Swimming with the Stingrays

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Geo: 19.3086, -81.2521

We arrived at Grand Cayman around 9:00 this morning with an all ashore time at 9:30. Today we had booked an excursion not from the cruise line. Our tour was with Captain Bryan’s to take a Catamaran to Stingray City and snorkeling. Originally we were booked on a tour at noon but it had been changed to 1 pm due to cruise ship arrival times.

We got off the ship at about 10:30 and looked to find a place to eat and decided on Dairy Queen (because there wasn’t many other choices near the cruise terminal).

Then we went to meet up with Captain Bryan’s. We were informed that due to the weather, they were not taking the cruise out and it had been cancelled. They arranged for us to go with a different company to do the same excursion.

After being bused to a dock on the bay on the other side of the island, we took a boat to Stingray City. It is a sandbar about 30 minutes out in the ocean that is covered with stingrays. They were everywhere.

We were able to hold one, kiss it and have it give us a massage. Nikki and the girls got back in the boat but I stayed in the water and had the opportunity to feed one of them.

Then we moved on to a reef about 15 minutes away where we snorkeled for about 30 minutes before heading back to the dock and back to the ship.

After returning to the ship, we got ready to go to dinner. We had Palo reservations and headed up there. Ashley was our server again. He has just returned from his vacation. Dinner was great and we had a great table by the window where we could watch the fireworks from Pirates Night. We were told that the fireworks are only 90 seconds long because that is all the Coast Guard will allow because the fireworks look very similar to distress flairs and they don’t want confusion.

After dinner we went to play Theme Park Trivia in the Promenade.We were all beat so we headed back to the room to decompress and get ready for bed.

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