Living in Grand Cayman

Last week, in the space of 48h, Grand Cayman received 12 inches ( inches …) of rain.   That is quite an epic amount of rain in such a small period of time.  Needless to say there is water everywhere.

To give you an idea, here is the end of the runway (no danger to planes …)  Where normally there is only a few very small ponds, there is now a very large lake!  The first picture below is the state after the rain.  The second one is the satellite view of what we normally have.

That being said, all the long time residents were surprised by the quantity of water so early in the “season”.  Rain like this would usually be associated with a tropical storm or the likes.   This weekend is gorgeous, so at least we got the rain during the work week.

Finally.  The storm “Alberto” died out at sea.  However, right behind that storm we now have “Beryl” which is as I type this a Tropical Storm and hitting the coast of northern Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.  Quite a start to the 2012 active hurricane season, that is officially not ever started.

I also added a link (top right) to James Grandage’s blog which is similar in nature to mine.  He posts some interesting stuff so invite you to take a look.

Reminds me of the shampoo commercial for when I was a kid! 🙂

A system is active north of Cayman, and not on course with us at all.  Its Tropical storm Alberto.  Interestingly, Hurricane season only starts June 1st and we usually don’t see much (if any) action until August.

I guess what this makes us think is that it will be an active season.  Lets hope not.  We must however note that the last 3 summers we have had 0 storms in Cayman! Last one was Paloma in 2008.

More posts soon.  The Flowers Sea swim is coming up soon … cant wait for that one.

Well .. not sure what to make of this news, but I found it amusing and also revealing at the same time.

Today’s front page news is a piece of an Ariane rocket that was launched in Guyana and that washed up in Bodden Town a few days ago.    How cool is that?

Photo: Elly Wray (on Caycompass.com)

Here is the full article.

http://www.compasscayman.com/caycompass/2012/04/27/Space-junk-found-in-Bodden-Town/

What I found to be revealing is that this made 1st page in the local paper today.   Things must be pretty good for this to be the headline. At least that’s my take on it.  Next time I am out diving on the southern side of the island, I sure hope to find some space memorabilia!

In continuing with the “slow news day” theme … it has been really quiet here.   Lots of rain recently though, good for the grass and people with cisterns.  I also had a visitor to my office … this fellow stayed for a long while on my window sill.  Not afraid at all ; my camera was mere inches away (separate by hurricane glass of course)

That’s it for now … all is well in the Cayman Islands.   People are starting to think (already) about hurricane season, which officially starts in just over 1-month.

All of you know I love to dive.  Well I am now ecstatic about a new attraction coming to Cayman.

Starting today, a dive operator just off Seven Mile beach will be offering shark dives.  In fact, just off the public beach and hotels, there have been many very large sharks sites, so that seems to have sparked the idea.

What they will do is attract them in close and let the divers go in and see them up close. During some dives, a few compelling pictures were taken with 16-ft bull shark.   Large tiger sharks were also spotted in the Seven Mile beach area.

Of course this has generated lots of excitement in the diving community.   Dives cost 40$ per dive and include the blood and guts that are fed to the sharks to attract as many as possible.

I cant wait to go diving with these massive sharks … next April fools day 🙂

PS : I have actually never seen any “real” sharks near Seven Mile beach (the below whale shark does not count).

A while ago I posted about a solitary pelican that could be seen on a lamp pole along the road in Prospect.

Here is that post:   https://micho.org/cayblog/?p=1901

In today’s paper was an article that made me very sad. I try to keep this blog upbeat, since its in my nature, but when things happen to animals it really gets to me.

So it turns out that this lovely bird was likely killed by some fishermen by being beaten with oars.   The bird was taken to the vet but had to be euthanized 🙁

If anyone has any information, there is a  number in the article (see link) that can be called to report these cruel people.

“According to the Department of Environment, it was likely this pelican was the same one people commuting from Prospect had been seeing in recent months, perched on top of a CUC pole in the central road reservation.”

http://www.compasscayman.com/caycompass/2012/03/26/Fishermen-beat-pelican-with-oar/

That is all …