January 5 – Georgetown, Cayman Islands

land flag

Weather – 24º, mild, lovely

Steps – 8,234

I'm in Hell

Another day, another tender boat ride. Today it was expected and seamless. There were 4 other ships in the harbor. I didn’t realized Cayman Islands didn’t have an actual cruise port, but a series of sea-side tender boat docks. Altogether we figured there were about 9,000 passengers + probably 5,000 crew in town.

sea flag

Considering tourism is Cayman Island’s main industry, it’s probably typical.

As soon as we step foot on land it is obvious that there is money The Cayman Islands. High end shops and clean streets. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see one street person all day. I also saw lots of churches. No connection to money, just an observation.

We learned that the Cayman Islands have 2 flags…a red one and a blue flag. The red one is for use at sea, and the blue for on land as it is hard to see blue at

We're in Hell

sea.

A group of about 24 of us, hop onto a small bus for today’s tour.

making my way out

Our first stop is in Hell. Part of the Cayman Island’s landscape is low, black rock formations that resemble what we might think Hell looks like. I thought there’d be a bit of a walk around with the Carlos, our guide, hearing about the formations…nope. We saw the rocks, the Hell themed gift shop complete with a devil shopkeeper, took a couple of photos and were back on the road out of hell.

A 15-minute drive later and we were at a rum cake factory. We visited a rum cake factory last year in the Bahamas, so I was looking forward to tasting the cake again…rum cakes are the moistest cakes I’ve ever tasted. We also

4 of the 5 in today

sampled coconut and mango rum. The coconut was very tasty. The factory wasn’t operational today, so we couldn’t see any of the baking, so this was basically a shopping stop.

Lastly, we visited the 7Fathoms rum distillery. We tasted about 10 different rums, listened to an

lunch

entertaining distillery worker give us a history of their distillery and rums. Then we saw the factory for about 5 minutes (just right) bought a T-shirt and back to the port.

On the way back, Carlos explained why there are chickens roaming free everywhere. Apparently in 2004, Hurricane Ivan blew people’s chicken coops all over the place and no one claimed them after the storm. Now they are considered a pest.

Filipino stick dance

We wandered around the port area, found a charming Italian place on the water for lunch and were back on board around 3. We’ll be here again next week, so we were also scouting out other places.

Predinner entertainment was Krew Kapers. Each cruise members of the crew put on a talent show. I try to NEVER miss it. It’s amazing how great some of the singers are.

not the whole 453 - some have to work still

There is ALWAYS “Dream the Impossible Dream”, “YMCA”, the Filipino stick dance, a few hip-hop ensembles. There is also always an Elvis impersonator

whose nametag onboard is actually Elvis - this one is one of our favourite bar tenders.

I learned today that there are 453 crew onboard coming from 34 different countries – WOW!

Elvis is in the house