Day 10 Farewell Little Cayman……Crystal Caves and bioluminescence tours

Our CCMI departure day arrived and by 6.45 am the boys were all breakfasted and packed off into the CCMI minibus to go to the Little Cayman airport. Before the girls had even managed to get to the 7 am breakfast they had returned! The 2 staff at Little Cayman airport had told them that they were “very sorry, however, there would be no flights departing Little Cayman today due to a fault on the plane”. After a split second of delight flashing through all of our minds we suddenly realised that we would miss the rest of our itinerary back on Grand Cayman if we could not leave the island!

Fortunately, the Little Cayman community are experts in dealing with these sorts of situations and soon the Little Cayman Beach Resort had offered to take us (and the 2 other passengers due to fly off the island today) to Cayman Brac. At 10 am the CCMI staff bundled us all into the minibuses and the luggage into their pick-up truck and drove us over to catch the boat. We had rather heavy-hearts as we waved good-bye to Sam, Miriam and Katie from CCMI, and as Little Cayman became ever more distant I’m sure that we all felt that we were leaving a piece of our hearts on that beautiful little island. We had a 40-minute journey over the sea to Cayman Brac and then were swiftly transferred over to the Cayman Brac airport to check in and immediately board the flight (which was waiting for us!).

The common room at CCMI where many card games were played. Here the group are waiting to hear how and when we would leave the island!

Thirty minutes later we touched down in Grand Cayman. Once again Emma Drake kindly met us there, and after picking up the ‘Merrick Mobile’ and the ‘Chicken Chariot’ (our minibuses) we made a very speedy stop at a cafe to buy sandwiches; dropped our luggage at the hotel; then headed out for the hour’s drive across the island to the Crystal Caves (who had allowed us to rearrange a later tour time due to the travel problems!).

Our hugely entertaining tour guide, Robert, (it seems to be the Caymanian way!) explained that the caves had been created around 95-60,000 years ago and are made up of mainly calcium carbonate deposits creating the stalactites and stalagmites. Robert pointed out the parts of the caves that looked like faces, elephants, skulls, coconut palms and encouraged us to find other structures and point them out to him (like looking for shapes and faces in clouds). One of the caves housed a lake, the rain water takes a whole week to filter down and drip into the lake. This cave had special lighting installed so Robert could switch from highlighting the calcium on the surface, or showed the reflection of the stalactites on the surface of the water (see photo). Robert also showed us the fruit bats on the ceiling of the caves, one of whom kindly decorated Mr Merrick's T-shirt!

Next stop was dinner at Kaibo, a restaurant in the stunning location on the beach at Rum Point, where we were given the use of the VIP Cabana and were served coconut water from freshly cut coconut - impressively cut using a machete knife by our super-waiter Fabio.

Once we had all filled up on delicious pizza, burgers, wraps and salads we had a quick group photo before heading to meet our guides Mark and Spencer (yes, they really were Mark and Spencer!) for our bioluminescence tour. After a quick briefing we set out on our 2-person kayaks in the dark with just the flashing red light of the tour guide to follow. Just a 10-minute paddle and we were soon sitting on the calm waters at the mouth of the bay. Spencer asked us to look at the stars and pointed out Jupiter and the constellation of Scorpio, the darker it got the more clearly we could see the Milky Way (something we had been gazing at from CCMI as there was so little light pollution!). We then paddled further into the bay and gradually noticed twinkling in the water and then we could see that our paddle strokes were creating a stream of light – simply stunning. Spencer told us many little tricks to create different displays of the bioluminescence, for example, scoping the water with your hand, holding the hand up and letting it dribble down the forearm creating the illusion of twinkling veins on the arms. That particular bay in Grand Cayman is one of only 6 sites in the world that has this display of bioluminescence on a daily basis, and we were told that we were seeing it at its most spectacular (some days are better than others). The bioluminescence is created by chemicals in the phytoplankton. During the day the light gives the phytoplankton the energy to store, when it gets disturbed (both during the dark and light) it emits the light as a defence mechanism, but we only notice this in the dark. There are sadly no photographs of this trip as it was dark and the glow does not create good images, so phones and cameras had been left safely on the shore. I have no doubt that any of us will ever forget the experience it was simply stunning.

After an hour’s drive back we reached the hotel at about 10 pm and were pleased to be able to have a shower (we got rather wet on our kayak tour) and then fall into bed for a good night’s sleep……