Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

Grand Cayman – Fri 12/5

I woke up in the morning and didn’t feel like diving. Besides, Kristen and Cindy were going to head to Georgetown for some shopping and I didn’t want to miss out on the festivities.

We decided to take the bus. Sounds fancy, and you’re probably picturing a bus, but it was more like a minivan that operated taxi style, cramming as many people in as possible. Very interesting. Cheap though, only C/$2.

Fortunately there were no cruise ships scheduled to come in, so we didn’t have to deal with any unnecessary crowds. The shopping was lackluster. The only places to shop at were crappy souvenir shops and high end jewelry stores (which apparently are filled to the brim on busy ship days). There was only one store that I really found tolerable. They had many girly type GC shirts (I was tiring of the abundance of cheap manly tees everywhere) and even some italian charms. I picked one with their flag to keep with my current bracelet theme and got a cute shirt as well. I have to say I was really surprised at the lack of interesting souvenirs on the island. Not only that, but there were never any little handmade jewelry stores or street vendors anywhere. Only prepackaged stuff that was probably made in China.

We exhausted our shopping efforts and were back at the condo by 11:30. The boys were already home from diving. To my disappointment, I found out they did a wreck dive. Damn it. I wanted to do a wreck dive. Not only that, but they were the only ones on the boat (aka no dumbheads) and it dropped them off at the beach in front of the condo after the dive. No fair.

We hung out at the beach for the rest of the day. I decided to take a long beach walk since it had been a week and I hadn’t done that yet. I brought my iPod along for company to read a book, either New Moon or Eclipse at the time.

For dinner we decided to eat at Edoardo’s. It is spelled funny, but there was no messing around with the tasty Italian food there. Or the wine rack that we sat in front of. I don’t remember if we ate dessert there or at Antica Gelateria, but wherever we went I’m sure it was delicious.

Grand Cayman – Thurs 12/4

Today I got up at 6:30 and was not the first one up. Unfortunately since I wasn’t the first one up, I wasn’t the one who made coffee, so I forgot to drink some.

Curtis, Kristen, Ted and I dove today. Nick still had a headache from yesterday, so he decided to stay back.

~~~

After diving we decided to go to Eat’s Cafe for lunch again. They were pretty busy so we sat in the bar area for the first time. It was a nice change, made me feel like we were somewhere new.

When our bellies were full from lunch, Kristen took a walk, Nick played WOW and Ted, Cindy and Curtis went to the beach while I took a much needed nap. I was out cold, in both senses of the word. I recall waking briefly to Kristen coming in and I asked her to toss a beach towel at me so I could cover up. That was all I remember until 5:30, when everyone was congregated in the living room chatting. I even slept through the housekeeping lady (Susie?).

~~~

Curtis, Kristen, Nick and I went to dinner. On the way we stopped at a diving shop so Curtis could buy a new mask. We ate dinner at the Triple Crown Irish Pub and had dessert at Antica Gelateria again. My flavors of choice this time were banana and dark chocolate. Mmmm.

Spanish Anchor, dive 30

Dive: 30
Cayman Dive: 6
Date: 12/4/08
Site: Spanish Anchor, Grand Cayman
Avg/Max Depth: 36/52
Temp: 79
TBT/CBT: 0:47/23:20
Buddies: Kristen, Curtis, Ted

After a surface interval filled with Matty’s jokes, we quickly geared up for our second dive. The site was aptly named because of an Spanish anchor almost completely overgrown with coral (I missed it, apparently Curtis got a photo). Matty said it carbon dated back to the 1500s. Kristen and I were the first ones in today and we immediately descended. None of this bobbing on the surface nonsense.

The fish were plentiful on the coral fingers. The stoplight parrotfish are my favorites here and there were lots of them. I also got what I think will be a quite stunning picture of a French Angelfish.

