Wednesday, October 25 - George Town, Grand Cayman
Another morning, another port town. The difference here is that the water is shallow, we have to drop anchor and ride tenders (4 that are on our ship, they are slighter larger than the regular lifeboats, can hold 120 people each, and 1 from the port). There are no less than 6 cruise ships anchored in the harbor, pretty amazing sight. When we arrive in the ship's theater for instructions about our excursion, we are informed that it has been cancelled. Apparently due to the rough weather that we sailed thru, the beach resort we are supposed to go snorkeling at has decided the water is too rough. Dana, still less-than-thrilled with Mexico, says she is happy to stay on the ship. I said, no, we're here, this is supposedly NOT a third-world area, let's get off and walk around. (The excursion people on the ship told us we could sign up for a different excursion, we found out later that other folks went all the way to where they were supposed to snorkel, scuba, etc. only to be told that they were cancelled. We decided to take our refund and spend that money on booze, souveniers, etc. )
We were able to catch one of the early tenders off the ship, since we still had our excursion tickets in hand (doubled as your tender ticket, the folks with scheduled excursions got to go first, no one looked at our ticket closely enough to say "hey, that excursion is cancelled, go to the back of the line!"). Once on shore, it was apparent that George Town was very different than Cozumel, it looked like any American city. Banks everywhere, as we had heard, lots of money on this little island.
I noticed right away that they drive on the left-hand side of the road, it was messing with my head when I tried to cross the street, etc. The cars were mixed, some had right-hand steering wheels, some left. Since we had no set plans, we just walked around the main drag, spotted Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, said hey, let's go get a margarita. Stopped first in the store, the t-shirts were VERY expensive (more on that in a moment) so we went upstairs to the restaurant. The prices were kinda high, but we figured we were spending the money we would have otherwise spent on the excursion, so we said what the heck. It was getting on towards lunchtime, so we ordered the "Volcano Nachos" along with our 2 margaritas. We passed on the $13.50 "large" margaritas in a plastic bong, got a rather small one in a standard plastic cup for $7.50. They were tasty, we ordered another round. Well, when the bill came, we noticed that the menu prices had been in Cayman dollars, U.S. dollars was even more (.8 Cayman dollars to 1 USD, as opposed to 11 pesos to the USD in Cozumel). 1 order of nachos, 4 margaritas came to $50 USD. Ouch. We figured we'd eat a proper lunch back on the ship where it was paid for.
Wandered down the street, past the big wooden statue of a black pirate-looking dude, with a sign next to him proclaiming "Big Black Dick" of course all the women had to get their picture made next to this. Big Black Dick is a brand of rum apparently. Speaking of rum, we went to the Tortuga Rum store, bought rum cakes and a bottle of rum. Headed back to the ship for lunch and the afternoon by the pool.
Next - Montego Bay, Jamaica
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