The last three or four days it has been much more humid here. Normally it is hot and dry but the humidity has shot up and there has only been a slight breeze.
After several days it was starting to get a little oppressive.
Then on Wednesday the clouds burst and it rained and rained and rained. Proper torrential rain. The lightening was amazing and thunder truly awesome. I love a good storm! The garden filled up with about 4 inches of water the roads were flooded and everything just steamed.
We have had a couple of really wet days since. Rainy season runs from mid to late April to early June. So I guess it must be rainy season now!
On my work email we just had our first Storm/Hurricane Alert fully two and a half months early! The weather trackers are following a deepening depression / storm in the mid Atlantic.At this point it poses no threat but to even have a storm identified this early is very unusual.**
This is a Cayman Brown Racer Snake that Jim caught today.
Obviously you can tell from the proximity of my bare feet it was a terrifying ordeal.
If you catch them they become very docile and let you handle them quite calmly. So after showing it to the cats, who were bemused, to Nana who is phobic and to Poppy who was intrigued but happy to be a few feet away we released it once more into the garden and it went along its merry way.
In 2000 mum and dad visited Cayman, for the day, while on a cruise. While here they bumped into a genuine pirate.
That’s just one of those things that happens here.
Anyway, 17 years, Hurricane Ivan and three earthquakes later the pirate in question is still lurking around town and mum caught up with him today!
He looked happy to see her.
Neither mum nor the pirate have changed much. Amazing what six coats of varnish can do…
He seemed in good fettle and had recently had a fresh coat of paint!
We had an explore around town and visited the suffragette statue in Heroes’ Square.
This was more than a bit of fun, mum and I had attended the premier of ‘History Her Story” last week an event hosted by the Minister of Education and Gender Affairs. It was the first showing of a documentary about the history of women’s rights here in the Cayman Islands.
It was a really moving evening and a fascinating film. It was attended by several of the original signatories of the letter to the Governor of Jamaica calling for equal rights for women. Cayman fell under the control of the Governor of Jamaica until Jamaica declared independence. The statue featured in the film and it recognises the importance of these events to the history of these islands.
The event included a poem written and performed by Nasaria Suckoo Chollette.
We then went on to the National Library to an art exhibition being hosted there as part of the National Festival of Arts and had the chance to meet the artist behind some of the work on display.
A very interesting chap even if he did have an odd taste in shirts…
We have had a lovely couple of weeks with mum and dad visiting. We have spent a lot of time on the beach. Dad has found a place up in West Bay called Alfresco that he really likes. A lovely little local restaurant right on the beach serving tasty grub. They have taken the kids up there a couple of times.
We wandered up to Rum Point for a swim and a paddle been to Spots to see sea turtles and had an immense lunch at Grand Old House. Not a bad time on the whole.
When you are 11 going on 12 and live in the Caribbean you have to make your own entertainment as there is literally nothing to do!
I guess you can make swings out of old bits of rope.
Or make do with balancing on old bits of wood (while pretending I am gymnast).
I suppose I can go swimming or dig in the sand.
I mean it’s a hard life when there is nothing to entertain you and you have to make up your own games!
Sometime when I am swimming I might spot interesting things like a squid or a ray and that can be a bit of a distraction for a while.
When the weather is nice I can go rock pooling I suppose.
Occasionally, if I have been good, I might get a treat! I might get to play with a paddle board or have my hair braided or even get treated to a milkshake.
But on the whole I to have to make my own entertainment!
Mermaid
Sun and Sea
I suppose I am just about coping though… It’s a tough life but a girl has to do what a girl has to do.
At work we were in the run up to half term and sports days. Sports days here are huge, we took the whole school down to the national athletics stadium for the actual day but not before we had spent the best part of two weeks carrying out ‘eliminations’. Only the finalist competed and I do mean competed at the stadium. For those that did not take part in the main sports day we held a second ‘fun day’ in the same week. The winners of our school sports day will get to compete in the national inter-primary games in two weeks time…
Like I said seriously! The most furiously competed races however were the mums’ and dads’ races! We ran 4x100m relays and the parents really went for it!
On top of this I have ended up coaching our basketball teams and taking them to matches every Friday. Now not to brag about my coaching but our girls team have only lost two games and our boys have won every game! Seriously I am not bragging about my coaching skills, the kids do it all themselves I just organise the buses, wash the uniforms and bring the Gatorade! They are amazing, the only way I could improve the whole thing is if I organise speakers to blare out Sweet Georgia Brown during the games.
