From July 13 - 16, 2007 I traveled to the Cayman Islands for a weekend scuba expedition. It's a surprisingly short trip from DC and after six months of work with no vacation, I really needed a getaway. Luckily, my local dive school plans these trips almost monthly. I had promised myself I'd go on one sometime this year and get my advanced certification. After several months of conflicting schedules I finally decided July was it and reserved my spot.

I had an incredibly fun, if exhausting time. I improved my diving skills, met some great people and took advantage of the location to do some photography. What else could I have asked for? What follows is a sort of mini-review of the trip, with several photos for visual context. Enjoy!

Grand Cayman Island 

Just south of Cuba, the island of Grand Cayman was surprisingly unimpressive. Although under significant development, houses, business, and hotels dotted the landscape seemingly without any master plan. Devastated in 2004 by hurricane Ivan, many smaller dwellings had not yet been rebuilt and debris still littered some of the shoreline. There was a conspicuous absence of large, full trees and much of the greenery looked only a few years old. The beach was nice though, with clear, light blue water lined by golden sand, hotels, and condos. If I were just looking for a beach to sit on though, I would probably go some place less expensive. Everything in Grand Cayman is expensive, especially compared to my last diving experience in Belize.

Diving

This was a dive trip. While I was only in the water three to four hours a day, it seemed as though the entire trip was spent diving. I suppose this is due to the nature of the sport and its required preparation and travel time. If I wasn't actually diving, I was getting into or out of gear, driving to or from the beach, or boating to or from the dive sites. Mixed in with these activities was eating, photo taking and editing (of course), and a little sleep.

Diving is truly Cayman's raison d'êtra. It is easy to forget the strip malls and copycat resorts on the surface when exploring the underwater world just off shore. The marine life was abundant and the reefs were fascinating to explore. I managed nine dives on my trip on the West and North ends of the island. Highlights include a wreck dive (in the day and at night), a deep dive to 35 meters, and a very shallow dive at Stingray Alley. I also nearly swam headfirst into a rather large nurse shark. We were both navigating around a large bit of coral in opposite directions and didn't see one another until we were about a half a meter apart. Thankfully, he (or she) decided it would be best not to run into me and quickly swam away.

The trip was organized by my dive school, SPE Dive School. They booked the rooms, provided transportation, organized the dives and planned the meals. All of the dives were chartered with Divers Down. They were very nice, but we had a few too many people on our boat. The gear was in better shape than other rental gear that I've seen and I got lucky and received a nearly new BCD. Unfortunately, the regulators were unbalanced, making it harder to breathe at depth and towards the end of the dives, but they did the job. Hopefully by my next dive trip I will own my own gear. (Hint for anyone doing some early Christmas shopping.)

Flying, Food, Folks, Fun, and...Hotels

Having the entire trip planned by someone else was a luxury. All I had to do was get myself to the hotel with my gear and be ready to go. Spirit Airlines had a great sale on tickets and got me there in one piece. (The sale didn't look as good when I had to pay $10 just to check a bag and another $1 for a can of Coke.) Due to a few thunderstorms in the area, our flight was slightly delayed and as a result, I was on a boat heading out to the first dive site within an hour of landing.

Everyone stayed at the Sunshine Suites hotel. It was certainly not extravagant, but clean, with a nice pool and a fantastic poolside grill that provided free continental breakfasts. The rooms had small kitchenettes with a microwave that let me reheat my take-home food. They even had free wireless internet access. I would certainly recommend the hotel if you're looking for someplace simple and relatively inexpensive.

Dining occurred mostly at the grill at the hotel. Luckily, the food at the grill was some of the best (and least expensive) I had. Somehow, they made nearly perfect french fries, which I ordered twice. We also went out to two nice dinners, which I didn't think were worth the cost. Disliking seafood, I twice ordered overpriced steak instead. If it weren't for the social aspect of the expensive dinners, I would have much preferred to dine at the grill or the delicious Chicken Chicken! we visited once for lunch.

One great aspect of traveling with a local dive club, was that everyone on the boat was from the DC area. Not only were they from DC, but most turned out to be, well, somewhat like me. That is to say many conversations revolved around which episodes of MythBusters we had seen, where we had been in the world, and what our thoughts were on national politics. These were certainly people with a passion for learning and adventure.

As a solo traveler on this trip, I was "adopted" by a great couple who lives around DC, Erika and Ray Brown. They were great fun to talk with and kindly served as my dive buddies for the weekend. On the morning we departed, the three of us drove around most of the island in search a blowhole on the southern shore and for the town/post office of Hell. We missed it the first time around, but after driving in circles for a while, we finally arrived in Hell. It's basically a site of eroded rock with a colorful and creative post office/tourist trap. Erika and Ray kindly sent postcards to their family members postmarked from Hell. It wasn't long before the Hell puns became excruciating to listen to. For Ray's sake, I hope Erika didn't keep them up on the entire flight home. They were great though and hopefully I'll be seeing them again soon. I wonder if they like board games?

Photos

Here are a few photo highlights from the trip. All of my photos are on my Flickr site. There's also a fun slideshow with some great underwater photography taken by one of my instructors. Of course I took my GPS along with me, so you can see most of my photos placed onto a nice map of Grand Cayman. For $25, I purchased a cheap underwater film camera at the local dive shop. Unfortunately, the images did not turn out well enough to be worth posting. It looks like I'll have to start saving up for a real dive enclosure for my SLR. In the meantime, enjoy the above-water photos.