Living in Grand Cayman

After almost exactly 3 months since we purchased it via an online auction in Japan, our CRV is finally here.  I must admit though, it was worth the wait.  The car is in fantastic shape and works beautifully.  The windows are heavily tinted ; great to keep out the sun. Also, the outside has no dings/dents, only a few very small scratches, quite normal for a 2002 I would think.  Inside, all is perfect.  As an added bonus, the car is equipped with the very bright Xenon headlamps (for those not familiar, these are the very bright white/blue-ish headlights most luxury cars have) which are usually a 1000$ option, so I am quite pleased since the purchase sheet did not mention that this CRV had them. 🙂

On tuesday, it took Julie & I pretty much all day to get the car thru Cayman’s “administrative process”.  Here goes :

1.  9:35am.  Get insurance coverage for the car. Prices are quite similar to Canada.
2. 10:30am. Go to the bank to get cash.  Most government agencies only accept cash or cheque. I had to wait in line; I am not used to going to the bank anymore.
3. 11:00. Go to customs to pay the 27.5% duty and 250$ environmental charge
4. Around 11:30. Pickup Julie in Savannah  (still with the Mazda) and then go to KPMG to park the Mazda.  We then got a lift from a Co-worker for step 5.
5. Around 12:30. Get dropped off at the Port Authority and pay a small port fee (20$)  Customs then drove our car to us and inspected it to make sure we are not smuggling in anything we are not supposed to.  The battery was dead (we expected this).  We had it boosted and all was fine after driving around and letting the car idle.
6. Around 2pm. Over to the licencing department.   With the car, we lined up for about 15 minutes.  An inspector then just checked if all the turn lights & headlights worked and a few other things are in good working order; all was fine.  Then we had to go inside, show the inspection report and pay 250$ for the exam and the annual licence fee.  We were also given the licence plates and a sticker to put in the windshield.  
7. Aound 3pm. Go home.  We are dead tired!  We had supper and of course I had to wash the car and give it two coats of wax. After 3 months at a japanese port & on a boat, it was quite filthy.

Here are some pictures of the day and of our new car. 

This is the Port Authority location in the industrial park in Georgetown.  Our car was stored here.

Before it was cleared from customs, it was behind these barbed fences.  Its the 3rd one from the left.

After going from Kobe, Japan – Kingston, Jamaica – Cayman, these are all the markings on the windshield.  We needed rasor blades to get all of this off.

First picture at home after wash & wax.

Notice the small rearview mirror on the hood. We are not 100% sure, but think its to see the sidewalk for parking in order not to scrape the wheels.

From Honda de Brossard to Honda Nagasaki.  I would have never though we would get a car from that dealership! 🙂

Notice the small Quebec flag we put on the rear.

This weeking there was a forecast for lots of rain ; like usual, they were wrong. Obviously we were very pleased.  On sunday morning, we went to Smith Cove.  Its near Georgetown and its a small but gorgeous beach.  Great place to snorkel or just to float around in the waves, which is what we did today. Its also a popular place for the locals, which seem to leave 7-Mile beach for the expats & tourists.

In the afternoon, we went for a drive and found a fruit bearing mango tree on a lot with no house or anthing.  Well, Julie’s favorit fruit is the mango, so yours truly went and got a bunch for her.

This is only part of what we got.  I picked these which were low hanging, but we went back with a bag & a stick with a hook on the end and got 20 or so more.  Most of them are not ripe yet, so Julie will be able to eat loads of Mango’s for the next week or so.  I guess we’ll go back next week to pick some more.

Monday I leave for Miami for 3 days.  As usualy, I have a shopping list of things to get at the Dadeland mall, Target & BestBuy.  We even ordered a few books from Amazon.com & a new Breadmaker (our old one broke) on the Internet.  I have them shipped to my hotel.

On a final note, the Honda CRV should be here really soon. Its now in transit in Kingston Jamaica. I should be here by the end of next week, but never know with these things.  It will have taken 3 month in all.

Last night we had a major storm pass by.  The lightning and thunder were like being in a war zone ; sorta made me think about the combat scenes you see/hear on CNN!  It also rained like mad for quite a while.

This morning when going to the grocery, this is what we saw not too far from our house.  Of course, with the Mazda 3 we have, we had to take another route. We were not mistaken, it had rained a whole lot.

On the side of our house, we then noticed that there was a large accumulation of water.  As you can see, it continues onto the lawn of our neighbor.

Finally, while I was in the Virgin Islands, Julie started to make a screen door.  We wanted one since we could not leave the door open without having bugs come in the house, so we always had the a/c on.  Julie build the door, I helped a bit.  Looks really good, dont you think?

As part of my monthly column in “The Journal”, my second article was published last week. It is about “Google Hacking”.

 Here is what it looked like in the paper. Below this picture, click on the link “google_hacking.pdf” to read the whole article.

google_hacking.pdf

I flew last sunday to BVI for some work at our office over there.  Absolutely beautiful place ; mountains, lush vegetation, not too developed, etc.  Its a hassle to get there though : Cayman to Miami to SanJuan to Tortola (BVI).  The return trip is exactly the same.

 The hills are a great challenge to drive ; very steep, sharp turns and brake smoking descents. Fun, fun! 🙂  My hotel was on one of the nicer beaches on the island ; Cane Garden Bay.  Glad to be back in Cayman with Julie now!

 A view of Cane Garden Bay.  My hotel was just off the beach, at the other end.

Brewers bay ; a spectacular beach with coral reefs just meters from shore. See them?

View from the office I was using.  You can see how lush it is compared to Cayman. Notice the rainbow!

From San Juan to Tortola its a prop plane, a “Super ATR”.  Its a 60ish seater and it takes about 25 minutes to fly from Tortola to San Juan.