Fireworks Friday

As I leave tomorrow, I decided today would be a nondiving day - you need at least 24 hours of surface time before flying and I return to NYC tomorrow.

So today I decided to check out the turtle farm on the northern part of the island. The Cayman Islands is famous for turtles (we saw several on our dives), but also when Columbus discovered the region, it was named Las Tortugas because of the many turtles!

After getting ready, I waved down a public bus which are basically vans that can pick you up or drop you off at any part of the route and costs 2 Cayman dollars - it kind of felt like Via which is a shared taxi service in NYC. Here’s a photo of my first ride up West Bay Road and a selfie - I’m wearing a hat from Papa Kim:





At the turtle farm, there are two price points - the more expensive ticket includes swimming with turtles and seeing the nurse sharks. Since I already did that in the ocean, I opted for the basic ticket.

I perused the education center, the turtle tanks, and got to hold different turtles at the touch tanks:





Then it was feeding time in the breeding ground. Apparently, they are fed 9 buckets of this feed a day:







Here’s a link to a video of them eating. Mikey described them like the children’s game “Hungry Hungry Hippos”: https://youtu.be/GMisDdbMwAA

After my visit, I flagged down another public bus and asked to be dropped off at a northern part of Seven Mile Beach. Here’s another bus selfie:



I stopped in at The Ritz Carlton poolside restaurant called Bar Jacks and had their famous piña colada  and West of Cayman salad (I was craving vegetables) pictured below:



After digesting my lunch, I meandered down the beach and napped in a few places. Here’s one beach view from the day:



As with every other day, I returned to the condo and relaxed by the pool for a bit and washed off the sand from the beach. I met a nice family from Michigan and we chatted about the Pirate Week festivities.

I showered and headed out again to catch the public bus as Mikey asked me to meet him at his office downtown. The roads were already congested and the fireworks for the festival were downtown.

So I headed south in a very full van and Mike and his colleagues met me at the bus stop. We got drinks at Bread and Chocolate and hit up the street food fair. We shared roti and chicken curry, Cayman style beef, coconut curry shrimp, jerk chicken and pork, and various sides of Mac ‘n Cheese, potato salad, plantains, fritters, and rice and beans. Caribbean culinary heaven!





We ate in Mikey’s office benefitting from the air conditioning, but then having a balcony view of the fireworks!



All of Mikey’s colleagues were so nice and one colleague brought her 1 year old daughter and 4 year old son, Kaizer. As he couldn’t see over the railing, I had fun holding him during the fireworks display. Then we all ran around in the office, drew outlines of their bodies on the erase board, and spun them on the office chairs. We even squeezed in a quick video call to William!

What a fun time as my Friday night went off with a boom in Grand Cayman!