Day 19: Argh. Pirates.

An entire fleet of cruise ships hit Grand Cayman on the same day. Six or seven – we lost count. It made the island a bit crowded, but not as bad as I feared.

Grand Cayman’s port isn’t deep enough to accommodate cruise ships, so we had to tender in to shore. Fortunately the weather was perfect, with next to no swell, so the ride in was delightfully spew-free.
The island’s pirate heritage is heavily promoted, and every second corner seems to feature a carved pirate.
Some of the pirates were unfamiliar to me. Personally I don’t recall this guy, but he was particularly popular with the tourists:
I think I spotted three or four statues of Big Black Dick. I was disappointed not to find any of his second-in-command, Wee White Willy.

These days Grand Cayman’s pirates have moved on to tax-free banking, and duty-free jewelry. We didn’t bother checking out the banking, but we did hit a few of the jewelry stores.

Ah, well, it’s just as well we don’t have any kids to leave an inheritance to.

We both picked up watches, and Emma managed to find a nice ring with a Columbian emerald. And only four people were killed acquiring the emerald.

(Sadly this may not be far from the truth. Columbian emerald mining is a major source of income for the country, it comes at a high price. One estimate is that an average of five people are killed each week over emerald disputes.)

On a more positive note, the afternoon was one of the highlights of the trip: Stingray Cove.
I tend to be skeptical of tourist promotional photos. Give a photographer enough time and access to photoshop and you can make anything look good.

This time the reality was better than the photos.

For hundreds of years fishermen have been stopping at a sandbar near the north end of the cove to clean their catches, and the stingrays have learned boats = free food. It took a 45 boat-minute ride to reach the sandbar, which was shallow enough Emma felt confident hitting the water.
See all those grey shapes? Stingrays. There were too many to count, but I’m guessing around 40 to 50. There were so many the biggest challenge was not to step on one.

We’d been coached on which parts were safe to touch (under the wings), which parts to avoid (the top ridges and the barb – Steven Irwin didn’t fully appreciate the last bit). We were apprehensive about touching them at first. By the end of the hour we were holding them.
It was just phenomenal. Experiences like this are why I travel.