Day 77

013008_009
Originally uploaded by Rance Rizzutto Photography

George Town, Grand Cayman. Today was fantastic. Dad treated me to our own excursion and it pretty much went as planned. We wanted to rent a jeep and just drive around taking pictures. We got off our tender boat and found an info table. The lady called a rental place, but they only had a minivan and a Nissan Sentra. We had her check one other place…they had a jeep and sent a shuttle to get us. We read in…well…in something (travel book or excursion info) that Barkers National Park had blue iguanas. We couldn’t any specific mention of a national park, but one part of the map said Barkers, so we headed that way. Stopped at a few places randomly on the way there, but ultimately ended up where our map said “Barkers”. It went from paved road to dirt road. Basically dirt/sand road with nothing but bushes on the sides. I tried to put the jeep in 4-wheel drive. I got it into 4-wheel neutral and then it was grinding. Put the car in park and got it into low gear…then I couldn’t get it out. We drove some more until we found a road with water on either side. We were in the middle of nowhere on a sandy road in a low gear. Dad told me to just back up, but there was one really narrow spot that was easy going forward, but could mean us in the water going in reverse. I found an area to turn around and THERE was a large iguana sunning in the grass. We did it! We found a blue iguana!

From there we headed back. Stopped in Hell. A tourist trap of rocky limestone formations. There were some iguanas in trees there. Stopped to check out the turtle farm just in time to meet Deanna and the moms who were haggling with a cab driver to take them to the beach. We took them.

Mostly just nice to drive around. I haven’t driven in at LEAST 77 days, so that was nice. We got on the ship, had dinner, got our parents some ok seats for Cirque Bijoux and then did our improv sets for the cruise.

It’s been a really great time having my parents on board. This morning my dad said this was a highlight of his life and he could die happy…looks like we’ve created a cruiser.