Living in Grand Cayman

This weeking there was a forecast for lots of rain ; like usual, they were wrong. Obviously we were very pleased.  On sunday morning, we went to Smith Cove.  Its near Georgetown and its a small but gorgeous beach.  Great place to snorkel or just to float around in the waves, which is what we did today. Its also a popular place for the locals, which seem to leave 7-Mile beach for the expats & tourists.

In the afternoon, we went for a drive and found a fruit bearing mango tree on a lot with no house or anthing.  Well, Julie’s favorit fruit is the mango, so yours truly went and got a bunch for her.

This is only part of what we got.  I picked these which were low hanging, but we went back with a bag & a stick with a hook on the end and got 20 or so more.  Most of them are not ripe yet, so Julie will be able to eat loads of Mango’s for the next week or so.  I guess we’ll go back next week to pick some more.

Monday I leave for Miami for 3 days.  As usualy, I have a shopping list of things to get at the Dadeland mall, Target & BestBuy.  We even ordered a few books from Amazon.com & a new Breadmaker (our old one broke) on the Internet.  I have them shipped to my hotel.

On a final note, the Honda CRV should be here really soon. Its now in transit in Kingston Jamaica. I should be here by the end of next week, but never know with these things.  It will have taken 3 month in all.

Last night we had a major storm pass by.  The lightning and thunder were like being in a war zone ; sorta made me think about the combat scenes you see/hear on CNN!  It also rained like mad for quite a while.

This morning when going to the grocery, this is what we saw not too far from our house.  Of course, with the Mazda 3 we have, we had to take another route. We were not mistaken, it had rained a whole lot.

On the side of our house, we then noticed that there was a large accumulation of water.  As you can see, it continues onto the lawn of our neighbor.

Finally, while I was in the Virgin Islands, Julie started to make a screen door.  We wanted one since we could not leave the door open without having bugs come in the house, so we always had the a/c on.  Julie build the door, I helped a bit.  Looks really good, dont you think?

As part of my monthly column in “The Journal”, my second article was published last week. It is about “Google Hacking”.

 Here is what it looked like in the paper. Below this picture, click on the link “google_hacking.pdf” to read the whole article.

google_hacking.pdf

I flew last sunday to BVI for some work at our office over there.  Absolutely beautiful place ; mountains, lush vegetation, not too developed, etc.  Its a hassle to get there though : Cayman to Miami to SanJuan to Tortola (BVI).  The return trip is exactly the same.

 The hills are a great challenge to drive ; very steep, sharp turns and brake smoking descents. Fun, fun! 🙂  My hotel was on one of the nicer beaches on the island ; Cane Garden Bay.  Glad to be back in Cayman with Julie now!

 A view of Cane Garden Bay.  My hotel was just off the beach, at the other end.

Brewers bay ; a spectacular beach with coral reefs just meters from shore. See them?

View from the office I was using.  You can see how lush it is compared to Cayman. Notice the rainbow!

From San Juan to Tortola its a prop plane, a “Super ATR”.  Its a 60ish seater and it takes about 25 minutes to fly from Tortola to San Juan.

Its Julie writing this post! June 1st was the first day of the hurricane season so we started our preparation, hoping that everything will be calm this year, as it was last year. Hurricane season is from June 1st to November 30. However, June – July are usually very calm. Most hurricanes are in August & september. Our survival kit and plan include an evacuation plan, a shelter at the office, a babysitter for the pets, some canned food and bottled water, batteries, fans (battery operated), flashlights, and many other things.

Micho installed hurricane shutters on the terrase doors this morning.

Also, we moved the clothing lines into the garage since it rains so often now. This week is rained 5 days out of 7.  It never rains very long ; usually 30 minutes to 1 hour, but it comes down very hard and leaves a lot of water everywhere.

We decided to use a clipper on Aipa since she was loosing so much hair. She is a little whiter with her new haircut. Here are some pics of her with her boyfriend Niko, they are quite cute together 🙂  Niko lives a few houses away and belongs to a co-worker of Micho (Julian)  He comes to visit us once in a while.  Niko also follows us when we pass his house when taking a walk.