Living in Grand Cayman

Today, ash wednesday, was a public holiday here in the Cayman Islands.  There is an annual agriculture fair held every year at the same date.  So we decided to go & check it out.  Its basically a place where you can see cows, sheep, local farmers with their produce, etc.  There were also “fruit contests” (see pic below) and load of plants and local stuff to buy.  Nothing hugely exciting, but nice to see nevertheless.

 Once home, I was doing some random chores outside at the back of the house and Aipa was staring into the tree.  It turns out there was a couple of (very rare) Cayman Parrots.  They stayed there for quite some time and we got some great pictures of them. Thanks Aipa 🙂  Most of the Cayman Parrots died during hurricane Ivan in 2004, that is what made them so rare.

 Here at the fair, the Leader of Government Business (AKA : Prime Minister) of the Cayman Islands  Kurt Tibbets is taking in the sights.  You would  not see this in North America ; no body guards, etc. It definately feels safe here.

 At the fair, here are some animals we saw.

Also at the fair, here is the “fruit contest”.   There was judging on all types of fruits, vegetables, etc. I guess it was for beauty.  Not exactly sure how all of that worked.

Here are the gorgeous Cayman Parrots.  They actually look a lot like Bijou, just a lot bigger.

Some of you asked for some additionnal pictures of the house, especially outdoors.  Today, after our trip to the beach, I took some picture, so here they are.

 As for the car, we are still actively looking for a CRV, but are now exploring other options.  My next post may be from L.A. I am flying there next saturday and come back the following friday. On the sunday, I already plan to go to Disney World 🙂

Aipa at the beach

A cricket match.  We watched a few minutes.

The house – Front

The side

The back yard

We did not get this one either! 🙁

Actually our bid price was over what it sold for.  What happened is that in the “auction instructions”, I wrote that I wanted them to make sure the car was a “Right hand drive”, had dual airbags & Air conditioning.

Well, I got a message that upon inspection, the car  did not have dual airbags as we requested, so they did not bid on it. We are actually quite pleased  ; technically they could have got it and I would have only seen this issue once the car got to Cayman … it would have been too late then. I guess they are really professionnal and seem to do a good job for their clients.

So back to square one!

 I am starting to like the Grey CRV’s. Its a bit darker than silver  So far we had only bid on white.  What do you think?

Still a Honda CRV.  Now its a 2004 instead of a 2003.  Its pretty much the same as the last one ; white and all equipped.  Funny thing it actually has a DVD & Navigation system. Kinda funny for such a small island.  haha

We should know if it works sometime tonight or tomorrow morning.  Stay tuned.

 Here is a picture of the actual car we bid on.

Note : Since there are quite a few pictures in our posts, I archived quite a few.  You can only see the last 5 posts now on this page.  To see previous posts, click on the different months on the menu to the right.

This week-end is our first where we can actually take it easy. On saturday, we went to 7-mile beach and did some snorkeling.  The rest of the day we went shopping and in the evening we went over to Rory (a coworker from the UK) & his wife Leslie’s ocean front condo for a great BBQ & drinks.

 Sunday we went to a very quiet beach at Beach Bay which is an 8 minute drive from our house.  There were only 2-3 people on the whole beach.  We took Aipa with us and she loved going in the water and getting a piece of wood that I would throw into the ocean. Since there were waves and some current, we put on here life vest ; quite cute!  See the pictures below.

 As for the Honda CRV (see the previous post for more details), we did not win the auction.  We will bid on some other CRV’s this week.  We were about 1000$ off the final price it sold for.  Its quite fun actually ; its like eBay but a lot more expensive!

 The beach at Beach Bay.  Notice the palms are propped up since they had been knocked down during the hurricane in 2004.