Living in Grand Cayman

While in Las Vegas last week, I had the opportunity to go for a (quick) road trip to Death Valley, California.  If you like heat, this is the place for you.  Think “opening the oven to look at your pizza” type heat! Its extremely intense.  However, its an easy and very enjoyable drive.  The roads are in great condition and the views are spectacular.

On the road there ; some great mountain views

This is the spot.  It is the lowest place in North America ; 282ft below sea level.  There is a rectangular sign about 1/2 way up that mountain (difficult to see on the picture) where shows the sea level.  Its a looooong way up!

Out for a walk on the salt flats.   The temperature was a crazy 117f  (+-47c) when we did this walk. I have to admit that walk was not one of my brightest ideas.  When we left the car, we had cold drinks in our hands.  I kid you not ; when we walked back about 15 minutes later, they were piss warm, yuk!  Only good thing is that the humidity is so low that you don’t get all sweaty like in Cayman.

My high school friend Mathieu joined me on this road trip.  He is getting married in a few weeks and thought it would be great so spend some time with him so he flew down to join me!  Very wise of her, Julie did not come to Las Vegas with me.  There was not a day below 105 while I was there, so staying inside in the A/C was the way to go.   Note, we are not holding hands in this picture! 🙂

The temperature gauge in the rental car!

On the way back, we saw this fellow on the road.  He seemed lost.  We tried to give him some water but that was a failure. Anyway, coyotes have survived in the desert for thousands of years, so I assume s/he will be OK.

The trip!  We started out in Las Vegas, then took the northern route (top) and then after Death Valley, went south (down) and back to Las Vegas to complete the loop. +-330miles/550km from Las Vegas, to Death Valley and back in one afternoon!  If you plan on doing this trip on your next trek to Las Vegas, get a comfortable rental car, bring lots of drinks and a GPS is quite useful.

A regular reader of my blog, Lisa from California, was kind enough to send me a picture she took while vacationing recently on Grand Cayman.  An I must say, what a picture it is!  WOW

The picture was taken from Seven Mile beach on August 5th, just after lunch time.

Now these things are definitely not rare ; I have seen a few myself.  However, this one seems much larger that the ones I have seen.  I am guessing this is a mile or so off shore, so its a big one.

I had to do some reading about these things ; actually an interesting phenomenon. They are generally much weaker than land based tornadoes and do not suck up any water.   Here is the Wiki for those interested:

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

There are also a few video’s of this on Youtube.  Impressive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUkpVi9yRGs

More posts in the next few days …

I am always amazed at the quantity of nice cars in Grand Cayman.  Most places in the Caribbean you often have a mix of old, rusted and “bumper missing” cars.

Not the case in Grand Cayman! Off the top of my head, we have Porsche, Mercedes, Audi & BMW dealers for luxury cars.   You have to admit, for +-52,000 people, thats quite impressive.

The love affair with cars goes even further, as this sign is a witness to:

So what’s this sign you ask?  I saw this in the parking lot of A.L. Thompson, our local equivalent of Home Depot. Strange don’t you think? It turns out that locals LOVE to wash their cars.  I have often seen people washing (and doing maintenance on) their cars in random parking lots and even over lunch breaks.  There are also quite a few car wash facilities scattered around the island. There are also many “mobile” car washing services. Essentially two guys in a van with a reservoir of water and cleaning products. They will wash your car in the parking lot of your office (for example) and when you finish work you arrive to a nice & clean car.

Speaking of cars and hot days as I have in recent posts, some kitty cat was looking for a cool place to rest a few days ago. This is what I saw as I was walking back towards my CRV a few days back ; a kitty cat fast asleep in the shade.  It was only when I got really close did s/he see me and ran away.

If you have ever driven along South Church street in South Sound, you probably have noticed this oddity!  I certainly have but never really wondered what it was until now (I am also wondering why I had not stopped before … I’m usually curious about quirks like these ; anyway!)

So here it is below!.  The story of this tree runs something along these lines.

After Hurricane Ivan in 2004, a couple noticed that on some remote beaches, there was trash.  Often, that trash was shoes/flipflops/etc.  So they collected a few hundred at various locations (remember, Ivan was a nasty storm, so lots of debris went out to sea and is coming back to shore) and then one night, to make a statement, nailed them to a large dead tree on South Church street, where many motorists pass every day.  Since then, people have been adding shoes and it has become a bit of a tourist photo op.

There is even a Facebook site for this tree.   Also, there was an article about the tree (and how I got the story I explained above) at the following link if you are curious.

http://www.uncommoncaribbean.com/2011/04/05/uncommon-attraction-the-dirty-story-behind-the-cayman-shoe-tree/ or just search for “cayman shoe tree” on Facebook.

So after checking out the tree and working up an appetite, I headed to one of my favorite restaurants : Chicken-Chicken.  I am often asked by readers for good places to eat, so here is one. Its close to 7-Mile beach and town, quick service and reasonable prices. +-10$CI for a full meal and drink. (I always have the bottled root beer or cream soda ; so good!)  Below is the spot.   +-1:30opm on a Saturday and there were quite a few clients inside.  For Canadian folk, this place compares to Swiss Chalet (or Chalet Suisse for the Quebecois).

Preparing the chicken right in front of you.

The product with corn bread ; very yummy!  A good friend of mine, with whom I have been to this restaurant many times (you know who you are!), his wife once told me that if he could chose whichever restaurant in the world to go to on his birthday, he would still go to Chicken-Chicken! 🙂

Summer is here and its quite obvious.  Although rain has been quite rare (ask all swimming pool owners … they count on summer rain to keep their swimming pools full.  If no rain with lots of heat, the water evaporates and the pool then needs to be filled with the hose which costs $$$) things are growing lots.

First, the Royal Poinciana’s are in full bloom.  These have got to be my favorite trees here.  I love it every year how brilliant orange they get.   When driving east towards Savannah, they overhang over Shamrock road is awesome. Here you can see the first or many (see in back) just before getting to the countryside shopping center.

Here are some more on someones property in the area.

Next … the fruit is almost ready!

Here are limes.

Ackee.  These are extremely popular with the local Jamaican population.  When prepared it looks like scrambled eggs and is often (always?) mixed with salted codfish.   I believe this is eaten for breakfast. Please enlighten me if you know!  Although I consider myself adventurous, I have not yet convinced myself to have salted codfish for breakfast.

And of course banana’s.  Not yet ripe though.

On another note, I went to license my beloved CRV this week (long time readers know what I mean by beloved).  In Cayman, one needs to have their cars licensed every year. Its a process that can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2h depending on how many people decide to do it that day.  Basically you have to drive to an approved location and they check the condition of the car ; indicator lights,  headlights, tires, wipers, etc.  Once you are given the OK, then you pay!  But thats not the story.  At the new licensing building in Red Bay, there is a pond right next it and there is a resident family of West Indian Whistling ducks.   Sooo cute.

There are not particularly shy. I guess they are used to having people around all day since its a busy location.   I also suspect they get fed since the government employees had a small water bowl out for them.  I did some research (aka : googled it) and it turns out that these are somewhat endangered (although not critically) and are indigenous to most of the Caribbean islands.

Last thing ; I saw this at a local supermarket. Obviously some sort of shipping error!

Note sure who is going to buy a snowboard here, even if its only 2$ 🙂