At dawn Tom awoke and found we were sliding into our first port stop, Grand Cayman. To our surprise and awe, another great cruise ship pulled up alongside us, then another, until there were three floating hotels anchored in the azure waters a mile or two offshore. To our left was Liberty of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean liner, and to our right was Inspiration, the little sister of Conquest, about two thirds our size.
This was our only port stop where we were to travel to the shore by “tender,” meaning there was no deep water pier sufficient to dock the vast cruise ships and they anchored offshore, with smaller boats shuttling groups of cruisers to and fro all day.
On shore we waited for a while and then caught our bus to our chosen shore excursion. We were surprised when the bus turned into a residential area, but pleased that it showed us a bit of daily life, at least for those who could afford vacation homes in Grand Cayman. The bus route mystery was solved when we pulled up to a dock between two big houses on a canal which served the wealthy vacation homers, allowing them to launch their boats from their back yards.
The snorkeling boat crew immediately engaged us with high spirited banter, particularly the ring leader Rob, a Brit who was funny, articulate, informative, a great guide and host. All three crew members were sunburned white guys, the youngest seemingly in his 20s. Their boat Emerald Eyes was a flat bottomed, motorized, double decker catamaran.
We motored down the canal and Tom was stunned to see dozens of 2-3 foot long Honduran iguanas lounging in the backyard grass and docks of the wealthy homes. It was like instead of dogs or cats there were these cat sized lizards with incredibly back fringes and long droopy chin wattles.
In half an hour we neared our first stop, the coral reef that lined the mouth of the islands North Sound for many miles. The white lines of breaking surf clearly showed the location of the shallow reef. After brief instruction, the 50 or so tourists on board donned masks and snorkels and fins and slid into the incredible, swimming-pool clear turquoise water. Visibility must have been close to 100 feet. The reef was 3-8 feet below us, and we floated over it, hovering, occasionally flipping with feet or stroking with arms, pulled back and forth over the coral below by the waves.
The boat had laminated sheets of color images identifying about 60 species of reef fish, and Tom swam back once to look at it before coming back to find Lauren. We saw “Dorie” from Finding Nemo, a blue tang. We saw two different types of wrasse, fish that are one color in front and different colors in back, with a vertical stripe in the middle of their bodies demarcating the color break. Sea fans waved in the clear current, wafting gently back and forth. Millions of little fish of all kinds and colors ducked in and out of sheltering holes in the brain coral and stalk coral. We saw something called a trunkfish, who had a body like a triangular puffer fish and used its long snout to blow a little clear space in the white sand and root for food. One fish had a dark blue-black body pocked with iridescent dots all over its back, like electric blue stars against a black night sky. There were parrot fish and tiny iridescent blue guys with forked tales called blue chromiss. Finally, after all to short a time (about 40 minutes), the boat’s air horn signaled it was time to motor over a half mile or so to our next stop, the famed Stingray City.
In various books and web sites that reference snorkeling in the Caribbean, the Stingray City sand bar on Grand Cayman invariably is cited as one of the top snorkeling experiences in the region. As we pulled up, Rob explained that for many decades, island fishermen had been fishing in the deeper water beyond the reef, then they’d come into calmer waters inside the reef to clean the fish and chuck the guts and heads overboard. Over the years, stingrays learned to associate this area with a free meal.
The fishing boats may be gone, but the tourist boats now come in such numbers that Cayman wildlife authorities have forbidden tourists to feed the rays—only guides can now do so. All of us reentered the water, this time over 8-10 foot deep white sand several hundred yards inside the reef. Rob and his mate Nick proceeded to feed the rays squid while the rest of us swarmed like schooling fish. Lauren had a close encounter where the entire underside of a ray and brushed along her thigh. Tom stroked the undersides of several rays, which ranged in size from big dinner plates to big guys 3-4 feet in diameter. As Rob said, touching a ray did indeed feel like stroking a soft mushroom.
Finally, the tour boat brought us back to the dock, where we tendered back out to the ship. Tomorrow, swimming with dolphins at Cozumel…
P.S. It is now Saturday morning, Aug. 30 (my blog posts are several days behind!), and Hurricane Gustav is now northwest of Grand Cayman, expected to hit Texas on Monday or Tuesday. Weather is typical around Conquest--sunny with a light breeze. It appears almost certain we will outrun Gustav and make port in Galveston a day or two ahead of the storm.
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