Our 2005 Biking Cruise

Page 2

The tall guy is Ritchie. He's holding "Morning Muster". We all gathered on deck 4 (The Lobby) and Richie would call the roll and give us the "Plan of the Day". Notice the "Coastal Cruisers Bike Club" tee shirt. There were about 40 bikers in our group. Usually 30 to 35 people biked each day.

On Grand Cayman we brought our bikes ashore on a tender. This is Marianne getting help from one of the courteous crew members

All our bikes were stacked on a tender and delivered to the dock for customs check. We checked in and out at each port. I guess they didn't want us selling our bikes to the locals "duty free".

Here is a map of Grand Cayman. We landed in near Georgetown and biked "To Hell and Back" via the Turtle Farm. There was a lot of traffic on the roads and they drove on the left. (This is a British Colony.) Somehow we all survived! Georgetown is a lot like St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands: Lots of shopping for gems, crystal, watches, and other duty free stuff. Also, they speak English.


This is "Hell". Yes, there is a town named "Hell". It's an obligatory Grand Cayman destination like the "Wall Drugs" in Montana. It is named for a nearby limestone formation that looks like hell!

We visited "The Turtle Farm". There was a huge enclosed pool filled with large breeding Green Sea Turtles (up to 5' long). As soon as they lay eggs, the staff digs them up and takes them in their hatchery. This picture was taken at feeding time. There was a frenzy to get the gumball size pieces of floating food.


This lady (you can tell by the short tail) is a couple of years old and is ready for release on one of the Cayman beaches. In 17 years she will return to that same beach to lay her eggs and, hopefully, maintain the population.


We stopped at Smith Cove for lunch, a dip, and a snorkle dive. The snorkeling was just OK. The coral was a little beat up, but there were fish to see

The guy on the right is Jim. He's our "Cruise Clown". THe gal on the left is a local iguana. Both of them will kiss anything.



This is the queue to get the tender back to the ship after our 20 mile bike ride. The lines were long, but they went fast as each tender could hold over 100 people. The cruise line deserves a lot of credit for their "crowd control". We never felt that the waits were long for any activities: Meals, port embarkation and debarkation, etc.. The only lines that were long and slow were those when we got on and off the ship in Miami.


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