Living in Grand Cayman

Each time a hurricane, or even a tropical storm/depression comes close to Grand Cayman, all the residents prepare and brace for the worst.   However, those who live in South Sound near the water probably worry a bit more.  You see, the street is no more (my estimation) than 4ft above sea level, so any surge will spill sea water into homes and onto the street. For every storm we have seen since getting here, some homes were damaged and had water come in.

Now, this guy has it all figured out:

This house that is near completion is build about (again my estimate) about 10ft off the ground on concrete stilts. So barring some catastrophic storm,  this house should do just fine.

Another resident on South Church street who figured this out is the owner of the biggest house on Grand Cayman.  Notice the slope on the driveway. This house is perched up quite high compared to street level.

If you want to see some jaw dropping pictures inside and outside of this mansion, take a look here.  The owner, from what I have been told is a 30-something financier. I have also been told that he is a super nice guy and if you met him you would never know that he is uber-wealthy. Before you ask, the number 30M$ was once mentioned to me, but I have no way of knowing if this is true or now.  In any case, who cares, its a amazing house!

See the pictures here:

http://homesoftherich.net/2009/05/cayman-islands-mega-mansion.html

Couple of other random things …

I got this view of a cruise ship while on a dive boat.  Quite an impressive sight up close.

Plus, there were localized rain showers this week and today (of course, also one right after I washed my truck)

Here we see a very heavy rainfall over the ocean after passing George Town and South Sound. For some reason I am always fascinated how it can be raining in one area and bone dry somewhere else. These clouds seem to pass by only a small area and drop their loads.

Alright … i’m tired and going to take a nap like this guy on this sunny saturday afternoon 🙂

(I know long time no post. I travel a lot more now, so I will be posting somewhat less often …)

A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck Grand Cayman this morning. I only flew in this PM, so did not experience it.   However, people seems to have been quite shaken up.   With the terrible events in Haiti just recently, its not surprising.

From what I have been told and read, this in the only significant damage. Its a 20ft sinkhole n South Sound.

Looks bad, but damage could have been worse.

A few facts …

The Cayman trench is the second deepest place on earth, second to Challenge deep which is somewhere off Thailand.  There is a major fault line that run south of the island.  So its not really surprising that we are seeing seismic activity here. Lets just hope that that was the end of it for a while.  Also, I know that there is a very strict building code here. When you build a house or commercial building, there are inspectors during the whole process and the place needs to be good for hurricanes & quakes. I am sure that was a factor today and why there was not more damage.

Anyway, all is normal!  Diving this week-end 🙂

In the last week or so, there has been lots of wave action. On the open ocean, its called “oceanic swells”, those large waves that make boats bobble all over the place.

Today, I went diving on the east end with some friends of mine. Let me tell you that there were plenty of swells!

To get to our dive site, the boat cruises for about 20 minutes or so inside the reef protected area. At one point, near Morritts (for those of you that know the area), we exit the reef and into the open ocean!  Man-o-man, we encountered some pretty big waves. Here is a video of exiting the reef

Once our dives completed, we headed back to base.  We were in for a treat. I posted a while ago some pictures of guys kite surfing.  Those pictures were very small and you could only see the guys hundreds of feet away. Well, one guy who is obviously quite skilled in this actity gave us a free show.

Here is a picture of him!  See the video below … quite spectacular.

The video. Amazing! 🙂

Finally, back to base.   I took a picture of a pelican resting.  Why take a picture of this common maritime bird?  Well, I cant recall having ever seen one in Cayman before.  There are plenty in Florida and other Caribbean islands, but not in Cayman. I have no idea why. If I were to venture a guess, it would be something to do with the hurricanes we have had in the past 5 years.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to give a presentation to 300 high-school students. As some of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I work in the IT field.

The presentation was to inform them about the risks they face online when using the Internet.  From cyber predators to scammers, to spam and online gaming.  I also discussed how anyone can be filmed at almost anytime (such as at the beach) and that if they do something they regret, it could be uploaded before they know it! Its especially true now that almost all cell phones have a camera & video capabilities.

Its a dangerous world out there, and not just for teens. A reporter form a local paper assisted the presentation and made a lovely writeup about it,  It can be found at the link below.

http://www.compasscayman.com/observer/observer.aspx?id=8152

In the past years, there were have been a few “turtle releases” done by the local turtle farm.  However, due to hurricanes and also low fertility of their turtle population, none had been done in the past two years.

A few weeks ago, such an event was planned on seven mile beach. I of course attended. 🙂  Ten 1-year old turtles were released by members of the public. Approximately 200+ people showed up for the event. I managed to get “front row seats”.

Here are some pictures of the event.  The first one will give you an idea of the crowd that gathered. May be more than 200. In any case, someone driving by must have thought that some rock star was giving a free concert! 🙂

Here go two of them.

This one made it to the water. The “carriers” would put the turtles down on the sand and let them make it into the water themselves.

This one swam very close to me.

Swimming away to freedom! As you can see, there were even people in the water hoping to catch a glimpse of these lovely animals.

As a note, turtles are protected in Cayman. It is illegal to catch/kill any. Those that are caught face jail time.  When I go diving, I often see turtles swimming around, so I think that although the population is not huge, it does seem to be doing well.

Final note: One one day of hurricane season remaining. 0 storms this year, not even a near-miss.  IDA was the closest and was never a threat.