Swimming with Stingrays

Last week, my friend Vicky (another crew member on the Valor) organized for us both to go swimming with Stingrays on Grand Cayman Island. This is one of the popular shore excursions on the island, though it has been less popular in the last few months because of the death of a certain high profile Australian! It was my first time off the ship at Grand Cayman island, so it was a really nice way to get out and explore a little. Probably the most amazing thing about the island is how clear the water is. This is really a part of the world worth visiting. Even though the island is fairly built up, the beaches and water are so clean and beautiful.

The shopping centre across from the Pier had a few interesting extra attractions, too – a cage of iguanas and some parrots flying around the centre.

We took a short boat ride out to the stingray sandbar and were briefed on how to pat the stingrays. I was expecting them to be quite small – there were some at the Long Beach Aquarium that you could pat and I thought these would be similar. I must admit I was a bit surprised when I saw how big they are.

We did get in and swim with them and pat them – they are pretty tame and there are always handlers around to look after them. I held one and even kissed it – apparently it’s 7 years of good luck! This is Vicky in the water with one of the stingrays...

All in all, it was a pretty amazing experience!

We also visited Roatan Island, Honduras last week. Apparently there are monkeys here and I am looking forward to doing one of the tours through the jungle!