At home we were equally frenetic preparing for guests. The migration of the Woodwards. On the penultimate Friday before the break the advanced guard arrived. Sally landed to spend a week with us before half term and the arrival of Caroline, Pete, Wig, Alice and Daisy.
We had a quiet week with Sally mainly because we were still at work during the day but it was lovely to have her over and she enjoyed mimbbling about and going to the beach. She even came along to watch the Prospect Sports Day.
Sports days out of the way and half the academic year down we all headed to the airport to pick up the rest of our guests and to take them over to their digs.
Poinsettia Apartments
Obviously they were on a budget so had to rough it a bit… their apartment was gorgeous, right on the sea front with a pool and private beach and it own ship wreck to explore and snorkel around. Just imagine if they had some money!
Rock Pooling
Cousins
Beach Walk
Beach Boy
Paddling Pool
The sunken ship was just of the beach, it formed an artificial reef teeming with fish. We even saw a shoal of rainbow parrot fish, each about two and a half feet long and beautiful!
The Ship Wreck
Being westward facing the apartment had uninterrupted views of the setting sun…
…and we were treated to a couple of beauties! We even saw our first Green Flash! A phenomenon where in the last second before the sun drops below the horizon the arch of the sun flashes green!
Saturday was an easy day while the gang settled in. We headed to Governors’s Beach and spent an afternoon messing about in the water and snorkelling out to the reef.
Our neighbour Damo was there with his boards so we grabbed a couple and all had a play at paddle boarding!
Sunday, it was down to Smith’s cove for more fun in the sea and Alice’s first snorkelling experience, turned out it was Sally’s too! They both loved it and spent the rest of the week splashing around when Alice wasn’t chasing chickens with Poppy.
On Tuesday evening the gang headed off to Rum Point and Bio Bay to see the bioluminescence. Generally agreed to be the highlight of the trip. Night time paddle boarding in a glowing sea, just stunning. The lack of light pollution meant the stars were out in force and Victoria and James saw the Milky Way for the first time in their lives.
Wednesday. Of course because its Cayman we jumped on the Capt. Jimmy and headed out to Stingray City.
Everyone loved it and Pete and Wig both proved to be very popular with the amorous rays! Pete getting a kiss and Wig getting her bum rubbed by the rays! Still they did not seem to be to upset by the experience. Wig was alright about it too.
On Thursday we headed to Spots Beach and swam with wild turtles, to be fair they seemed quite placid not even a little bit bothered to see us.
Here Alice is following a pair of juveniles.
On Friday the ladies headed out for Wig’s Cayman Hen Do. Leaving us boys baby sitting so we sat on the beach, ate pizza and drank beer until quite late while the kids ran about and eventually fell asleep under the stars. Who says we aren’t responsible parents?
One of these two pictures is the hen do…
Having stayed in with the babies us chaps felt the need to reconnect with our masculine sides. So the next day us boys headed out for a manly hike along the Mastic Trail a route through the island’s ‘jungle’ interior and a climb to the highest point on Grand Cayman. Reputed to be nearly 60 feet high!
Not a trek for the faint hearted.
We saw loads of wildlife including Cayman Parrots, racer snakes and lizards. Pete stopped to take pictures of everything! It was a great hike but we still felt we needed to walk some more and to do something even more macho to keep the testosterone levels up.
So we headed to the Botanic Gardens.
It was very pretty even if it meant more walking in the sun. But we did get to see Blue Iguanas! Suitably worn out from our excursions we headed out for a well deserved ‘boys’ lunch at the Lighthouse! A lovely Italian place overlooking the sea…
All in all not a bad week, lots of sun, swimming, snorkelling, sand, sea, laughter and we found time to watch the rugby, have a b-b-q, head to Da Fish Shack for dinner, eat jerked pork on the beach and drink lots of rum and cold beer!
James caught this little beauty at my school on Saturday, it is really strange as soon as you pick them up they go docile am just let you hold them as quiet as anything.
Then on the way home we spotted this chap…
… he was six foot long from nose to tail, huge easily the biggest iguana we have seen to date. As we stood watching him other people took interest and gathered round. The general consensus was he was a monster! A beautiful prehistoric monster!
Under an Endless Sky 