I Love Comedians with Guitars, a Magic Trip Report

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We saw this ship and a little boy told his parents that he could tell that was a “real” pirate ship.

Looking back from where we came.

 

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So, where are we going you may ask? Our excursion is the Shipwreck and Reef Snorkeling. When we found out that Grand Cayman was one of our stops, many people told us that snorkeling there is a must. I approached Lisa with the idea and she wasn’t too keen on it. She had never done it before, and it made her nervous. Once Brook booked the same cruise, we kind of talked about it and she said she would go with me as it is something she has always wanted to do. I told Lisa that I was going to do it with Brook and would she like to come and she decided to give it a try. That being said, I think she was still nervous about doing it.
We chose this particular one for one reason; it was pretty cheap compared to other things on the island. I think this port adventure cost $39 per person.
Our walk that we had been taking was leading us to the boat that would take us snorkeling.
And I must admit, we had some “pleasant” scenery awaiting us on the boat as well.

Remember that little patch of sand we had just past?

Those small steps there at the other end, …..That’s where we went down to get on the boat.

As we walked down the steps there was quite a bit of stones and shells there so I took a picture.

Or two

They told us to take off our shoes as they could easily fall off as we got on the boat and they weren’t about to go chasing after shoes. One other note, the sandy beach area was not even ground when you came down the steps, so that could be an issue for some people.

We loaded up and found a seat and waited. I took a few pictures while we waited. (like you are surprised by that)

Our captain.

And his mates.

I honestly can’t remember a single one of their names now, but they were all super nice and fun, but professional too. I think they all, or at least 2 of them had come from Australia. They had a passion for diving and sea life.

While sitting there I was finally able to get that picture I wanted.

 

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We had to sign waivers and then got instructions.

By this time we were already on our way out to where we would snorkel. I was still in picture taking mode.

This guy gave us the basics and though he was serious and gave us good info, he also joked a little bit.

The seats that we sat on did open for storage. Not all could be used by us as they had ship supplies in them, but they had a couple that we could use and we threw our bags inside of that.

We were handed our snorkeling gear and then went over to get our fins. I had to get the extra big feet size. LOL! They handed me a pair at first that was supposed to fit like a 9/10 for ladies. I could tell right away that I wasn’t going to like those…and when I couldn’t squeeze my foot in it, I knew for sure they wouldn’t work, but they did have a bigger, so all was good.

So I am all set, and please take a picture of me looking at my absolute worst…I really want to post this for the world to see. The picture wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t scrunched back and added about 12 chins to my face.

Yeah, I’m all sexy like that.

One of the guys came over and took a picture of the 3 of us.

Don’t we all look fabulous!!

Time to get in. Now we were told to put our fins on right at the edge so we didn’t trip when we walked, but I seemed to have forgotten that and put them on right at the bench. LOL. But I was fine. I did the fin walk to the edge and got nervous. Not many people had gone in yet. We all were nervous about jumping in with the gear, but I decided what the heck and made a very ungraceful jump right in.

 

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Brook and Lisa were not far behind.

And my first look under the sea.

camera. It was so fun to be able to click away.

It took a little bit to get our breathing down and to be sure our masks were on our face right, but soon we were doing well, even if it looks like we are dying.

Brook wanted a shot of her with the ship behind her.

Lisa getting the hang of it.

 

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Our guides had told us that there might be some very large fish down towards the bottom and they were NOT sharks and please do not holler shark as it will send everyone in a panic. We didn’t see any yet . We did see some Dory’s though.

Hi Lisa!

Hi Brook!

Lisa took some pictures of Brook.

And then Brook was going to take some of Lisa and I together.

 

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But then one of the guides, who we thought looked like Owen Wilson came over and said he would take a picture of all 3 of us.

He then told us to hold our hands and make a circle and he would go down below and take our picture. This is one of my very favorite shots of the whole trip.

I wasn’t looking directly down as I was afraid of following him and then getting water in my snorkel. I then see Lisa and Brook go up for air and they are laughing. I guess the “Owen” guy was down there taking the picture’s and wasn’t paying attention and swam right into a rock. Poor guy. He came back up and scolded us for not warning him ….just jokingly of course.

More snorkeling.

We noticed the “Owen” guy swimming towards the bottom. I guess he went down to scare some fish into action.

And out came the big fish. He did sort of look like a shark when you looked at him from far away.

 

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There goes a school of fish.

 

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These guys came up pretty close.

We noticed that it was time to head back to the boat so we made our way back. We had one more destination yet.

