Living in Grand Cayman

Happy Halloween 🙂

This last Sunday, I had the opportunity to run in a 30km relay race (hence the 10-10-10).   A part from diving, I was not doing any sports and felt I should to something a bit more athletic to keep in shape.  I decided to take up running, which is something I did do a bit many years ago.   The great thing about running in Cayman is that there is a huge population of runners and there is a race almost (no kidding) every week-end from September though February (during summer its just too hot!)

This week-ends race started from lovely East End of Grand Cayman, more specifically at the Reef Resort. The course is essentially the whole “East end loop”.  So runners start at point A (see below), then run West (top of island) all the way to Frank Sound Road (Old Man Bay) and go south, crossing the entire island and then back to The Reef along the southern coastline.  Each runner does 10k out of the 30.  The race started at 6am, so the first runner had very little sun to deal with but this day there was virtually no wind and humidity was quite high. I was runner 2 and had decent shade since 5km was on Frank Sound Rd and there are large trees/bushes along that road.  The final runner had it tough ; to add to the no wind/high humidity, the sun was now out in force and right in their face. In case you are wondering, I ran my 10km (+-6.2 miles) in 48mins 10 seconds.

At the awards ceremony.  We were the second corporate team in.   Overall, we came in (I think) 6th team out of 14 teams (or something along those lines) Personally I am just happy to have run it; the trophy is just a bonus.  The guy in the middle the is Governor, Duncan Taylor, who is also a very good runner and won the 5km race.  In case you are wondering, the Governor is the formal head of state and is named by the Queen of England for a 4-year term.

There were a few visitors/tourists who ran the race. (There was also the option to run the whole 30k solo) So if anyone visiting Cayman wants to know if there will be a race where they are on island, here is a Website that lists and details all the upcoming runs.  There are a whole bunch coming up, so if you will be in Cayman anytime soon and want to run a race, you should have no problem finding one to participate in.

Here is the URL:  http://www.caymanactive.com/running

You can also follow them on Twitter for race announcements @CaymanActive

Well, Cayman dodged another few bullets. Rina went to Cancun and that other system (see previous post) just fizzed away.  The only effects we got here were lots and lots of rain. Not good for mosquitoes, but I guess that’s the lesser evil. This was a common sight from my office; the photo does not do it justice.  It was really coming down when I took this pic. Apparently, in the last week we received nearly 5 inches of rain.

After the rain, the puddles!  Here is our resident “CSI:Miami” hummer driving by 🙂

This morning I had an errand to run at Camana Bay.  For those who have never been, Camana Bay is a huge development project by our resident (and only one as far as I know) billionaire, Kenneth Dart.  It is a mix of businesses, retail stores, restaurants, a movie theater and residential units.  Its a great place for a business lunch, some shopping or to go for a movie in the evening.  There is also a very nicely made observation tower which gives you a view of the complex and Seven Mile Beach hotels at a distance.  The restaurants at Camana Bay are all very nice and there is also a “Books & Books” book store which is just as nice as an Chapters (for Canadian folk) or Barnes & Noble (for US folk).  Books are duty free in Cayman so prices are quite reasonable.  The movie theater also gets new movie releases at the same time as the rest of North America. So Camana Bay is so a great evening idea for residents and tourists alike. I must admit we don’t go here very often but probably should.

The whole complex is done in a very tasteful manner. Here is the view of one of the main “intersections”.

The observation tower is the structure on the right.

Going up in the observation tower ; there are amazing decorative mosaics.  Very nice.

Some up close detail of once of the murals.

View from the top.   In the distance is Seven Mile Beach.  At the extreme right you can see part of the Ritz Carlton.

If you want to see a live video of this view, there is a Webcam running.  Here is the link.

http://camanabay.com/webcam.html

Cool benches just outside the movie theater.

More posts coming soon …

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That storm I mentioned in my previous post is now a Hurricane (called Rina) and is going to Mexico.  That being said, another system is now on Cayman’s radar.

This system, now called Invest97, is just off the coast of South America and west of the chain of Caribbean Islands.  If it continues on the current course, it may be in Cayman late this week. Current forecast, makes this storm into a Tropical storm, so no hurricanes on the horizon.  Probably the worst news in all of this is that I have a 10k run this weekend, so it may be a very soggy run.   But, on the bring side it wont be a hot/sweaty run 🙂

A day or two I looked at the long range forecast for tropical systems  and there was nothing on the horizon.   Now, we have two system that seem to have “popped up” virtually overnight. One of them is of particular interest since it is at a similar position where Hurricane Paloma was almost 3-years ago already.

Forecast is for a tropical storm sometime mid-week.  Already though, the outer bands of this system brought us copious amounts of rain today. In fact, I got to work and had to sit in my car for +-10 minutes since it was raining so much. Even with an umbrella, I would still have gotten my legs and feet (and shoes …) soaked I just listened to some tunes and waited for it to rain a bit less.

Travel to a new Caribbean destination soon.  Stay tuned 🙂