May 13th

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The weather is changing, but we still managed to do 2 snorkels, as we count down to the day of our leaving, Tuesday.

In fact, it cleared up to be a very sunny day.

First stop: Spotts’ Beach, to see “just” 2 turtles and our old friend the stingray without a full tail. Then to Eden Rock for our last visit. We bought shirts there and said goodbye to Mario, the man who works all the time. It was incredibly still. Nothing special was seen, just lots of lovelies.

We stopped at Hurleys on the way back, sending David in to get the special rock cakes we had ordered. Then lunch at home. Then an interesting visit to Pedro St. James, a very historical house – redone to be like the original built in the 1700s by Mr. Eden (as in Eden Rock). And a quick visit to the local Fosters, where we were indeed able to buy some more “Bulla Cakes,” the Jamaican staple. It was too early to eat supper, especially as we hadn’t had lunch till 2 pm, so we poked around the island a bit – including finding Her Majesty’s prison! We had decided to go to a local restaurant that advertised coconut fish on Fridays – looking forward to it all week – only to find out they didn’t have it. Just jerk chicken. What!?

But it all turned out well because we returned to the Czech Inn and enjoyed red snapper and the best garlic potatoes anywhere. Boy was he busy! Which we like seeing. We are going to have to give him a huge bunch of stars on Trip Adviser.

We are wondering what the change in weather will do for us – whatever, it will be a good day.

Now, an education about sargassum. About 4 days ago we returned home and boy did it smell fishy. And the next day too. And we noticed more of the brown crinkly stuff floating in the water near the shore. Well, evidently that’s sargassum, and it’s arriving in Florida and the Caribbean Islands in record tonnage this season. Usually it swirls around in the Sargasso “Sea” in the middle of the Atlantic – evidently there are some fish that live only there, it’s so big! The good news is that the smell is completely gone, and we are back to having only a little bit of it floating here and there. It’s a full moon tonight – must be a month since we were in Arizona and missing the chance to see the very black sky.

It happens to be a holiday weekend – Monday is a national holiday – so we don’t know what that means for restaurants and shops. That may explain the larger than usual traffic in early afternoon. There is a vintage car show if we want. Yesterday and today we noticed that the Caymanian flags were half-mast – evidently their oldest citizen just died at 106 years of age!

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