DAY FIVE - GEORGETOWN, GRAND CAYMAN

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2006

We got to the Grand Cayman Islands via tender boat right at 10 a.m. --- just in time to discover that the snorkelling guide had already left.

We had to reschedule, which meant that we had about 2 1/2 hours to kill.

At George Town, in the area where the tender boats dock, there isn't really a whole lot to do. You've got your standard gift shops selling junk labelled with the town name, duty free shops selling booze and perfume, and scores of jewellers.

For someone strapped with cash, it wasn't really the ideal place to kill time.

I liked the coloured walls of some of the buildings, but George Town was surprisingly bland and boring and almost rundown looking in some spots.

This was directly across from the pier.

We arrived right at ten a.m., missing our motor cruiser for the 10 a.m. snorkelling tour.

Our Royal Caribbean attendant rebooked us for the one leaving at 12:30 p.m., which meant we would miss the Grand Cayman highlights and turtle farm excursion that was at 1 p.m.

Sebastien assured us that we'd made the right choice and that snorkelling was best done in the Grand Cayman.

It was exhausting trying to find ways to kill time in Grand Cayman. It's not like we had oodles of cash on us and even if we did, I wasn't exactly in the mood to cart around huge bags of booze and perfume and jewellry.

Each shop seemed to sell pretty much the same thing.

The heat was so bad that we kept ducking into shops, attempting to cool down while pretending to peruse the wares offered for sale.

Felt a little out of place in some of the shops, 'cause I thought it was pretty obvious that we weren't buying anything.

(C)Lonely Planet

(C)Lonely Planet

This was taken aboard the motor cruiser after we finished at the first snorkelling location, which allowed us to see the reef system.

Remember "Finding Nemo"? The blue fish that Ellen Degeneres voiced? Yeah, well, there were tons of schools of fish just like that, darting in and out of the reef.

The guide, Russ, said the Grand Cayman was an ideal location to learn how to snorkel 'cause the water's relatively calm and warm and there's plenty of tropical fish and marine life to see.

We were warned not to panic if we saw "shark-like fish" 'cause they weren't really sharks. They were tarpin and they were harmless.

After the first location, they took us over to this shallow ship wreck that had become an artificial reef system which had been extensively filmed by National Geographic and Discovery Channel.