Something you don’t see too often. LOL

 

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As we went over to the shipwreck site we were given a bit of history. It wasn’t very far from where we just were either.

A little info about the shipwreck. “The Cali, built in 1900, was a 220-foot long steel-hulled four-masted barquentine that sank in George Town harbour in 1949. She was sailing from Ecuador to Cuba with a cargo of rice when she encountered bad weather and began to leak. She diverted to Grand Cayman but attempts to keep her afloat failed and she was run aground.”
Basically what we were told is she ran into shallow waters to avoid sinking, but she was full of rice and it expanded from the water and started breaking the ship apart. It sat there for many years and finally they decided to blow her up to sink her completely, but someone was a little bit generous with the dynamite and added way too much and she blew up BIG and pieces went flying all over and into town. Her remains are on the bottom and we could see quite a bit.

Time to get back in.

And I attempted a little underwater video.

 

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This is kind of spooky looking.

I played with some of the ways I edited the pictures, so the water itself didn’t really turn to a different green or blue, just the way I edited it to see if I could get them clearer.

Another peek at our ship.

These fish just totally cracked me up.

They would swim right at me and then quickly turn away.

 

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It was like they would say “hey let’s check her out … oh wait …… she’s scary, turn around quick”.

We continued our snorkeling fun.

This boat went by a couple of times. If I remember right, it had windows down below and it was an excursion to look at sea life.

There’s Brook.

A last look under the sea.

I was now to the point that I had to go to the bathroom. I was also starting to get a little cold and waterlogged, so I got out.

Brook and Lisa soon followed.

We got one more group picture as we waited for the rest to come back onboard.

Soon it was time to go and everyone had returned. We motored on over to where we had gotten on the boat and set off back to the ship. We tipped our guys because they were fabulous.
We decided to go back and freshen up and get a bite to eat then meet up with Carolyn, Susan and Shelly.

I took a few pictures as we walked back.

 

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Hey, there’s a rooster walking around.

I really had to go to the bathroom quite badly at this point. We spotted public bathrooms and Brook and Lisa declined to go in, but at this point a hole in the ground was gonna work for me, so I went in. Surprisingly these were pretty decent bathrooms. I would say on the line with the Castaway Cay ones. Not fabulous, but decent and they weren’t dirty.

Now that I felt so much better, we headed back to the tender area.

Easy to find the Mickey Boat!

Disney’s area was so much nicer than the Carnival one. They had a shaded canopy with cold water and cold towels waiting for us.

We soon were on a tender.

We made some chit chat with the one guy. I think he took a liking to Lisa. He was very friendly, but honestly we had a hard time understanding him and we did a lot of smiling and nodding.

A guy came on wearing a Fantasy Inaugural Sweatshirt and carrying a guitar. We kind of heard hints of whispers that he was new entertainment coming on board and that the 2 other ones had left that morning. I never realized this, but I guess a lot of the entertainment does not stay on board the whole week. They will get off at a port and fly home, or fly into a port and join the cruise midway.
I LOVED this guy’s sweatshirt by the way. I sure wish I could find a way to get one myself.

We soon set sail back to the ship and we saw some people enjoying themselves.

I took a few pictures of the Carnival Destiny as we went by her.

Back to the Magic.

As we were pulling in, we had a to wait a minute for the other tenders to get out of the way. All of a sudden Brook says, there is Carolyn on that one. I couldn’t believe she saw her. She said Susan wears big sunglasses with bright white rims and they caught her eye. LOL. We hollered back and forth and let them know we would meet up with them in about 45 minutes or so at Margaritaville.

Looks like the red could use a little new paint.

 

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We have arrived!

Snorkeling sure works up an appetite, so we headed straight for some food.

We all got chicken tenders and fries.

They were pretty good too.

A view of Grand Cayman.

We all headed back to our rooms to freshen up a bit. I guess I felt the need to take a picture of our towel animals lined up. LOL

We met back up and headed to the tenders once again.

 

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A peek over the side at the water.

A look back at the ship.

We have arrived once again. Which way to go?

There it is.

Let’s stop and take a touristy picture!!

I tried to get a shot of the floor, but as you can see, that wasn’t too successful.

 

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It was kind of a maze to get to the restaurant part, up stairs over this way and that, but we found them.

The place was pretty empty and we found sat a table next to them.

Here is the view out the windows. And there is a deck out here as well.

 

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The other gals had ordered food, but since we had just eaten, we didn’t, but we did each order a pop.

