boy!  One liter of beer.  (33 fluid ounces or 0.26 gallons for US folk) It actually looks smaller on the picture than it really was. Needless to say I did not order a second one (but did finish that one …)

As a last note, what else does Germany have a part from nice buildings and good food?  Think about it?  Cars!  WOW. This place is a car geek heaven.  2/3 of all cars are less than 4-years old and are either Mercedes, VW/Audi or BMW. Plus, so many nice models/features that we never see in North-America. For example, this Ford station wagon.   Why are they hiding this on the other side of the Atlantic?

Or this Audi Q5 with a TDI engine. In N-A, only available with a gas guzzling V6.

Anyway, loved this trip and wish I had a bit more time to visit this place. In the mean time, I am glad I was able to fly out and feel sorry for my friends and the thousands of people stranded for probably days before they can fly home.

This week I am in the Turks & Caicos Islands, more specifically on the island of Grand Turk which is the capital.  There are only +-5000 people who live on this island.

Getting to Grand Turk was half the fun. Flight from Miami to Providenciales (“Provo”); no big deal.  Then a flight from Provo to Grand Turk via Air Turks & Caicos.  Very fun!

Here is our plane, a very old De Havilland Twin-Otter

Here is our pilot. I kid you not! (pun intended) 🙂   This pilot was not more than 18.  (edit: Debby from Air TC left me a comment. The Pilot’s name is Captain Thomas and he is 23!  Thanks for letting me know.  In any case he did a great job!)

My view of the cockpit from my seat … no door! Great view of the whole flight.

The first thing that struck me once in Grand Turk was the amount of livestock roaming around.  Especially the amount of donkeys. At one point I counted 8 around the hotel where I was staying.

Here are some of the beasts roaming around the island.

On the hotel grounds, there were also quite a few cats & dogs roaming around freely. They seem to “belong” there since the dogs all had collars.  I approached some of the dogs and must say that they were some of the kindest souls I have even come in contact with.  Here is “Savage” getting petted while I had breakfast at the restaurant overlooking the beach.

Of course great place for going to the beach, unfortunately I had little time for that a part for a swim after work.

Lovely sunsets also.

A quick update about the Apoise, the luxury yacht I featured below. It sold today for 46M$US which according to the site superyatchs.com is a bargain! The estimated value was around 87M$.  Good deal for the British citizen (no name given) who purchased it. Click on link below for more details.

http://www.superyachts.com/news/superyacht-auction–apoise-sold-for-dollar46-million-496.htm

Note: If you tried to add a comment in the last two weeks or so you noticed that it did not work.  All fixed now.  Thanks to Yves for letting me know!

Part of living in Cayman is wanting, from time to time, get off the island.  Its great to be able to drive at highway speeds, shop at Walmart/Macys/JCPenney/Bestbuy/etc and of course eat at McDonald’s!  Dont get me wrong, Cayman is great, but a trip abroad like this is nice.

First stop, the Everglades. We made two stops there. One for a (some what disappointing) walk and then to a place for a  “fan boat” ride and gator show/information session which was really interesting.

Here Julie was picked by the host to play with the baby crocs.

I got to hold an older one. We really enjoyed seeing/touching them. Beautiful creatures!

Here is the “fan boat”.  Goes quite fast and makes lots of noise.  Highly recommended 🙂

Crocs in a pond along the Tamiami trail that crosses the state (and everglades) from Miami to Naples on the gulf coast. There was one right near the side of the street that scared the $%^& out of us when s/he dove into the pond when we got close.

Our ride for the road trip ; a Chevy Impala. I was not thrilled when we got it, but it was a great highway cruiser and very comfortable.

Now in Naples. This place is very special to me. When I was a kid, my parents used to take my sister & I here for Christmas vacations. I remember fishing from the pier and have many great memories from this city. The picture below was from that pier ; we were lucky to see a family of dolphins the morning we were there.

Going North … now near Orlando. No, we did not go to Disney. We went … Orange picking! haha  In Canada, Julie & I and with our families would always go apple picking.  So we though that orange picking would be lots of fun.  Guess, what? I was great.  We even picked some limes, lemons and grapefruits.   Here we are in this lovely orange grove filling our large bag. We had so many that we had to make juice in the mornings at the hotels so not to waste any.

We even made a discovery : Kumquats!  They are like mini-oranges. The skin is sweet and the inside somewhat sour, but totally addictive. I had never even heard of these.

Now further up north, Atlanta! First stop, the Georgia aquarium. Built in 2005 with a 250$M donation by the founder of Home Depot, its the largest sea aquarium in the world.  It was amazing.  To give you an idea of how big the tanks are, look below.  There are some people sitting down in front of the 2ft thick acrylic window. Whale sharks (huge!!!), belugas and so many other fish, it was very impressive.

After the aquarium, off to the world of Coca-Cola. Very interesting for anyone (like myself …) who likes the stuff.  At the end of the tour and as seen below, there are 64 fountains of all the different coca-cola products around the world.  I sampled all of them of course. Some were great, but some were not even potable in my book!

Now to “The situation room”! The CNN tour is great for CNN junkies like myself. You get to see the studies and some behind the scenes stuff.  No pictures could be taken inside though. It was quite cold in Atlanta so we had to dress up.

One of our final stops on our way back to Miami : Daytona beach. I remembered that we could drive on the beach and Julie wanted to try it. It was high tide and no other cars were on the beach … its a rental car, so why not! 🙂   It was lots of fun. Probably get arrested for driving this on seven mile beach in Cayman.

In total 1654 miles (2661 km) and a great time!  Next post, the “massive” Christmas lights are up as they were last year.  Ill get some different pics and put them here probably this week-end.

One of the things Julie & I have come to love in our neighborhood are the chicken & other animals that roam free.  For regular readers of this blog, as well as any guests that have stayed at my place in the 21 months we have lived here, you all know the special place that Niko, the neighborhood dog, had in our hearts.

Not long after we moved to Cayman, Niko started “joining” us for walks along with our own dog Aipa.  Either we would walk by his place and he would follow us or more recently he would lie outside our front door until we came out.  Just this week, Niko spent two days with us due to very heavy rain ; we let him stay on our back (covered) porch so that we would stay dry.  Also, a few times a week, Niko would follow Julie to the gym (a 10-12 minute walk) and would wait patiently outside the door until she finished about 1h later. He would then walk back home with her where he would be rewarded with treats.

Julian, Niko’s owner, came over this morning with the terrible news.  Niko was lying lifeless on the side of the street, very close to our place.   He had joined us for our nightly walk the previous evening and we know he went home afterward.  We presume that early in the morning, as he often does, he was coming over to our place when he was struck by (presumably) a car.

Here is a picture of Niko coming to our place wagging his tail!

Niko attacking a crab

On a hot day, sharing the cold floor and a/c with Aipa.