The Grand Cayman Adventure
I am usually the one who likes to plan trips down to every single hour in order to maximize our time. Having said that, our trips are never complete without things going wrong and last-minute changes. However, I believe it’s important to be flexible with plans, and not let unexpected inconveniences ruin your mood during the trip. Past Christmas, my friend Khanna and I, decided to spend our holidays far away from the cold winter of the United States and adventure in The Cayman Islands.
After spending the night partying at a friend’s house in Atlanta, and with barely two hours of sleep, we headed to the airport to catch our early morning flight to the Caribbean. The Cayman Islands is a 22 miles long island in the West Caribbean Sea, and you could drive from one end to the other in less than just two hours. As soon as we heard the captain’s announcement to prepare for landing, half-awake, we glued our heads to the window to spot the tiny island. The aircraft smoothly touched the tarmac and rolled all the way to the other end of the island.
Embracing the warm sun as we disembarked the plane, we grabbed our luggage and swiftly made our way to the car-rental station. Like I said, we had our plan laid out to the hour, so there was no time to waste. The Cayman Island is considered as one of the most expensive countries in the world. Trying to keep our expenses at a minimum, we rented the tiniest car possible. In case you are used to driving in the United States and you don’t know, The Cayman Islands follows the left-side driving pattern just like the rest of the world. Excited to begin our trip, I got in the driver’s seat and pulled out on the road in the opposite direction of traffic. After having the fright of my life, I immediately pulled off the road. That was the first and last time I got to drive this little car on the island. Yes, Piyusha had banned me from driving in The Cayman Islands for the remainder of the trip.
Our budget -trip took a U-turn when we reached our hostel. A few weeks ago, while making reservations for accommodation, we thought we were in luck to find a cheap place to stay. It seemed a little odd when the hostel manager asked us to use another address than what was mentioned on their website. Well, we didn’t really care at that moment clouded by the thought of this amazing deal. Now, navigating our way on the island, the GPS took us down a sketchy road in the middle of nowhere and finally landed us in front of an old compound with a few half torn buildings. There sat a plywood table in the center of the compound, which was supposedly the reception desk. With no attendees at the desk, we started wandering around in the building. Seeing us lost, a girl asked us if we needed a room. After convincing her about our reservation over the phone, she took us to a room which did not look half as close to the pictures on the website, asked us to help her prepare the room, grabbed her pile of clothes from the room, handed us the key and left. We soon understood that this place wasn’t really a hostel, and in fact was a brothel. After realizing what just happened in the past 30 minutes and laughing at what we got ourselves into, we decided to pack up and leave.
With no place to stay yet, and craving to explore this beautiful island, we decided to not waste any more day-light and headed to the closest beach to snorkel. The Cayman Islands is filled with some of the most beautiful coral reefs in the Caribbean. As we watched the sunset at Spotts beach, it hit me that we still didn’t have a place to stay for the night. We went around hotel-hopping trying to get cheap accommodation, but with Christmas season, the prices everywhere had tripled. With no luck on our hands, we decided to call-off our low budget plan and checked ourselves into one of the nicer resorts on the island.
Over the next three days, we had a lot of activities planned. If you’re ever out there, you should definitely check out the blow holes located on the East end of the island. I’d suggest always have your snorkel gear handy while driving on the island. Any chance we got, we hopped out of the car, put on our snorkel gear, and jumped into the ocean to explore the world under water.
The Cayman Island is surrounded by a massive coral reef on the West side of the island. We registered ourselves to go scuba diving at the Cheeseburger Reef. I was impressed how much Khanna was determined to dive to the bottom of the ocean floor without any fear of not knowing how to swim. I know most of you are thinking that scuba diving requires intense training and lengthy time commitment. Yes, it does for the PADI/SSI certifications, but most open water diving companies offer “Discover Scuba” sessions specifically designed for people who are on a short visit and do not want to invest time and money in a certification. After watching a 30-minute safety video, our instructor geared us for shore-diving. We spent about twenty minutes practicing techniques in about 10-feet deep water where Khanna got comfortable with the equipment, breathing, and buoyancy. The instructor then took us about 50-60 feet deep where we enjoyed swimming with colorful fishes, stingrays and cruising along these massive colorful coral reefs. Every time I scuba dive, there is this immense peace and calmness in my mind. It’s quite refreshing to spend a few hours in a quiet yet stunning world under water. I would encourage each one of you to experience scuba diving at least once in your life.
That same night, we signed up for another great experience. We got on a boat and took the boat ride to a shallow cove. The instructor shut the engine off, turned off the lights, and asked us to jump into the water. I would never do that if this was anywhere else, but we knew this was going to be special. As we lay silently in the pitch-black ocean, everything around us began to glow in blue. The living organisms in the water emit blue glow which is known as the phenomenon of bio-luminescence. Me and Piyusha wore our snorkeling gear ad dived in. We were blown away to see our hands and legs lit up like stars. The fishes sparkled as they swam through. It was magical, and we never wanted to get out of there. The instructor warned us not to touch the bottom as there lay hundreds of deadly jellyfish feeding on these living organisms on the shallow ocean floor. The instructor dived in and got a jellyfish for us to carefully touch without getting stung.
The next morning, we found ourselves on a catamaran headed to a sand bar in the middle of the ocean called ‘Stingray City’. As we approached the sand bar, we could see a fine line where the ocean color changed from dark blue to aquamarine, which I thought was pretty cool. The sandbar was filled with hundreds of stingrays. The instructors showed us the proper way to hold them without bothering them. Stingrays are harmless if you treat them nicely. After spending nearly 30 minutes playing with stingrays, we continued to an isolated beach to find some starfish. This was the first time I was getting to hold one, so I was super excited. On our way back, the captain shut the engine off and raised the mast, and we sailed back the rest of the way to the port.
Our resort was in the middle of the Island, which became very convenient for us to drive from one end of the island, quickly take a shower and continue to the other end of the island for our next activity. Four years back, I made a bucket list of all the fun and adventurous activities I have always wanted to do. On this trip, I was able to check off the bio-luminescent bay, and now I was on my way to do the next one- Jet skiing. Yes, you would think this would have been an easy one to check off, but unfortunately, it took me a while to find an opportunity to do this. Very excited, I rented a jet ski from the hotel, and rode as fast as I could on the bluest of water along the Seven Mile Beach. It’s so much fun to jump the jet ski in and out of waves and do stunts on it. Totally worth it!!
This was our last night on the island. We drove to the furthermost point of the island, watched the sunset and soaked it all in. It was also Christmas, so we went back to our resort, put on nicer clothes and went to dine in a fancy restaurant after surviving on pizzas for the past 3 days. Next morning, we packed our bags, checked out of the resort, and decided to hit the beach one last time before we flew back to the United States that afternoon. We grabbed two paddle boards and causally paddled along the reefs feeling content about our trip. We then took a stroll at the beautifully decorated Market Street, bought souvenir mugs for ourselves and headed to the airport to catch our flight back home.
