Putting on the Ritz at Stingray City
I sure can't explain how thrilled I was to hear that I had won a company-wide recognition program whose award ceremony would take place at The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman. It was a 4-day/3-night trip with one guest all expenses paid mini vacation. The best part was the awards ceremony (which was very nice and definitely humbling) was that first night and the rest of the trip was free time!
Gretchen was able to take the time off from her teaching position and we thoroughly enjoyed the trip. It was so nice to have a few days away with her and to enjoy it on beautiful Seven Mile Beach. We sunbathed, swam, ate, shopped and napped for several days on an island that had the prettiest water Gretchen had ever seen.
Yes, we did a lot of "high impact" activities for sure!! We did take a half-day excursion to see Stingray City and the North Sound Reef. We went out a big catamaran owned by Red Sail Sports and ultimately anchored at the infamous Stingray City. We had done plenty of research about this excursion and based on what you see at Google Images I made the assumption that the water would be as smooth as glass.
Well… it wasn't. We had 3+ foot waves constantly rolling in. Hey… at least there was only one other boat besides ours there so it wasn't crowded like you see in some of the pictures either. We obviously didn't let that deter us and quickly got in the water. For a bit, we just swam around and took some pictures with the disposable underwater 34mm camera. You know… actual film!!
If you do not recognize anyone from the picture above, that's ok. We don't really know these folks either, but this picture looked like it was right out of a travel brochure and I couldn't not post it. 
The waves were rough like I said and there's nothing more disturbing than being slammed into a stingray. Well, two things more disturbing. 1) Slamming into stingrays multiple times. 2) Stepping on the top of them when your foot comes back down to the sand. I guess it was worse for the stingray now that I think about it.
Here are a few photos of Gretchen and I with stingrays rested in our arms. As far as "more disturbing" things, it was also nice to have your face thrown by a wave into the wiggling tail of one of these guys that someone else is holding.
Yep, I got a heckuva tan while I was out there!! As you can guess, these photos are from them lame disposable camera, but I was glad we got one to capture some photos. These next few are snapshots underwater. You'll see we didn't get any of them framed up nice. I blame the waves, not the operator!!
The waves proved to be too much for Gretchen who got out a little early. She actually almost got hurt trying to go up the stairs and barely missed one of the catamaran's hulls from another wave's force. For me, I doubted I'd ever come back here so I stayed in the water as long as I could soaking in the experience.
Our next step was the North Sound Reef. It was clear to me the the water was pretty rough for snorkeling. After Gretchen watched the crew fish out two "big guys" (one was a firefighter) who looked like they nearly drowned, she insisted I wear an inflatable vest. I felt like a wimp putting this on, but I quickly realized it was perfect with the waves. I was able to effortlessly snorkel around and take some photos of the reef.
As I didn't do the reef justice, I'm including the YouTube video (surely not done by me!!) below to give a richer appreciation for the beauty. A highly myopic guy without his glasses using a crappy little camera yielded the pictures above. Hey, I tried!!
Back at the Ritz, we were able to get some very nice sunset pictures like these that I'll leave you with.
