Turtle Farm, Cayman Islands

The second part of our excursion in Grand Cayman was a visit to the turtle farm across the road from dolphin discovery.  This part of the excursion was at our own pace.  Due to the extra long drive, we didn't get as much time at the turtle farm as we were supposed to have, but honestly, we didn't even need any more time.  

Basically we just walked around and read the informational signs.  At one point we got to hold baby sea turtles if we chose to, which I did.  There was another point where you could step in the water with them, but we chose not to do that.  It was a nice end to our excursion but I probably wouldn't go again unless we did the excursion where we get to swim with the turtles.

Dolphin Discovery, Grand Cayman

This was the excursion I was looking forward to most on our cruise.  I wanted to do a dolphin swim on our last cruise but it just didn't work out.  When they were announcing the excursions that would be canceled due to the high winds, I was literally holding my breath.  Luckily, ours was one of the few that didn't get canceled and it ended up being a beautiful day.

We did the dolphin push, pull, and swim which meant that we got to swim with and interact with the dolphins.  I am not even exaggerating when I say this was one of the coolest experiences ever, especially as someone who has loved dolphins for pretty much my whole life.  Josh was a little apprehensive about this at first but was so glad I made him do it.  Our tour was through Dolphin Discovery which is a large organization which has sites all through the Caribbean.  I can not say enough about the amazing people who work there.  The girl we started with gave us a little background about dolphins and a little information about what we would be doing.  She also talked about things we can do to lessen pollution in the oceans.  The guy that we were with while doing our swim and interaction was also fantastic.  He was very patient and great at explaining what we needed to do. I can't remember our dolphins name because it was really weird but she was one of the alpha females and had been with that trainer for 8 years!  She was such a sweetheart and so fun and playful.

Josh and I had so much fun and were actually the only ones to get her to do the bogey board push on the first try, which was awesome.  At the end the trainer told us to splash her a bit to play with her and she came back and splashed all of us, and he did some tricks with her.  Again, I can not even tell you how great this experience was!  I highly recommend doing it, especially at a dolphin discovery property.

There was a turtle farm next door that was included in the excursion but I will talk more about that on Friday.

(All dolphin photos are professional.  I think it was a great deal.  We got a disk of all of the photos, a USB of all of the photos and 4 printed photos for $99 which was way less then I was prepared to pay). 

Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Our first stop on our Honeymoon cruise was to Grand Cayman.  I was mostly excited for this day because I would get to swim with dolphins!  This is the only day that the weather didn't cooperate and instead of tendering into Georgetown, we had to  go to the other side of the island and dock in Spots Bay because the winds in Georgetown made tendering unsafe.  

Unfortunately, this meant that instead of a 10 minute drive to our excursion, we had a 40 minute drive, and unfortunately there was nothing in Spots Bay so we couldn't do any wandering.  We just did our excursion and went right back on the ship and took a nap.  Most of the photos I am sharing with you today (because the excursion will be it's own post) are from while we were waiting for the bus to take us back to the ship.  Most of these were taken out back of the dolphin excursion place.  Some were taken at Spots Bay before we got on the tender boat. 

Fortunately, the cruise we are going on next year stops in Grand Cayman, so we have a chance to explore Georgetown next September, so it's almost like we're going to a different place which is great because two of the three stops we're going to next year, we've already been to.  Also, we did get to see more of the island this way.  I have a thing against taking photos of peoples homes and living conditions, so you wont see photos from the drive.  The Caymans are known for having lots of money but the locals still live in poverty for the most part, unfortunately.

All of the previous photos are from behind the dolphin place and all of the following are from Spots Bay.  The last ones are the view from our balcony.