2016 has been our year of vacations! We went to Cabos, Mexico earlier this year and took the family to Mount Rushmore and Virginia Beach this year as well! In November, Nathan's new company took us to the Cayman Islands for 6 days. It was an incredible trip at one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. It's a place you see in pictures and then are amazed that it looks exactly like the pictures in person. We never knew water could be so aqua blue even in the middle of the ocean! It's because the water is so crystal clear. You can see the bottom of the ocean even in 15 feet of water! It's truly breathtaking. We loved how clean and safe it was there. The Cayman Islands are near Jamaica in the Caribbean Sea, but are a British territory.
Our personal beach! It was almost always never very busy and was always this beautiful. We spent time here everyday. Our hotel was all inclusive, so we could order food and drinks all days from the beach. It was unreal and the perfect escape from Nathan's medical problems. It was shortly after we returned that his medical problems became severe, so we are grateful we had this little time together before it all happened. The temperature was little warm despite it being November and the humidity is quite high, so we spent the heat of the afternoons doing other things.
Sunset on our beach. We tried to enjoy this every evening.
Nathan's company held dinner on the beach several of the nights that we were there. There was a lot more "work" involved with this trip than any of our other company trips, which meant we were almost always with customers, but in such a beautiful place, who can complain?!
This little guy joined us at dinner on the beach one evening.
There were lizards everywhere! Big ones, small ones, green ones, brown ones.
One of our favorite parts of our trip was visiting this sea turtle rescue center. When the Cayman Islands became a popular tourist spot many years ago and development took over all the islands' beaches, the native sea turtles were left with no where to lay their eggs and were endangered. This amazing rescue center was created so that the sea turtles population can flourish. They are raised here until middle adulthood and then released back into the wild. They were beautiful and such a treat to see up close. They were incredibly loud when they came up for air every 5 minutes or so.
We bought some food to feed them, which brought a whole army of turtles to see us. We were the only tourists at the rescue center, so we had the place to ourselves. A school group showed up just as we were leaving, so we picked the perfect time.
Here they are fighting over the food. There were so many turtles!
Nathan found a friend. Do you notice the big guy down by his feet? We learned that even the iguanas like the turtle food!
We were quite nervous around these giant iguanas at first, but then we learned that they are vegetarians, so we loosened up after a while.
Notice the one under the bench as well.
And there were baby sea turtles too! They were very cute, but a little more shy than the mamas and papas in the big pools.
We were allowed to pick up the baby sea turtles! It was awesome! It was bucket item experience for sure!
Aren't they both adorable?!
Since we had rented a car for two days, we did a lot of island exploring. We were told we needed to go to "Hell." "Hell" really does exist and it is in the Cayman Islands. It is located on the island where black charred limestone rock was found and someone said it looked like hell. The name stuck and now you can mail a postcard home postmarked from "Hell."
The charred limestone.
The week we were there was considered the island's slow season, so we had Hell to ourselves. We had that luck all day which was great!
I had mad driving skills even with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car and driving on the wrong side of the road! Just don't ask me about what happened everytime I wanted to turn my turn signal on! Just like the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car, the windshield wipers and turn signal are on the wrong side of the steering wheel. A hard push for what I thought was the left turn signal sent the windshield wipers flying at high speed. Nathan could not understand how I could not learn the correct way after doing this more than a dozen times. It's hard to break old habits I learned!
The other exciting part of driving was the island's many round-abouts. They do not have stop signs or stop lights, they have "Give Way" signs. That means it's a free for all. There is no time to think which way you're going or which side of the street you need to turn onto, you just go and "give way". Miraculously, we drove around the island for two days without a single close call1
It's hard to imagine Christmas in such a warm place, but it was fun to see them decorating for it while we were there.
Our most favorite experience of the trip was visiting Stingray Bay (and we got to visit it twice because we took a tour one day and then rented a private boat with customers the second day!!). Those gray masses in the water are stingrays. Notice we are not anywhere near a beach. We are in the middle of the ocean, but could stand! There is a sandbar here where stingrays live and wait for tourists to feed them. They were first attracted here many years ago by fisherman who would throw scraps out here. Although they still have their barbs and are wild creatures, they are relatively tame after years of tourists feeding them.
The stingrays are so tame in fact that you can hold them!! It was such an awesome experience, one that I can't put into words. When our boat captains brought out food for them, the stingrays literally attacked us trying to find food. So many swarmed us so that we couldn't move. They are quite large and heavy so it was crazy to be surrounded by them. We watched a couple children from another boat take off screaming in fear when they swarmed us. It was pretty intense.
Our private boat captain took us to a little less known place called Starfish Alley. In fact, several friends who have been to the Cayman Islands have never even heard of it! We were grateful for this little inside secret because Starfish Alley was incredible. There were hundreds of bright starfish living just a few feet off a little private beach. Everywhere you walked there were starfish at your feet. They were easy to scoop up and hold, but we were told to keep them under water while we did so. It was awesome!
Our private boat for the day. It was a little scary flying across the ocean on such a tiny boat, especially because the water was very rough and the current was strong that day, but it will be something we always remember!
Our private captain took us to Rum Point for lunch. It is a beautiful, popular tourist spot on the island.
I love the sign that says "No frowning allowed here!" I don't know why anyone would want to frown here. We are very grateful we were able to visit such a beautiful place (for free!)!
