A week of life on Cayman.

Hi Everyone!

Let me just start with the statement that my life is amazing! This place is great. I was having second thoughts about my decision to be down here until Sunday. But all is well and I am excited about being down here and living in a different place and stoked to take off for the rest of my adventure. I am figuring out some plans and I will let you all know as soon as I can. I would also like to ask if anyone wants to come visit me down here please let me know ASAP, so I can plan accordingly! Thanks!

The apartment that I am staying is really nice. It is only a 5 minute walk from an amazing beach (see picture of Smith's Cove). I have been there pretty much everyday. I am living with 3 other people. Sarah Schmitts is working with me on the Wild turtle project and we share a room. She is my little buddy, we do everything together. Mel and Nat are working on a Sea Turtle farm. Yes that is right, a Sea Turtle farm. The Caymanians love to eat Sea Turtle so they started the farm in the 1960's to relieve hunting pressure of the wild turtles. It is really sad. I haven't been there but they tell me it is just awful. They are responsible for increasing nesting success and adding some science into their process. The poor things live a decussting life and fed dog food and live in a pool stacked on top of each other. The poor turtles have all sorts of problems.

My work schedule is really relaxed. I work 4 days a week for 4-6 hours depending on the nesting activity. And get this, I have weekends off! We break up the island into two sections the West side Monday and Thursday, and the East side Tuesday and Friday. We drive around in a truck to all the little beaches and split up the walks. It is great. I get to walk along gorgeous beaches in the morning for work. If we find activity we just remember what house/or mega hotel it is in front of and keep walking. Then once we get back to the designated meeting place we tell the corridor. Then we go back to the spot, normally through people's yards or mega hotel lobbies. We dig the nest to find the eggs and triangulate the location off of coconut trees, grass huts, pipes, walls and even no trespassing signs. It is a really relaxed job. To all that know me well, I am getting frustrated with the disorganization and the laziness of the job. For example, we will walk back to the truck and drive 200 meters down the road to other activity. Instead of just walking the 200 meters down the beach! But I keep my mouth shut and just enjoy them pointing and saying "dig here" and being a grunt laborer. Plus it is such a sweet deal to work here. I am getting free rent and got $150 shopping spree at the grocery store! So I am practicality living here for free! Also Mel and Nat have a car given to them to get to work. They don't have to pay for the car or the gas so they have been taking us to all around the island! So I am completely spoiled and all I do after work is go snorkeling and lay on the beach for 5 hours! I am starting to relax for the first time in awhile. I have been sleeping on average about 8-10 hours of sleep a night and not doing much of anything. It has been wonderful! I am starting to feel sane.

One of the corridators Janice has been super nice to us and invited us to go sailing with the Department of Enivorment Dirctor Tim and his family Sunday! Check out the pictures! It was incredible! So all four of us got a free sailing trip to this place called Stingray City. It is a sandbar north of the island where the snorkel and dive operations take people. They feed the stingray's squid so they are super friendly are abundant in numbers. I am not sure how I felt about this until I went. And I have to admit it was amazing! I of course was the first one off the boat and was greeted by 15+ stingrays all swimming up to me some of them were huge! I was really scared at first but then I realized they just wanted food and were used to swimming with people. They would just graze past you and you could touch their underbellies. All four of us just squealed and laughed and got tons pictures next to the gentle giants! One of the boats on the sand bar was blasting music and handed us some squid and we all fed the sting rays to the song Total Eclipse Of The Heart. It might be the first time that has ever happened to me or any one in history. I will try to load the video of it. Then the Captain Tim called us back to the boat and gave us a little floaty raft with a cooler of beer in it and told us to go drink on the sandbar with the stingrays. So we all had our self's a cold Red Stripe, with a floating bar, hanging out with Stingrays, on a sand bar, listening to loud dance music. It was surreal but extremely fun. We were eventually called back to the boat and started the sail back home. We continued to drink beer and talk science (my favorite!!!). One of the people on the boat was a visiting coral reef professor from Scotland. I stupidly don't remember his name. But I got the low down on the biology of the islands and got invited to got skin diving with them on Wednesdays! But it the trip wouldn't be complete without the fact that we broke down just out side of his harbor in his back yard and he had to got get a DOE boat to tow us home! It was quite the adventure!

So I am doing really well here! It is a really easy place to be and to culturally different from the US, its actually a lot like a small Florida. Most all the people here have a really good standard of living and are involved in the community. I haven't seen a lot of slums and have never once been scared or been worried about stuff being taken when I am out snorkeling. Its been really nice. In 2004 Ivan hit this place really hard, it still has a presence here and it talked about multiple times a day. Some places are still in the repair process and there is construction going on everywhere! I guess at one part of the storm the whole island was under 3 feet of water. All the agriculture was destroyed and so were the cars. So everyone drives big trucks and fancy cars. I haven't seen a shitty car yet. So I have been looking for the 700 banks on the islands and I can't seem to locate all of them. I guess they did say that only 10% were above ground! This place is super developed but you can find the cool little spots to go without the people. But no place is like the Pacific Northwest or the Arizona/New Mexico desert where you can go days with out see anyone. It is strange to come from that to an overpoplutated place like here were people are everywhere. I am learning to enjoy it.


I am goign to be going to Little Cayman in a couple of weeks so I will post another update soon if anything cool happens. Life is pretty simple here right now. Wake up play with turtles on the beach and then snorkel in the afternoons. I love it! Well I hope everyone is doing well! I will have pretty good email access for the month. Miss you all! Talk to you soon!

Mae

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