Our Christmas Visit to Grand Cayman

Has been updated with bird and flower pages after we got home.
The pages contain what we did and saw each day.
Links to the other pages are at the bottom of every page.
Dates of our visit were from Thursday, December 20 to Wednesday, December 26.
Updates are pretty much done.

This page is Day 1 - Thursday
Day 2: Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park - and more. (Friday)
Day 3: Swim with 20 to 25 stingrays and near-by coral area with lots of fish and a morey eel. (Saturday)
Day 4: Turtles, Pirate Cave and the city of George Town (Sunday)
Days 5, 6, 7: Mastic Trail, Blow Holes, Driving the East Side of the Island, Swimming & Going Home (Mon. Tue. Wed.)
The birds we saw (including some lifers)
Flowers, leaves and other beautiful things
- - Bonnie and Cam's tons of pictures are HERE

We left Fort Wayne at 6:20 am (a half hour wait to deice the plane, on Thursday morning, December 20. Arrived at the Atlanta airport at about 8:00. We waited and waited in the airport. About a half an hour before we were to get on the plane, Bonnie, Cam and the three boys showed up along with the other grandparents, Peter and Stephanie Eicher. We all enjoyed some extended family time and then boarded the plane (much larger than the one from Fort Wayne) and finally took off at about 11:30. We arrived at the Owen Roberts International Airport (ORIA) on Grand Cayman and is one of the largest airports in the western caribbean - which doesn't say much for the others, because it was not that big and made the Fort Wayne International Airport look monstrous. It does, however, have over 800,000 international and domestic passenger movements annually.

We rented two cars from the low cost Andy's Rent A Car, just behind the airport and I got my drivers licence to drive on the highways in Grand Cayman. This meant driving a chevrolet car with the stirring wheel on the left (as we are used to doing in the United States) on the left side of the highway. Yes, they drive on the left just like they do in the UK and Ireland. I had not done that in well over 40 years and I just had to remember that the driver needs to be curb side - not toward the center of the street. I did pretty good, until I made a turn and was reminded to get back on the left. Good thing there is not much traffic here and speeds are fairly slow - no such thing as a super highway and only three traffic lights on the whole island. They do use round-a-bouts and that is tricky as you try to remember to keep left.

After we drove about 20 minuets, we arrived at our home on Rum Point for the next week. The other car, and it's occupants had gone to a grocery store to stock up on food for our meals at home. The home, called Conquered Fame (you can see it's location on the map at the top of this page, is a very nice four bedroom home with a large covered porch on the back that looks directly on the beach and the ocean. BTW - it is called Rum Point because many years ago a ship haulling rum sank, releasing many barrels of rum that ended up on the shore of this area. People had a merry time with the rum they salvaged from the wreck - and it became known as Rum Point.

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Our house, as you can see, is pretty much hidden from the road. ....This is the view from the rear of our temporary home.

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These fast little lizards were everywhere. Very hard to catch. ....Within a few minutes of arriving, the boys were on the beach.

This is the rear of our home facing the Caribbean Sea

We unpacked, ate supper and went to bed.

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Day 2: Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park - and more. (Friday)
Day 3: Swim with 20 to 25 stingrays and near-by coral area with lots of fish and a morey eel. (Saturday)
Day 4: Turtles, Pirate Cave and the city of George Town (Sunday)
Days 5, 6, 7: Mastic Trail, Blow Holes, Driving the East Side of the Island, Swimming & Going Home (Mon. Tue. Wed.)
The birds we saw (including some lifers)
Flowers, leaves and other beautiful things
- - Bonnie and Cam's tons of pictures are HERE