My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Finally we had a week without training. Jase, Jess and I had some time off while we were at port and we wanted to go on an adventure. Jess had been there before so Jase and I told her she was in charge! Show us the island! Jess asked what we wanted to do and said there was a really nice Margaritaville and then she started listing some other chains with overpriced drinks right on the pier with lots of tourists. No that is not what we wanted to do. We wanted to go where the passengers didn’t go. Jess was no longer our tour guide. We took the tender to the pier where Jase chatted up the people selling conch shells and got the low down on public transportation. Now this was an adventure! We went to the designated corner and looked for the appropriate vehicle to hail. There were large vans that said taxi and they charged $4 US to go to the 7 mile beach. The public bus (which looked exactly the same but they didn’t say taxi) charged $2.50 US. I think our ‘bus’ said Kelly on the front but I wasn’t touristy enough to take a picture. We flagged down a bus and asked the driver to take us to the 7 mile beach. Along the way people would flag down the bus and it would stop, pick them up and then they would say where they wanted to get off and the driver would pull over and let them out. I was fascinated.
We walked along the beach and I became aware that I was really really happy. Like, I shouldn’t be this happy. I had had a lot of alcohol the night before and I should feel hung over. But I wasn’t. I was blissed out. Here I was walking through some people’s version of paradise with my friends and I was having a great time.
I came upon this floaty thing and I took a picture for my sister because she is a fairy by day and mermaid by night.
I went for a swim in the ocean because I wanted to. And we walked along the beach until we got hungry.
We left the beach and walked toward the road to find Coconut Joes. This food was amazing. I had rice and beans and plantains and coconut water out of a coconut. And it had wifi so I was able to call my friend Rose in London and wish her a happy birthday.
Then we looked out at the road and saw a group of white-bearded men on segways. That week at turn around there seemed to be a disproportionate number of men who looked like Santa Clause. It turned out that a whole group of them were on the cruise– 30 Santas with their Mrs. Clauses and their families. That’s how we knew that the segways going by were a Princess Tour. It was also pretty surreal to be sipping a drink out of a coconut in the Caribbean and watching a group of Santas segway by.
We hailed a bus back and asked the driver to take us back to the pier. He wove around the island a different way and I wasn’t entirely sure we were actually going to make it back to the ship. We stopped in front of this building with my mom’s name on it.
Eventually we made it back to the town. I knew where we were! The last time we had come to Grand Cayman I had walked around the town looking for wifi. I didn’t find any but I found the closed library where we were dropped off this time. I knew how to get back to the ship! We passed all of the tourist traps and made it back in time for our afternoon activities.
Coconut Joes was so good that I later had a very similar adventure with Stef. We had a day that was very much like a Saturday in my previous life (on the ship there are no weekdays– just port days, sea days and turnaround). We didn’t set an alarm– just woke up when we woke up. We hung out and got ready when we felt like it. We took a bus to Coconut Joes and had brunch. I had a breakfast burrito that time which was every bit as good as I wanted it to be. We went to the beach and then decided we didn’t want to be at a resorty beach so we went back to the ship and hung out at the crew pool. And later we went back to work.
