Collard's Adventures: March 2009

Friday, March 6, 2009

I almost forgot...

Jason wants to stay here on our next visit. It is a castle that has 4-5 bedrooms...the guest house has 2 bedrooms. It rents for about $9000 a week for the castle and $11,500 for both. Yikes! But it would be cool to stay in a castle!

Ain't gonna happen though!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Our last day on the island...we thought we would sleep in and the pack up. Well, we had been getting up at 6:30am everyday and basically slept until 7 this morning. So much for sleeping in. We got up and did all the fun stuff--clean out the fridge, get the scuba stuff together, pack up, etc. We left the condo around 11am. We had a 5:30pm flight so we planned on bringing our empty bottles back to the brewery and hit the last few geocaches on our list. We got about 20 minutes into our drive and ran into a stand still. Traffic was moving but very, very slowly. We couldn't figure out if there was an accident or what. We later found out they were having an agricultural show--I still can't believe they could fit all the cars at the show grounds.

We finally got thru all that traffic and couldn't find the brewery...no big deal, we will hit it on the way to the airport. We decided to head up and attempt to find the Pursuit of Art geocache. We were a little optimistic when they were closed for the holiday (Ash Wednesday). We walked around the side of the house but said that looked like the neighbors yard. We went around back to the yard with the dog. We debated and then decided to go for it. The dog was super friendly...we looked around for a few seconds when someone popped out of the house. He was basically like--what are you doing? We replied that we were geocachers...he had this blank stare on his face...he said that he was watching the shop for his Mom and didn't know anything about geocaching. We showed him the sheet...which stated we had permission to go thru the gate...he replied that we must have the wrong house because his Mom would never allow that with the dog. It turns out we were at the right spot but how annoying...yeah, we are trespassing, don't mind us. Oh--and the best part--the geocache states that the coordinates are about 50 feet off. So, we have a cache that doesn't have the correct coordinates but says you can go thru the fence to get the cache. Did I mention there were 3 gates within 50 feet?? The best part is someone emailed me telling me that I should adjust my coordinates...the owner told me they weren't right!! Very frustrating...so we headed on to the next one.

This was one we missed the other day. Others had since found it so we decided to go back. Once we accepted that we were at the correct location, we started looking...down...and there it was. It was a travel bug hotel so we were expecting something big--it was a plantar's peanuts bottle. We went and grabbed another one on the beach--our second First to Find on this trip!

We then decided to try to find the brewery...we found it all right but they were closed so we just left the bottle outside. We went to Sunset House for lunch at My Bar...they offer shore diving here. We talked to people who were getting ready for a shore dive. We realized that we really should come back to do more shore dives and less boat dives.

We got to the airport with plenty of time. We had one last Caybrew and waited to board. Since Jason has the Silver Elite status with Northwest, we are allowed to board early. Jason got a nice surprise...upgraded to first class! I was stuck back in the regular cabin but that was okay. I got talking with the guy in the aisle seat in my row. He is going to Vet School in the Caymans and is a scuba diver so we had a lot to talk about. Jason rubbed it in about how he got free drinks, soup, salad, shrimp kung-pao...

We made it to Houston and Jason got upgraded again! He offered the seat to me but I said no...he should take it. I didn't make it very long on that plane ride. My body thought it was around 11pm so I basically slept the whole way. We made it home safely and were greeted by the kitties who were just so happy to see us!

Stay tuned for our next adventure!!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Tuesday...

Last day of scuba diving...we decided to take the cameras out again. The visibility was a little better today. Our first dive was at Jack McKenney's Canyons. Jack McKenney is/was an underwater photographer that loved to dive this site so they named it after him. Our second dive was to Fantasea Land...after yesterday's 'argument that wasn't' we decided to go guided. I tried and tried to make this last dive a good one...I was going to suck all my air and stay down until the very last second. Well, that WAS the plan...until I realized that I was at 6 feet. Darn it...guess I am done. But I did manage to find a HUGE lobster at the end of that dive. I saw this long thing...then another...then realize that they were the lobster's antenna! It was hiding under a rock but I manage to still see it!

Here are some exciting pictures from the day...
A butterfly fish and a crab--funny how the divemaster had no idea what I was doing when I was scratching my upper thigh :) Guess they don't know the Jamaican signals.

This is a cowfish...

Here is a cool angelfish and a school of fish...

This was a huge grouper...

Jason loves the trumpet fish and the puffer fish. The puffer fish will blow up as a defense mechanism. It is so cute to see this huge ball of a fish--imagine a volleyball with fins that aren't even an inch long. The fins are going a mile a minute but the puffer is barely moving.

