2017-12-26: Stingrays and Dolphins in Georgetown, Grand Cayman

Happy Boxing Day! We arrived in Georgetown, Grand Cayman today. They don’t pay property or income taxes on Grand Cayman. They have a population of around 70,000 people. There are over 500 banks on the islands.

We didn’t arrive until 10:30am this morning. We woke up and had some breakfast while the ship pulled into the bay. We were anchored off shore. There were five other cruise ships in port as well. We had booked the “Stingray City and Dolphin Encounter” tour for the day.

We headed to the D Lounge and checked in for our tour at 10:15am. Shortly afterwards, we were following one of the ship staff members down to our tender and headed to shore. Once on shore, we lined up for our tour under a big tent. After a few minutes, we were taken to a bus which took us on a half hour drive to a place called Dolphin Cove. Dolphin Cove has 10 dolphins in residence that they have trained.

We were scheduled to visit Stingray City first so after grabbing a snack at the concession, we boarded a boat from the dock at Dolphin Cove. The boat ride to Stingray City was about another half an hour. It’s a shallow area in the middle of nowhere where the stingrays like to congregate. There were about a dozen boats already there when we arrived an a sea of people. It was windy so there were some waves we had to contend with. The water was supposed to be waist to chest level, but with the waves it was coming up to our necks. Michael and Patrick had to swim.

The guides would dive down and pick up a stingray which we could then touch, hold, and kiss. They took pictures of us with the stingrays. Other stingrays were swimming around us. They warned us not to jump around, kick our feet, or step backwards in case we hit a stingray with our feet. These stingrays are wild so they still have their stingers. They are very calm though and don’t attack humans. The wind was blowing in some seaweed and the guides saw some jellyfish amoung the seaweed. Not wanting anyone to get stung by the jellyfish, we were called back onto the boat and returned to Dolphin Cove.

Once back on land, we were fitted in life jackets and headed onto platforms in the water. We met the dolphin handler and our dolphin. The dolphin’s name was Nemo. We were given the opportunity to touch, swim, and dance with Nemo. Nemo also did a few tricks for us. They took a bunch of photos of us with Nemo in various poses.

We got out of the water and perused through the gift shop for a few minutes. They had screens where you could view the photos they took at Stingray City and Dolphin Cove. They pictures were really cool, but the pricing was outrageous. The charge by the person which is really weird. For one photo, it was $35 per person. Since there were six of us, it was $210 for one photo. If we wanted all the photos, it was $50 per person or $300. As much as we would have like to purchase a photo, that picing was too much for us. Of course, they don’t let you bring your own camera to take photos so we have no photos of the dolphins which is very disappointing.

We hopped on the bus and headed back to the port. There are wild chickens on the island and we saw a few of them walking around along the way. Once back at port, we visited a couple of the shops where Amanda bought some rum cake and the kids each got a t-shirt and a stingray stuffed animal.

We headed back on board the ship and started getting ready for dinner while the ship pulled away from Georgetown. We had dinner in the Royal Court this evening. Royal Court is a traditional dining room. It has paintings of various Disney princesses throughout the dining room. It was a very good dinner tonight with escargots, french onion soup, and chateaubriand. The kids had fish sticks and fries.

After dinner, the kids went to the kids club for about an hour while Darrell and Amanda chilled out in the room. Then we all went up on deck and played a round of mini golf before returning to the room and calling it a night.