I was not highly invested in the excursion we had planned for our 3rd day of the 5 night cruise. This was the "Grand Cayman and Mangrove Forest Tour". The mangrove forest sounded intriguing, but the Grand Cayman highlights seemed dismal. I was wrong: it was abysmal.
It's ok that a little island has very little to offer, and although I thought the saltwater forest would be interesting, I wish that it hadn't been packaged with "highlights."
The "highlights" consisted of a little narrated bus tour with a guide who was just bursting with information--about fast food restaurants. Why, yes! There is a McDonalds, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and here is our Arby's! Bank buildings were pointed out (but really? did we need to see them?), and if only the man could answer some basic questions about the infrastructure or the economy. . . . One plucky tourist did keep trying, asking about how the citizens of the island got their drinking water, was there a method of desalination, but sadly, the tour guide was clueless, about this, or the economy in general on the island. Ah, well. . . I guess that's what google and wikipedia are for.
Our tour guide did not let us down, though, when it came to clever wit and repartee in pointing out that there is a street named "Hell". He managed to work this into about 15 sentences.
We even got to stop at a souvenir shop in "Hell" where we could buy postcards if we wanted. Most everyone passed, and sat this one out:
2 comments:
Too funny! I think you must have had the same tour guide from our trip! We were there about 8-10 years ago, and we were taken to the Turtle Farm, and we visited Hell. I must say, though, that the visit to the rum cake factory was pretty wonderful! We bought a lot of souvenir rum cakes there to bring back - and then later in the cruise we noticed that the gift shops on the ship sold the very same rum cakes! We could have spared ourselves the inconvenience of having to schlep those boxes during our excursion. Oh, well, part of the experience, I suppose.
Well, I guess I will add to the stories. Bob and I visited there on a cruise in about 94. We didn't tour any of these places and it sounds like we didn't miss much. We sat on the beach all day and had a nice lunch. Bob found a shell with a conch and one of the native people asked if he could have the conch. Angela, I am so glad you had the chance to get away to someplace warm.
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