This was another huge grouper that we saw...

Here is a pretty parrot fish--they have so much color under water! and a yellow fish...I don't know the type and right now, I am just too lazy to look it up! Sorry...

Now, you would think my husband would find a better shot...

Tuesday afternoon we didn't do a darn thing. We walked down the street to have lunch at Vivenne's Kitchen...you order lunch from a door that leads to her kitchen. It was quite a strange set-up but very good food. We opted for a to-go order and went back to the condo & ate on the beach. We grabbed our books and beer and headed for the lounge chairs. Jason put his in the shade and I could put mine right next to his and still be in the sun. He eventually went up to the room and sat on the balcony in the shade, I stayed on the beach and sunned myself for a few hours.

We couldn't decide where to go for dinner...we opted for the Lighthouse. It was suppose to be excellent food and service but expensive. It was expensive...the service was so-so and the meal was just okay. I preferred dinner at Over The Edge on Thursday--it was more authentic. Before we left for dinner, I grabbed the camera for one nice picture of us. The whole trip I would ask before I shut the condo door...do you have the key. Before I would shut the car door..do you have the car key. So that night...I was so worried about the camera that as we left I was shutting the door as Jason was saying WAIT, WAIT...I don't have a key. And the door was shut. So now we were locked out of our condo with no way of getting back in. So we proceeded to go down to the emergency box and call someone. We had to wait about 20 minutes for someone to come back and open the office to give us a new key. We were so thankful that she did that...but then we were late for dinner. It wasn't a big deal and we got to eat at a table that was over the ocean. They didn't need any music in the restaurant, the sound of the ocean was enough!

I will end with a NERD ALERT...

Monday...

Monday morning we went scuba diving on a new boat! How exciting...ok, not really but it was a new boat. We went back to the same location I went yesterday afternoon--Breaker's Cut Back. We basically kept going until they could find some clear water. And they ended at the last dive site and had to give up on trying to find clear water. It was the worse visibility we had all week but still not that bad. For the second dive we went to Kelly's Caverns. We decided to go on this one unguided...I paid attention to the pre-dive talk so during the dive Jason wanted to turn around. I wanted to go over to a section where they said we might see some nurse sharks...Jason wanted to turn around...then he wanted me to lead! So, I had an argument with Jason...of course, he didn't know anything about it since it was all in my head! He just didn't want to be that far away from the boat since the visibility wasn't the best. We decided to go guided the rest of the dives.

Monday after diving we went over to Kaibo Beach Grill for lunch. Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and that is a huge holiday in Grand Cayman. They were setting up for the huge party there on Wednesday. After lunch, we went and checked out Rum Point and got the geocache that was there. Then we headed down towards Boddentown to grab the last few geocaches. One of them is called The Cliffs of Dover...it was a really cool location. Here is one shot looking straight down...

Here is Jason with the geocache...

Here is a house I wouldn't mind having :)

After the geocaches, we went to watch the Ocean Frontiers Soccer team. They were so bad...the goalie Elliott kept commenting on the scuba boat that he needed some DEFENSE...well, we know what he meant when we saw them play. It was fun to go and see but we felt so bad for them. There were tons of women around watching the game with their kids. We later were told that Ocean Frontiers played the Transformers that night...and that the transformers are convicts. Guess that explains the audience. Kids...lets go see Dad tonight.

We were going to go join them for a beer at The Dog House...we had planned on going out for pizza so we went and grabbed a pizza first. We did go over to The Dog House but they were all sitting at a table so we decided to just head back.

I forgot to mention...we called Avis about the rental car. Sunday morning they came out and traded cars. It was hard to find ours in the parking lot but it was a silver Charade just like our last one. It was nice to have a car that didn't squeak or sound awful.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

You should be able to double click the pictures to see larger images

Sunday...

Sunday we went diving to Lighthouse wall and little house. Brad was the captain and had the best drawings by far. It's not big...it's little house. You might see some butterfly fish...and nurse sharks. We did the two tank morning dive and I decided to do the afternoon dives also. I like to dive more than Jason and he was happy vegging out in the condo. I went to Breaker's Cut Back Wall and Maggie's maze on the afternoon dive.

We ate in the condo again for dinner but didn't have a lot of choices for beverages. Remember that I asked Jason on Saturday how we were doing on beer? Well...we apparantly drank more than we had been on Saturday because we were basically out of beer on Sunday! We managed though. Here are some of the exciting things we saw. Can you guess that we had two different cameras?