We weren’t there for long and decided to get moving. For some reason the waitress put it all on one bill. So annoying. I swear she said that it was $1.50 American to $1 Grand Cayman, but we asked Carolyn how much we owed her and she gave us a price that seemed way too little. I think Lisa gave her the money for our drinks since I paid the tip on the snorkeling excursion, so I am not for sure what the exact total came to.

We decided to take a bus around the island and see what it looked like. Lisa and I debated on this a bit. It sounded fun, yet we weren’t sure we wanted to do it. Finally we said OK and went along.

As we headed out we took picture of Margaritaville.

Lisa and I.

They had a pool area here too.

 

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Another stop for touristy pictures.

We had a few issues finding this bus stop. We were told it was behind Margaritaville, but honestly we just didn’t see it, nor any buses around.

We decided to look in here a minute because who ever heard of bamboo socks?

Well they had them and sheets and just about anything you could think of made out of bamboo. The clothing was VERY soft, and PRICEY.

We won’t be taking those home with us.

We kept on looking

Lots of Banks in Grand Cayman. And jewelry stores. At one point Shelly asked what the local time was as it was an hour ahead on clock she saw. I thought that was correct, but the ship stayed on Galveston time. But then later we saw another clock that had the same time as Galveston. Weird. We never figured it out. Some people said they were the same, while other said it was an hour ahead.

Finally we asked someone where the bus stop was. Well we weren’t too far…and this was not really a bus. There was an area with lots of vans parked. These were the “buses”. They asked where you wanted to go, more like a taxi that followed a route. We said we just wanted to make a loop and end up back here. So we all got in and started off. This van still made stops throughout the island, but very few people got on or off. You could tell some people used this to get to and from work, and I must say, if you got on near the beginning of the route and worked near the end, that is a long ride …..at least it seemed like it to me.

The whole reason for this ride was to see some local life. I will warn you now, I took quite a few pictures …through a window in a moving van, so needless to say, they are not great, but it will give you an idea what the island is like.

Our bus is fresh too!

 

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Let’s just say some of the decor is kind of interesting.

We passed some resorts and nice houses along the way. And some not so nice as well.

And we spot some beach!

 

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I think they must’ve been doing some remodeling, as all the bedroom furniture was outside.

 

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And here is a sight you don’t normally see every day ……….

Unless you are me! This is a common sight out in my back yard every day.

In case you didn’t know, my husband is a dairy farmer.

On our route we made stops and picked up some people and dropped them off. It was obvious that some were coming or going to work. I wouldn’t mind taking this bus to the beach, as it was close, but coming back would take a lot longer. Keep that in mind if you ever decide to use this option. It would be cheap transportation, but time wise coming back, not very good.

One last shot before we made it back to where we started.

Before our trip, Lisa had talked to Verizon about adding international calling so she could call her husband. While at Margaritaville she had tried and punched in the code she was given. It did not work. I think she said she heard a recording and it wasn’t in English, so she had no clue what it even said. She was frustrated. I didn’t even bother with my phone, as I figured it wouldn’t work if hers didn’t.

She tried a few times throughout the day and never did get it figured out.

After our bus tour we split up with the others. I wanted to shop for some junk. You know what I mean, right? That stuff that is very touristy and fun to bring home to the kids. The others didn’t want to so they went back to the ship. I think Lisa would’ve rather gone back too, but she stuck back with me. I want to add it was super-hot this day. We were roasting. Some places were cooler than others and that determined how long we stayed in the store.

I thought this fountain was cute.

Sadly, I just couldn’t find what I wanted.

This area seemed to have more high dollar places, or really cruddy places. I bought a few small things, I think a magnet for myself…this was my new “thing”, starting to buy magnets from different places and Grand Cayman was my very 1st one …sadly I don’t always remember to do so ….a stone turtle for Claire, and I think Lisa bought one for her grandson. I don’t think anything else was purchased, but it’s been a while, so I may have forgotten.

It was so darn hot that we didn’t venture too far down the road and gave up. I have heard that if I went further, I probably would’ve found more of what I was looking for.
We made our way back to the tenders then. We were getting closer to all aboard time and we didn’t want to be rushing back.

We spotted an airplane coming in.

It didn’t take too long to get on the tender. This time is was more crowded and we had to wait a little bit. They were bringing on supplies. Boxes of food, etc. I assume this was all for the ship. We also saw several people bringing on cases of alcohol. I need to brush up on this, but I thought there was a limit on how much you could take home, but I am not sure if it is the same from all ports. Maybe these people were hearty drinkers and planned to drink it all before they got back?

Finally we set sail back to the Magic.