Tuesday 19 February 2008

14th February - Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

This morning we awoke to a glorious day. We headed out the back of the hotel, right onto one of the best beaches in the world, Seven Mile Beach. Pristine white sand and turquoise water greeted us and all was good with the world after a crappy travel day yesterday. We pulled up a lounger and snorkeled and swam in the calm warm waters of the Carribean and lazed on the loungers on the beach. Bliss. Rain threatened, but never eventuated. We were suddenly very glad that our other hotel had been booked out!
After a couple of hours of lazing around we caught our shuttle out for our afternoon at Stingray Ally. Stingray Ally first started as fisherman used to used to park up in the smooth shallow waters and throw over the scraps of their days fishing and the stingrays soon got used to this and started coming and are still there for the benefit of tourists who feed them now.

We boarded our boat and headed out through the mangroves onto the water. After about twenty minutes we could see a blue turquoise colour in the distance. As we got closer, we realized that was actually the colour of the water and it was mesmorising. It was like the stuff you see in brochures but it was real. Visibility was amazing.
We hopped off the board and straight into the water. Our briefing told us to shuffle along the sand so we didn’t stand on any of the stingrays. Straight away they swarmed around us. They brushed and bumped against us. It was a little bit freaky to start with. We could touch the stingrays on their wings and they felt like rubbery slime.
We were told that because it was Valentines Day, if we kissed a stingray we would have seven years luck, so we gave it a shot. This stingray got double kisses!
We also got a backrub each with the stingray which felt strangely quite nice.
Dan held a small male stingray in the water.
Being out in the Caribbean, on a perfect day in crystal turquoise waters with stingrays is something we both will never forget. We hopped back on board to the boat to travel a short distance to some reefs to snorkel. Whilst the reef was fairly small, it held some beautiful fishes and we spent ages following brightly coloured schools of different fish around.
It was time to board the boat again and head back to shore, spotting the occasional iguana sunning themselves. We spent the afternoon snoozing on the loungers by the pool watching our first Grand Cayman sunset. As we were changing in our room for dinner, fireworks erupted and we thought can this day get any better?
We had some champagne to celebrate Valentines Day and ended one of our favourite days on this trip.

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