Living in Grand Cayman

Summer weather is in full swing in beautiful Grand Cayman Island. The sun is blazing, the water is uber warm ( I recorded 87 degrees on my second dive just south of the island this morning) and the fruit is ripe.

Here are a sample of local fruit that I saw recently. Lucky me, most of these trees/fruit are close to where we live and have access to them 🙂

Banana’s!  These are actually called “apple banana’s”.  They are about 1/2 to 2/3 the length  of regular bananas and a bit more stubby.  Taste wise, I find them 100x better. In my opinion they are a cross between banana and granny smith apples.

Bread fruit. These strange green things are the size of large grapefruits and you can see them all over the island. There are even some of these trees in George Town.  The way to eat these is quite peculiar. You slice them up in to the shape if french fries and then deep fry them.   They come out just like … you guess it, french fries. Quite frankly tastes just like them too.  I am sure there are other ways to eat this fruit, but have not identified any as of yet.  Uncooked it does not taste very good.

Mango.   The star of this list in my opinion. After hurricane Ivan, lots of people lost their mango trees or had them severely damaged. Well, 6 years later those that survived are producing lots of fruit now. Right now the trees are bursting with fruit and the are very sweet.  Mango overdose anyone? I have had 3 so far today.

The tree above has the “regular” mango’s like you find in most supermarkets.  The tree below has mango’s that are are bit bigger; I put them side by side to show the size difference. No idea what they are called, but in all honesty, with they way the taste, who cares?

To close, here is a property I had forgotten about.  It was built about 2 years ago and is on the southern coast, just after Frank Sound Rd on your way to the east end. This is probably a great house to be in if a hurricane comes by. It was made with poured concrete. In any case, I find it quite pretty even though I am usually not a fan of angular homes.

For anyone thinking about a trip to Cayman, here was my view from the front of the dive boat this morning. Amazing 🙂

In my recent trips, I had a few days in the lovely British Virgin Islands.  Great place!  Well, in BVI there is a fabulous wreck dive to be done.  Its the wreck of the RMS Rhone which sank in 1867 during a hurricane.  Along with the 310-ft ship, over 100 people lost their lives in this maritime disaster.

For more information on this fascinating story, see:

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

Today, she is one of the most popular wreck dives in the world.  The movie “The deep” with Nick Nolte was largely filmed at this wreck.

Here are some pictures of two (the wreck is so big that it takes two dives to see the whole things) dives I did.  The stern is in +-80ft of water and the bow in +-50ft. Thanks to Jen & Mark for these underwater pictures.

From inside the bow

A school of fish hanging around an engine part of some sort.

Very weird looking fish. Anyone know what this is?

A very large Barracuda named “Fang”.  He has been around for so long that he now has a name. There is even mention of Fang in the Wikipedia page. When we saw him, he was just hanging under some wreckage.

A porthole with the window still intact after 150 years. Impressive!  The legend is that if you (the diver) rub your hand on it in a circular clockwise motion it will bring good luck. I did it, have not seen any additional luck yet 🙂

Below that diver is one of the propeller blades.  HUGE!

Returning to base after two amazing dives.

I have been asked a few times by friends if the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will affect the Cayman Islands.  In short : it’s extremely unlikely.

Here is a current map I found.

As you can see, the main current enters the Caribbean near the Leeward Islands (St-Lucia, Dominica, etc) and then flows towards Cayman.  From there it passes between Cuba and the Yucatan and into the Gulf of Mexico.  Once in the Gulf, it flows east (“loop”) towards Florida (which is why they are unfortunately now getting oil on their shores) and then out towards the Keys and up the eastern seaboard.  The whole time it goes east, Cuba is sort of “shielding” Cayman.

I am sure many of you have seen the terrible pictures of those birds covered in oil.  So sad.  However, I am glad to say that Cayman’s amazing beaches and marine life are safe from the oil.

I have not been to this yet, but found this post on a scuba forum and am definitely intrigued and will for sure go to check it out.

Just off shore on the North side, at snorkeling distance, there are a few “hot water vents” … like volcano vents or “hot springs”. Who knew we had those! Best of all they are close to shore and in very shallow water.   Snorkeling anyone?

In any case, here is the location.   All credit for this information goes to a guy that goes by “Testudo” on Scubaboard.com.  This location is on the North side of Grand Cayman on the eastern tip. If you are not familiar, you may have to ask when you get to the area.

Here are some of his pictures.

More can be found at :

http://picasaweb.google.com/testudo92/GrandCaymanMemorialDayWeekend2010#

Also, its 3 days to … Hurricane season! 🙁

Unfortunately, a very active season is predicted. Lets hope they are wrong as they were last year.

In any case, just as a reminder to all who like to monitor Hurricanes but find that most Canadian/USA news outlets don’t cover Cayman  & the Caribbean enough, here are some site that us locals use:

http://www.stormcarib.com

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

On the road again … I just got back from a trip to Frankfurt Germany. First of all, I am certainly counting my blessings that I actually made it out of Germany. My flight out on Thursday afternoon was less than 12h before German airspace was closed due to the volcanic ash that is wreaking havoc on air travel all over Europe.  Since I had a Frankfurt-Chicago flight, they were able to fly a more southern route and avoid the cloud.  I have some friends stuck in London, Frankfurt and even one in Qatar ; I hope they all can resume their travels soon.

Off course, I took time to check out the city,  have some excellent German food and take pictures to report back on this blog! 🙂

On the Sunday, I took a  2h bus tour of the city.  It was a good choice to be able to see the main features of the city. In all honesty, there is nothing spectacular about Frankfurt, but its very clean and also very modern.   I enjoyed visiting this city and found it to be very safe.  Below is the city skyline. Frankfurt is the financial capital of Germany and most banks, including Deutche Bank occupy the buildings in these pictures.

Romerplatz, typical German architecture (I think …). Very nice place to walk around.

This guy on the bus tour seemed somewhat less enthusiastic about his visit than I was!

Of course, what would be a visit to Germany without Weinershnitzel?  (which is a sort of breaded veal for those not familiar with the dish)  I ate everything here 🙂

Finally, the beer! I innocently ordered “ein bier” (one beer …) and received this bad boy!  One liter of beer.  (33 fluid ounces or 0.26 gallons for US folk) It actually looks smaller on the picture than it really was. Needless to say I did not order a second one (but did finish that one …)

As a last note, what else does Germany have a part from nice buildings and good food?  Think about it?  Cars!  WOW. This place is a car geek heaven.  2/3 of all cars are less than 4-years old and are either Mercedes, VW/Audi or BMW. Plus, so many nice models/features that we never see in North-America. For example, this Ford station wagon.   Why are they hiding this on the other side of the Atlantic?

Or this Audi Q5 with a TDI engine. In N-A, only available with a gas guzzling V6.

Anyway, loved this trip and wish I had a bit more time to visit this place. In the mean time, I am glad I was able to fly out and feel sorry for my friends and the thousands of people stranded for probably days before they can fly home.