Grand Cayman was our first port day... this was a tendered port, which means that the ship cannot dock at the island and instead uses small tender boats to transport cruise passengers back and forth between the ship and island. We had a shore excursion planned to visit the Stingray Sandbar, Coral Gardens, and Rum Point Beach through Nativeway Water Sports.
We took one of the earliest tenders to the island not wanting to risk running late for the excursion and arrived at the tour meeting location over an hour early. There wasn't much to do in the port area so we basically wandered for a bit waiting for the rest of the people in our tour group to arrive.
There were a few members of the group who were running late and Nativeway decided to wait for them so we left about 10 minutes late. There was some confusion and disorganization at the beginning since they merged two groups of people together onto the mini bus but everything was much better once we arrived at the pier and were met by our guide for the day. From there we took a 20 minute boat ride out to Stingray "City".
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| Heading out to Stingray City by boat |
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| Stingray City |
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| Ben was much more enthusiastic about holding the stingray than I was - I was pretty freaked out.. |
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| They feel just like a squishy portobello mushroom! |
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| Stingray looking for food |
After spending around 20 minutes at the stingray sandbar, we headed for our second stop for snorkeling. I like swimming but am not a big fan of snorkeling because of my odd fish phobia... Ben on the other hand does not like to swim but loves to snorkel. Because of this, we always wind up going snorkeling numerous times on any vacation where snorkeling is possible. Any time we go snorkeling, I always ask Ben to get in the water first to tell me if it is the type of snorkeling I can handle... I like coral but don't like lots of fish... lots of fish = major panic
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| Ben snorkeling in Coral Gardens |
After the 20 minute snorkeling stop, we headed off to Rum Point Beach, the final stop of the day. We had a very good lunch, probably the best excursion food we've had and then spent some time wandering around the beach and sitting by the water.
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| Rum Point Beach |
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| Colorful tables at Rum Point Beach |
We spent a couple of hours here and then headed back with the rest of our group for the cruise port. This excursion was our favorite of the week.
Once we arrived back at the port, we saw a massive line of people waiting to board the tenders to head back to the ship. Having done quite a bit of research prior to the cruise, I knew that we would have to wait upwards to an hour to get back to the ship but I was not prepared for how hot and uncomfortable it would be standing out in the scorching sun. There were unfortunately only two tenders running and hundreds and hundreds of people trying to get back to the ship. We waited over an hour before we were finally able to make it onto a tender boat... when the tender reached the cruise ship, there was once again a very long wait as there were over 300 people on the tender all trying to get off the tender and through the security checkpoint on the ship.
By the time we arrived back to our room, we were both exhausted... it had been a really long day. One of my favorite things to do every day we returned from a port was to pull open the curtains to our balcony to look outside. On that particular day, we were greeted with this:
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| Disney Magic |
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| Disney Magic - nice looking ship! |
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| Grand Cayman from our balcony |
Aside from the excruciatingly long wait to get back onto the ship, it was a really great day. Next up: Roatan!
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