Curtis and Kristen headed back to the boat a littler early. Ted and I continued exploring. After about 10 minutes we decided to head back to the boat. We spotted the boat almost effortlessly and did our safety stop. Right about the time my stop was complete, I looked at Ted. He was shaking his head and pointing at the boat. I turned to look and saw the boat was now surrounded by divers. What was wrong? Why were all these strange divers at our boat? Oh, it wasn’t our boat. Woops. We headed in another direction. Our 40 minute time limit had passed, and I was afraid that they would think we were a couple of rogue divers like the one from Tuesday. Since I was only at 13 feet I decided to surface and have a look around to make sure we were going in the right direction. I spotted the boat up top and descended again, pointing the direction to Ted. That was the first time I longed for a compass. At least we were close, a couple hundred feet away at the most. It was then my ear started acting up again, so I hovered at about 8 feet, shallow enough not to hurt, but deep enough to not struggle against the current. We saw a barracuda, and as much as I wanted to swim closer for a picture, my ears weren’t having it. Probably a good thing anyhow.

We got to the boat quickly and we weren’t even the last ones on. On the drive back Matty came on the CB and asked if Frank was donating his camera to him. Crap, I realized it was my camera. I left it in the freshwater bucket. I tried telling the driver, Nicole, that it was my camera and I was with the Lahr party. Somehow she misinterpreted it to be “the misses of Frank”‘s camera. Matty came back on and said, “that’s not Frank’s misses, but I know who you mean.” He said he’d leave it at the dive shop for me to pick up tomorrow. I was only disappointed because I’m quite positive I had some rockin’ pictures on there and now I have to wait a day. Pooey.

Sand Chute, dive 29

Dive: 29
Cayman Dive: 5
Date: 12/4/08
Site: Sand Chute, Grand Cayman
Avg/Max Depth: 60/100
Temp: 79
TBT/CBT: 0:35/22:33
Buddies: Kristen, Curtis, Ted

Kristen and I were disappointed to learn Dreamy Jonny *swoon* would not be accompanying us today. Instead we had Matty. What he lacked in looks, he made up with personality. He was a very animated character, complete with a rolodex of [bad] jokes.

We drove down the street from our hotel to a public beach area where some boats were pulled on shore. Hmmm… boarding a boat sans dock, that was a new diving experience for me. There were the four of us, as well as two gentlemen (not together) we dove with before (Frank and an older gentleman) and an unfamiliar couple.

Our first dive site was Sand Chute, a short boat ride from the shore. Kristen and I were the first ones in the water, followed quickly by Curtis and Ted. Personally, I was sick of waiting up top for the other slowbies to get in.

This dive was lots of fun. We started through a short canyon that plunked us out near 100 feet deep. Matty pointed out a giant wall of coral to our left, he wanted us to see how insignificant we are. We also spotted a turtle in the distance and saw a massive starfish. Since the four of us had computers we got about 10 minutes at the end of the dive to ourselves. There was a jelly fish waiting to greet us at the ladder and I scurried out of the water as quick as I could, fully expecting a wave to push me into it. It got Curtis instead.

Grand Cayman – Wed 12/3

First one up again. Coffee, computing and breakfast. I decided to skip diving for the day. It was only partly cloudy, but the wind was whipping up a storm outside and I didn’t feel like being a captive to the elements all morning.

I computed and read my audio book for most of the morning. Then sunscreened up and hit the beach with Cindy around 10am. There were big puffy ominous clouds passing across the sky. It was chilly when they blocked the sun, but there was enough of a wind to make the sunny portions of the day comfortable. It stayed nice, but between 12-1 it suddenly got very windy. Almost painfully windy as the sand would blow up and pelt us. And even with the wind it was getting hot. Around 2 I hightailed it to the shade and wrapped up in my sarong to keep the chill of the wind off. Also, curling up on my side helped to lessen the surface area of my skin that could be attacked by the sand. Around 3:30 I had enough. I went inside to shower up, but the housekeeping lady was there, so I sat out on the balcony for what felt like an eternity until she left.

Nick had a headache, so we ditched him at the condo and went to Yoshi’s Sushi for dinner. At first glance it looked like we had to sit on the floor on pillows, but the floor is built up around the booths, so there was actually a hidden place for us to stick our legs. We ordered a sushi boat for five (how convenient) with some extra rolls and sashimi on the side.

When we got back Nick was feeling better. I accompanied him to Eat’s Cafe. I passed on second dinner, but I did indulge in a slice of cheesecake for dessert.

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