George Town, Grand Cayman (Promise, Last One!)

It sure is fun to have so many pictures to look at.....that is until I have to post them! :) This is the last port and last post from our vacation clear back in February. It's taken a while to get them all up and I have other things to move on to but I really want them all to be in my 2011 blog book.

Our last port of call was George Town, Grand Cayman. It was fantastic....the weather was perfect and the island was gorgeous. Jason and I decided that for our last port we just wanted to lay on the beach before we headed back to snowy Utah in a couple days. We booked a tour to a beach club called Tiki Beach. It turned out so good. We had a 30 minute tour on the way and got to see some of the island. Grand Cayman is pretty ritzy....lots of incredibly expensive properties and what looked like tons of money floating around. Tons and tons of banks....of course because the Cayman Islands is where everybody hides their wealth or something like that. :) It is part of the British West Indies and it was interesting to hear a little bit about how their government works. According to our driver, Great Britain sends a new governor every four years that is in charge but the people there have no say in who they'll get.

Tiki Beach was beautiful and private for our small group....I gotta say that I love private beaches. It's so nice to have lounge chairs right by the water and not be fighting 300 people for the use of 200 lounge chairs and a spot by the water which is what many of the public or cruise line beaches look like. We got two loungers right at the waters edge and away from other people....it was so nice. We were served some really delicious fruit punch and had an array of services at our fingertips. It felt like a pretty luxurious place. We lounged for a while and then decided to snorkel since there was a little reef not far from shore. It was so fun because we went alone and went wherever we wanted. We were happy that we didn't have to fight the snorkel vests that the snorkel tours make you wear....it can be hard to get all the air out of them if you want to dive a lot. We had a really fabulous and long underwater adventure, just the two of us. I guess it was because we were alone and had no guides, but this was the first time that I really felt a little bit nervous about sharks. Thankfully, we saw only fish and coral. I didn't think we'd be snorkeling so I didn't bring the underwater cameras, darn it. Jason got a sea urchin spine in his thumb. We thought he could just pull it out with tweezers back in our room on the ship but the spines just break like glass when you grab them. He ended up doing some minor surgery on himself with the finger nail clippers to get it out.....OUCH!! Despite that, this was his favorite port.....he loved the beach and the unguided snorkeling.

A fatty in an animal print is not a pretty sight but oh well....it's not like everybody I know doesn't already know that I'm a fatty :) I'm a happy, vacationing fatty though. :)

As I mentioned before....I actually used too much sunscreen on the trip! I kinda wish I had used a lower SPF. I was greasy and ended up with a pretty weak tan for being in the Caribbean for a week! :(

Arriving at Tiki Beach beach club

On the tender from the Glory