Travelin' Tuesday: Grand Cayman

Grand Cayman is the largest of the three Cayman islands and contains the nation's capital of George Town which is where we anchored for our final stop on our latest cruise.

We had to tender in for this port, and due to a 12:30 excursion we were on one of the first tenders after docking at 10 am.

Our ship on the left was one of 3 in port that day

I guess we didn't need to get off the ship so early, as there wasn't much to do in the small port area other then wait for our excursion to meet up and leave.  Shopping the local crafts was our way to kill time.

Our excursion for the day was to the ever so popular stingray city.  And by popular, I mean way overcrowded because everyone and their brother seemed to be there when we finally arrived.  We waited our turn to get off the boat and have a photo opt with one of our tour leaders holding the stingray.

We took a couple more shots with the underwater camera before getting back onboard to grab some pics with my DSLR.

They felt sort of like a portobella mushroom under the fins

Here's a better visualization of how crowded it was, our excursion alone had 150 people, and there were at least 5-6 other boats of varying size at the sandbar at the same time.

The second half of our excursion included some snorkeling at the Coral Garden.  I'm not that strong of a swimmer and didn't really want to deal with the crowd again, so I stayed on board the boat while Chris checked out the coral.

While Chris snorkeled, I took in some shots of the gorgeous surroundings.

It was a great experience to be up close and personal with the stingrays, but with the crowds it's not something that I would do again.