Thanks for asking, Gus. It was great! You cannot imagine how much fun my friend
(since 194O!) Norma and I had snorkeling our heads off.
The clear brilliant turquoise water and
fish-laden coral started right outside our balcony - we
could hardly believe it. We tried to go to a different
venue each day, but we always took a swim at home where we
had crackers to feed to the fish so that whole schools came
right up under our noses.
Our apartment was old, but roomy, neat, bright, and cheap
for GC (Harbour View Condos) where everything is unbelievably expensive. We could
see the cruise ships come in every morning to unload their
thousands of tourists far away from us, thank God. We took
local buses everywhere we wanted to go, which was mostly to
the (very sophisticated and beautiful) restaurants. There was a big super market across the street from
our digs, so we ate breakfast and lunch at home and splurged
every evening.
We took a snorkeling cruise to a coral garden (magnificent -
about thirty different kinds clearly visible); to a barrier
reef (where there were nurse sharks, larger fish, and moray
eels); and finally to a sand bar where very tame sting rays
about the size of bridge tables would come up and eat out of
your hand and rub against your legs, etc. That part was
weird, I thought, but the rest was thrilling. I'll bet that
in our snorkeling we saw at least fifty different kinds of
fish, glorious blue and gold and silver and pink and striped
and speckled and all gracefully unaware of the glass-eyed
monsters spread out above them. We spent at least four hours
in the water every day and were surprised and delighted each
time - we also got Very Tan.
Away from the tourist haunts, Grand Cayman is a lovely
island. I have never been any place where people were so
uniformly gracious and honest. There is no unemployment on
the island, so the standard of living is quite high and the
crime rate low. We felt very safe walking around at night
although I did have my new wind-up flashlight
with me and I held it backwards after
dark so that people would know we were walking by the side
of the road. Of course it's all right-hand drive, so since
we looked the wrong way when we crossed the street, we almost got run down a few times.
We had five full days because Norma had made brilliant
reservations that got us there early enough to swim on the
first day and late enough to swim on the last. I cannot
recommend the Grand Cayman snorkeling experience highly
enough - it is easy, convenient, and breath-taking. Great
snorkeling is the only sunny-weather activity that South
Florida does not have in abundance, and so although it was
certainly frivolous to go from one tropical paradise to
another, I'm glad we went.
