Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Grand Cayman Snorkeling
Hello, from Cozumel! It’s 8AM now, so we’ve not yet left for our “Swimming with the Dolphins” adventure. Yesterday, in Grand Cayman, it was a beautiful day. Sunny and in the mid 80’s. Yummy! Josie was in the care of her grandparents while James, Maddie and I went on a Reef & Shipwreck snorkeling adventure. It was just awesome!
Our boat pulled up right onto the beach where we boarded and took a short ride to the coral reef. If you imagine your hand spread out, with your wrist as the beach, your fingers would be the coral reefs and the space in between would be small trenches where tarpons and barracuda hide. We got to see both of these fish, along with thousand of others swimming among the many different kinds of coral.
Our Captain asked if anyone had seen ‘ Finding Nemo’. Of course, many of us had. He then explained that we would not see any Nemos but there were thousands of Dori s. He also explained that they WERE the dumbest fish in the ocean and that YES, they did possess a 3 second memory. We found this to be true – and it’s funny to watch them go back and forth.
After 40 minutes we headed around a corner and into a cove to swim above the shipwreck. It wasn’t a sunken galleon or anything like that…it was a sunken container ship from the 1940s that ran aground. The crew, knowing that ship was not going anywhere and that it couldn’t sink because it was already grounded, abandoned ship and headed for a local watering hole. What they neglected to consider was that the ship was carrying a hull full of rice. That, combined with an undetected gash in the hull and the rising sea water, caused the rice to expand and literally pushed the hull apart, causing it to ‘sink’. In the 1960’s the Brits decided to do away with the wreck by using 10 cases of dynamite that not only destroyed the wreck but killed 4 people on shore and damaged a number of building. Our Australian captain called this a ‘typical Brit cock-up’!
It had rained the previous day, so the water was a bit milky. However, we did get to see the wreck and surrounding undersea life. It was a great experience!
We celebrated our Family Day anniversary at dinner with a toast to Josie. She is so incredibly loved by everyone in this family! We are all so lucky to have each other! A number of the adoptive family members we have met on board came by during dinner to offer their congratulations. What an incredible experience, what a wonderful life!
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Hmmm swimming with Dolphins….didn’t you scare off? Well I also like to do snorkeling in Grand Cayman and will surely do it whenever its possible for me to go there. Probably I will go with my family in summer vacation.
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