Ship Life: Grand Cayman Island

Hello Grand Cayman! Here's our daily "before we start the day" picture on the boat! We took a few pictures off the boat, but either I couldn't find them, or they weren't very good :(  I do, however, have a picture of the little boat that took us from the ship to the shore! We couldn't dock on the shore, so we had to take the boat to get there. It was weird to be on a "small" boat in the ocean after the days after days on the ship!

Looks tiny from the top of the ship!

As soon as we got off the water, we went straight for our excursion. They have people standing around waiting with signs so you know where to go. Today's plan was the all inclusive party boat + snorkeling. We told the lady what our excursion was, and she sent us to "Zone A". There, a guy took our tickets and gave us a wristband. We waited for about 10 minutes with the group and then they lead us to a huge van/taxi. We were a little confused about why we had to take a taxi ride to get on a boat instead of just leaving from that port/dock thing, but we thought maybe they had to go to a private dock or something. We finally stop, and a women comes on the bus. She welcomes us and tells us where lunch is, that we can have a beach chair wherever we want, and that the snorkeling desk is the other way but is included with our day. 

We head off the bus and walk onto the beach and immediately look at each other..... where's the party boat?! It seemed like we were the only ones that were confused, so we asked another lady what excursion we were on. She informed us that we were indeed screwed it was an all inclusive day at the beach. Whhaaatt?!?! :( We didn't have our tickets to check what excursion we were supposed to be on, but this is DEFINITELY not what we asked for. We decided to make the best of it and take full advantage of the all inclusive part of the day. Caybrew beer was on the menu! We decided to eat lunch before we camped out on the beach for the day, and this was our beautiful view....chickens. And a rooster, that was cock-a-doodle-doing the entire lunch. There were also a few daring birds that were darting (way too closely) to our heads while we ate. So, on to the day. We ordered as many drinks as we could carry a couple of drinks and headed to the beach. There was a huge reef right off the shore, so we couldn't really get past our ankles in the water.

You can kind of see the dark reef in the picture. The weather was pretty good, but not as hot and sunny as it had been. Katelyn and I decided to try our snorkeling. we would have rather snorkeled off the party boat, but this will have to do. At the desk, they informed us that snorkeling was in fact NOT a part of this excursion and that we'd have to pay for it. The hits just keep coming! We complained, because if you remember, the woman that welcomed us specifically said it WAS included. They offered us a free drink for their mistake (um, hellooo we're drinking for free anyway!) I was so mad that I may have...ok, I did....shed a few tears and   got to snorkel for free! It was so cool! 

We had to walk down to a part of the beach that had a break in the reef in order to swim in the water, and in the process of "crossing the reef", I managed to scrape up my leg on the reef. It was definitely burning the whole time, but I didn't think it would be more than a scrape. Somehow it managed to bleed the entire time I was in the ocean and a little bit after I got out of the water. Maybe because of the salt water? It was weird, but it healed up nicely :). There were tons of fish and reefs to look at and I am SO glad we went! We swam over to the girls to get this picture and came back in shortly after that.

When we finally made it back to the girls, Lynsey was headed back up to the bar for a refill with Heidi. We were sitting on the beach for a while and decided it was getting close to time to go, and we needed new drinks, so we packed up all of our stuff and went back to the bar and found them sitting at the bar while the bartender was juggling the bottles for them! They were getting the royal treatment! The only two things that came with our "all inclusive" day was Caybrew beer and rum punch. Somehow, the girls were getting Captain and diets and Long Islands! They were having fun to say the least, and we had a long photoshoot with all of us. I won't put them all up because, let's face it, we're a bunch of hot messes they're not the most attractive things, but there was a decent one! It was getting close to the time to leave, so we had to drag ourselves out of there and get back to the bus... :(

Lynsey was taking tons and tons of pictures on the way home and most of the bus-mates were loving it. She was definitely the entertainment for the ride. Heidi and I were stuck in the back hiding from these pictures. We made some friends in the back of this tightly packed bus-- there were jump seats in every row, so we literally were stuck back there until everyone in front of us left-- but we ended up taking pictures with our new friend.

Then, since we had over an hour before we had to get back on the ship, we stopped at a little bar at the port called  The Green Parrot :) We had a couple of drinks there and I think Katelyn met some people from Illinois! 

We only got one more picture that day before getting back onto the little boat.... we were in pretty rare form! It's a miracle that we all made it back! We didn't all successfully make it through dinner, so we didn't get a picture with all four of us dressed up that night. It turned out to be a decent day on the island, despite that horrid start!