Grand Cayman: Scuba!

More back tracking! Yay! Haha, I just feel like I should do something with all of my pictures. Plus, I planned a trip to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands for Thanksgiving weekend, so I figured I should post some pictures of the last Caribbean island we went to, so I can compare.

We went to Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands in August of this year for my birthday.

Can you tell I have a thing for sunsets?

We did a lot of exploring. It was helpful that we rented a car to get around. We decided to take a road trip to see the whole island. Luckily, it's not that big of an island, so we could do the whole thing in one day. The first thing that we saw was the caves.

The caves were recently excavated and had a lot of really cool rock formations, stalactites and stalagmites, and plenty of bats.

This tree's roots were determined to keep this tree alive!

Bats!

After the caves we did a big loop of the island, stopping to see the different beaches and a few major landmarks.

Statue Garden

There a really big diving culture on the island, so they had plenty of relics from diving history including this submarine parked on the side of the road.

Gotta stop to smell the roses...

...or, you know, dirty shoes.

Vlad and I found this pretty funny. At Vlad's bar in Key West, people staple dollar bills to the wall when they've been there, to leave their mark. But, in Grand Cayman, many of the places we went to, they stick up their flip flops instead! Some people even signed them. But, it just had me wondering, how many pairs of shoes did people bring with them?? Or are they just walking around barefoot now...?

The beaches here were absolutely beautiful. The Cayman Islands had, by far, the clearest, turquoise blue waters I've ever seen. And it had a lot of competition; I've done quite a bit of traveling.

Looking into the ocean seemed as if you were looking down into a pool. And most of the beaches were perfect, powdery white sand. I would honestly go back just to spend the whole time sitting on the beach. 

Speaking of crystal clear waters...we went scuba diving! I can't even stress how amazing it was. The visibility underwater was perfect. There were so many fish, corals, lobsters (huge ones!!!) and other sea life, it felt like being in a giant aquarium. 

Getting down...

A school of fish that joined us

Can you spot the lion fish?

We saw a sea turtle!

Part of the reason, I'm sure, that the Cayman Islands have such beautiful clear waters, teeming with sea life, is that they have very stringent laws on pollution and fishing in their waters. The water all around Grand Cayman is a protected marine reserve. I thought the Keys had really nice reefs, but the reefs we saw in Grand Cayman were on another level. So, one night we're at a local bar there, Calico Jack's, and one of the bartenders had just had a new baby boy born that day, so the whole bar was celebrating with him. Guess what he named his son? Reef. I'm not kidding.

Mmmmm, lion fish tacos...

Pretty much everywhere we went, the food was really good too. We definitely took this opportunity to eat plenty of seafood. We found out that most of the places here buy only locally caught fish. One day after eating, we were walking along the beach and found these guys, with their fresh catch right on the beach, cleaning the fish and selling them. Made me want to start cooking some fish!

And some more wildlife to join us on our trip...

Grand Cayman was a beautiful, spectacular island which I loved and Vlad hated. He thought it was too boring and small town, and he spent too much money. I didn't know when I booked the trip that Grand Cayman was one of the most expensive places in the world to visit...

But, then again, he gave me free reign to pick where I wanted to go, so maybe he'll learn a lesson there. Haha. I definitely want to go back, though, even if it's just to go scuba diving. Or maybe I'll move there. 😜