Little Cayman Day 3: Bloody Bay Wall remix

An all around great day! Beautiful weather, cool breeze, warm sun. Brett has today off, so our DMs du jour are Marc and Dottie – what a hoot. She wears a fluorescent orange, green, pink, purple wetsuit ... and she has spiked blond hair (that's her, above, wearing her skin from the dive goddess). As we were gearing up for our first dive, she called out “If you have trouble finding me, I’m the one with the yellow fins!”

Two in our group, Sarah and her significant other (David, I think, who does not dive), weren’t with us. They headed over to Grand Cayman to get their marriage license ... they’re getting married on the LCBR dock tomorrow! Christopher lent Steve his “Team Zissou Intern” t-shirt. That and the red beanie and he’ll be ready to start making up his own species. ;-)

On our way out to the first dive, we passed the Cayman Aggressor offshore at the far end of the island. Not too bad a ride, from the looks of it!

Dive #1 —Cumber’s Caves

This dive site, we’re told, is named after one Mervin Cumber, the founder, apparently (and if I remember correctly), of Island Air. A very nice dive, lots of cool caverns. We started with a really pretty swim-through, more of a deep crevice as the light shone down on us except for in one enclosed spot. It dumped us out into the big blue at about 78 feet. It was amazing to “burst!” out (as Dottie called it) into the great open water like that. Awe-inspiring. Beautiful mountains of pillar coral ... reminded me of the underwater mountains in the north of Bonaire – just south of Witches’ Hut, I think.

We saw a small stingray right as we got started, with some fish hanging out with him while he stirred up food in the sand. He let us watch and follow him around for quite some time, even getting very close. I hope Steve got a good picture. At the end of the dive, just as we were hanging at our safety stop, there was a big spotted eagle ray foraging in the sand. We watched him for quite some time, too. Lots of conch, I saw two that looked to be “racing” (it’s all relative), trails behind them both, little eyeball sticks poked all the way out, chugging along, one right behind the other. A very nice dive.

Dive #2 — Cumber's Caves/Busch Gardens

My favorite dive so far; Steve’s too, he says. Beautiful cuts in the coral, with sand “highways” up to the shore. It’s rocky and craggy, with mountains and overhangs everywhere. Just a really gorgeous and unique landscape. In some of the cuts and overhangs, you feel like you’re in a big bowl with sunlight pouring down in on you. One is even called the “washing machine,” because you can hear and even feel in your chest the turbulent water all around you (see me in it, above). We saw more fish than we have so far, and a few different ones, too. I finally saw a trunkfish, a good-sized smooth one, all white. Tobacco fish, tons of blennies, white tilefish (we think), lots of snapper. There’s also an o-l-d anchor and chain; Dottie says that scientists have analyzed the links and determined it’s from the late 1700’s or very early 1800’s … a pirate anchor! Cool! I almost didn’t see the anchor itself, Steve had to take me back to show me. It’s now its own reef, a very large (crossbar is probably 7-8 feet) anchor-shaped coral.

When we got back, I went for a dip in the pool and then the jacuzzi, then took in a little sun before lunch. Today Chubby made me steamed squash, broccoli and cauliflower and spicy refried beans. He is the man! Steve had grilled cheese and homemade onion rings. I’m hooked on the iced tea. Nothing special about it, I guess it just hits the spot.


Dive #3 — Ringers

Awesome dive! Dottie parked the boat just at the edge of the reef, and we entered the water looking straight down the side of the wall – the wall that keeps going for 6,000 feet! It’s a bizarre feeling at times, but I love it because it feels like I am flying. You can just soar – up, down, somersaults – in the open water, an abyss that gives you the feeling of being in outer space (or so I imagine being in outer space would feel like). The wall is beautiful, and the fish, as Dottie pointed out, are oriented as if the vertical wall is their “bottom,” so to us they appear to be swimming sideways and upside down. We swam down the wall for a while, then over the top and returned to the boat over the flat coral gardens – very nice. We saw two big lobsters, a scorpionfish (our first here), a couple of white-spotted filefish, chromis, Creole wrasse, blue tangs, and another first, two large queen angelfish, deep along the wall. Yesterday we did see a few large gray angels, but these were the first queens. We saw a large crab in a coral head, absorbed in munching on some tiny little things.

And! Near the end of the dive, Steve spotted a small hawksbill turtle. We watched him swim toward us, then surface for a gulp of air. Then he seemed to look down at us, as if trying to decide if he trusted us enough to come back down. He did eventually, and let us swim with him for probably close to 5 minutes! We got so close that I saw that he was tagged on both front flippers. Then he let me get even closer, and I could read the tags. They were different numbers, so he’s been around! The left tag was WE5667 or WE56667. The right tag had a “79” in it. I’m going to try to see if there’s a way to look him up, some tracking site or something. It was VERY cool!

After we returned, I sat in the jacuzzi for a bit and then napped beside the pool. After a shower, we walked the whole 100 yards or so to the little shop, Mermaids, where we saw some great framed photographs (including one of Bloody Ball Wall that was featured in National Geographic mural project back in 2001) and some very cool jewelry – old coins from the Atocha, but also other wrecks, land finds from Mexico and Guatemala, even some Roman coins dating back to ~300 BC! That gave me goosebumps, thinking of the very coin in my hand being around that long ago. Who knows whose pockets (did they have pockets back then?) that coin has been in!

We chatted with the Canadian gal who works there. She found the job on the internet and moved here from Manitoba (wowie!) almost 3 years ago. She says she tries to "recruit" folks who enjoy the island, and then proceeded to tell us how their new medical staff consists of a nurse and a paramedic (and one brand-spanking new ambulance, fully decked out with lights and siren, as if that's necessary!!), and that their contract just happens to be up in September. Well! Food for thought, perhaps!

Dinner was announced around 6:30, with the clanging of the dinner bell – the same one that clangs at 7:15 for breakfast and around 12:30 for lunch. Simple, but very effective! As soon as we walked in, one of the staff said “Chubby has something for you!” Indeed he did. A mélange of mushrooms, asparagus, onions and peppers, and a bit of pasta, all in a tasty balsamic glaze, with grilled sliced tomatoes on the side. Dessert was sliced pineapple, melon, grapes, and strawberries. I finally had to wrap the grapes up in a napkin for later, I couldn’t eat another bite. Steve has grilled chicken pasta, grilled pig—I mean pork, and asparagus. Which was HUGE, by the way. Asparagus that big at home would be so tough you’d never be able to chew it, but this was tender and quite tasty.

Afterwards we sat at the bar with some of the folks from our group, chatting about what we saw today and other places we’ve been. Sarah and Dave got their marriage license today and are getting married on the dock tomorrow at 2:30 – she planned it that way so she could make the morning dives with us!

One small last note to give you an idea of the attention we’re getting here: we were a bit chilly last night and pulled down some extra blankets. Instead of folding them up and placing them back on the shelf, the housekeeper (who has come and gone by noon every day) made up the beds with the blankets neatly placed between the sheets and the comforter. Minor detail, I know, but quite observant and a nice touch.

VERDICT, day three: B+ (Steve says it would’ve been an A had we seen more sharks!)