1/1/05 Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Speaking of trivia, apparently when Columbus discovered Cayman Islands he called them La Tortugas, because of the apparent abundance of turtles. Later, people took a re-count and renamed the islands into Cayman or Crocodile. Must be more Crocodiles on the island. Of course we have not seen any. We did see a few parrots, but our focus was the beach and the famous rum cakes.

We stopped at Grand Cayman - the largest of the Cayman islands, which is 22 miles long. The port is located in a busy touristy center of the city. This area, called Georgetown, is covered with restaurants, galleries, shops and duty free stores.

We took a cab to the 7-mile beach. Apparently the beach is less than 5 miles long, but locals call it 7-mile beach just for the heck of it. The way to the beach is via main road that runs through the island. The scenery made me think of the term: Vocation-spot wanna be. Things did not look too smooth. There were attempts to make an impression of civilized place, but really they were just attempts.

The actual 7-mile beach was clean and pretty. It was divided into areas, each of which was ripping off tourists with its own bar, restaurant and jets rentals.



Needless to say that such peaceful scenary evoked irrepressible urge to have local rum cakes and even the rum itself. We headed back to Georgetown and went to the duty free store. We took full advantage of the generous treat of free rum cakes and free rum shots. For about 1 hour after we boarded we did not even smell Zuiderdam. What else can one ask from a Tortuga rum cake?

All pictures from this trip