Green Harbor MA Captain’s Log

Our second stop aboard the Carnival Cruise ship Liberty was Grand Cayman Island. We arrived early morning on November 16th, 2005 after a day and night at sea. We saw some rough seas during this leg of the trip. Many people were sea sick. Without getting to graphic lets just say there was plenty of evidence of it around the boat during those conditions. Rough ocean conditions forced the cruise ship to dock on the opposite side of the island. Instead of docking the ship we are now forced to anchor off the coast and tender on and off the vessel. This is a significant change in plans that we would not fully appreciate until later.

We had a pre-arranged day ahead of us that would include a bus tour through Grand Cayman with stops at Hell (basically a town named Hell with a gift shop), the Turtle Farm, and Stingray City. We arranged our day through the cruise ship and as a result we were given tender priority over those who had not planned excursions. We did not realize at the time how important this was. We were off the ship and starting our adventure pretty quickly. If you were not part of the planned excursion priority exit then you were part of the mass ciaos waiting for hours in lines just to get off the boat. Thankfully we were not part of that mess.

I quick trip on the tender and we are standing on Grand Cayman Island. I had been here before and I was instantly struck by the vegetation devastation. The Island was hit hard by hurricane Ivan on September 12, 2004. The wake of destruction it left behind was still clearly visible. They lost almost all the vegetation on the island, many building were completely destroyed or badly damaged, 70 percent of all vehicles were a total loss, and many people lost love ones and everything they owned. They are on the rebound but it will take more than a decade for the vegetation to return.

Our bus driver “Darrel” grew up on the island. He pointed out the many points of interest along the way and did his best to entertain. We stopped first in Hell. Hell is a town in Grand Cayman that is just large enough to have a gas station and a gift shop. It was one of the places you go just to say you have been to Hell and back (that is exactly what the hat I purchased says). Hell was not big deal so lets more on to our next stop, the Rum factory. I’m not a big Rum drinker so again no big deal. It was located on the side of the island were we could not dock the cruise ship and by looking at the ocean you could see why. The waves were huge! Next stop the Turtle farm.

We were all excited about this stop, especially my youngest, her favorite animal in the whole world happens to be the sea turtle. After a quick tour of the facility we were able to handle these beautiful animals.

They had sea turtles of all sizes. The kids really loved this part of the tour (I have to admit I did too). The last part of the sea turtle tour included the option to try some sea turtle soup. That struck the kids as a bit disturbing but it is part of their culture so you can’t really blame them. No one tried the soup. Back to the bus and now we are off to Stingray City.

Stingray City is a sand bar a few miles off the coast of the island where Stingrays will come and feed right out of your hand. My kids have seen video of my wife and I enjoying this attraction from a previous trip and they were both really excited about going. The bus brought it to a small marina where we boarded a 35ft charter fishing boat. I was quick to ask the captain if I could climb to the top level above the hardtop for the ride out. This turned out to be an excellent call. My two children and there two cousins joined me up there. It was a great ride out from where we were sitting but if you had been unlucky enough chosen a seat on the lower port side of the vessel then you were getting sprayed with ocean water the whole ride out. There were many boats anchored on the sandbar when we arrived and you could see the dark outline of stingrays passing by in the water. Once anchored we all got off the boat and enjoyed the interaction with them. My oldest daughter (she is 12) has no fear.

She was trying to swim after the stingrays and feed them squid. My youngest (she is 9) was not as brave but did warm up in time. What a treat it was to bring them here. This is by far my favorite part or Grand Cayman. We stayed on the sandbar about 45 minutes and them headed back. On the way back the captain and crew took a quick diversion to dive for conch. Within 15 minutes he had about 20 large conch shells in the boat. He removed the conch from each, cleaned up the shells and gave a shell to each kid on the boat. It was a nice touch.

Our Grand Cayman Adventure was coming to an end. The bus took us back to the dock to catch a tender back to the ship. We quickly realized this was not going to be a quick process. There were already thousands of people waiting in lines to catch tenders back to our boat and two others that were also docked off the coast. The pier could only accommodate 2 tenders at a time and these were pretty small vessels. This proved to be a recipe for disaster. Carnival did not provide and security or organization or any kind. Large groups of people who were either to rude to care or had no idea were cutting lines and before long there were no lines. Complete chaos broke out and tempers were flaring (mine included). I few older folks dropped to the ground most likely from heat exhaustion. There were no bathroom facilities and not water. We were stuck in a line that was not moving with thousands of angry people all around us. Carnival Cruise Lines through there complete mismanagement of this situation put my whole family at risk. It is a situation I will write more about later but for now let’s just say we made it back to the ship. If I can someday separate the tender situation from this visit I’d say Grand Cayman was great but until I can this experience has a black mark on it in my memory. Even with the hurricane damage it is a beautiful place filled with good people.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.