To be honest, on land, the Cayman Islands aren’t our kind of place. Everything is insanely expensive, especially for those of us that have grown so accustomed to Central America’s prices. Hamburger and fries, $18. Case of beer, $60. Three mile taxi ride (no Ubers), $20. The grocery store is possibly the nicest I’ve ever stepped foot in. I half expected a doorman to stop me and turn me out for not wearing a tie. Now, these are first impressions, and I’m sure there is more to the place than fancy jewelry shops and $10,000 watch stores, but after just a couple days this is our view of the place when we go ashore.

One encounter I found amusing was at lunch one day the waitress was doing a pretty half-assed job of serving us. Not bad, but clearly indifferent. We got the bill, which comes clearly marked in both Cayman dollars and U.S. dollars at a terrible exchange rate. I handed over Cayman, and sort of surprised she said, “Oh, you’re ‘on island’?” She said it in a tone which clearly indicated she now thought we were locals, and that she was embarrassed by how she had done her job.

Anyway, first impressions of Grand Cayman, not great.

BUT… nobody comes to the Caymans for what’s on land. So, into the water we went.

The Wreck of the Cali was right by us, and lies just 50 yards offshore in maybe 15 feet of water. The kids liked this one. A 220-foot ship with a lot of the big pieces still there for them to explore.

Not a ton of marine life, but nice clear, clean water.

This year Lowe has really started to take off on his own in the water. We get in and he is immediately headed down into the depths. Ouest does too, but she tends to just enjoy being in the water for the sake of being in the water. We’ll be snorkeling a spot like this, and I’ll see Lowe down below me and turn around to find Ouest near the surface doing flips one after the other and then sinking motionless until she runs out of breath. She’ll do this as long as we’re in the water.

We moved from the Cali over to Eden Rock, just around the corner. Another nice spot, but a little too deep for the kids to dive to the good spots. There’s a long “canyon” under those rocks that was cool for me to check out, but too far for them. There were also some huge fish hanging out down there in the dark spots.

Bumfuzzle getting ready for bed. Wet towels piled up outside the shower, bedsheets rolled back, and the golden glow of teak calming everyone down.

A little quiet Lego building time.

Woke up this morning to find three cruise ships filing in. That white thing is a boogie board with a bunch of mudballs piled up on it. Kids are somewhere down below there making more.

From the west end anchorage of George Town we moved around to North Sound and anchored near Starfish Point. On our way in we passed by Stingray City and later on decided to dinghy over.

Many years ago, before the tourists were here, fishermen would clean their catches here in the shallow sand bars. The stingrays figured it out, and eventually became accustomed to heading over to eat when a boat came by. Today the tourist boats show up by the dozens. They bring squid, feed the stingrays, grab them, and hold them for the tourists to get their picture taken. I’m not sure what to think of the place. I mean, at least they are free to continue on if they want. For us it was fun to just head over and hang out in the shallows and watch them all swim past. Our dinghy looked a little out of place, though.

This is our anchorage off Starfish Point. This was one of those places that we just had to shake our heads. The tour boats file in all day long and unload passengers to see starfish on the sandbar. We went over there expecting that there must be hundreds of starfish for this to be so interesting. Instead we found a sandbar with a few dozen people milling around and just two starfish. Make that four. We found two next to each other, but within seconds a tour operator walked up, asked, “Are you using these?” and then picked them up (keeping them underwater) and carried them over to his boat where he set them down gently and called his group of tourists over to see. Oh. My. God. People pay money for this. We had the anchorage to ourselves at night. I’m not sure there are any other cruising boats on the island right now.

Another snorkel spot, Coral Gardens. Nice spot, some decent coral, good depths (~15 feet) for the kids, but hardly any fish.

Overall, it’s been fun to be back in the water snorkeling with the kids where the waters are clear and really clean. We could do without the offerings on land so far, but there’s always more to see and do. And there are plenty more spots we can snorkel still, too.