Island tour and shopping

[be_cruzan]

We tendered here, along with 5 other cruise ships! What a sight to see! When we got off the tender, it was a bit chaotic, so stick close to your friends or family. We decided to do our own thing at this port of call, as we were exiting the “pier”, as usual, the locals will be asking you if you want to take a tour. We hadn’t decided on what we were doing because we all wanted to do different things and we did find a tour for $20USD that gave us a mini island tour, well just of the west end. One frustrating thing is that you have to wait until they find enough people in order to get their tour going, I think we ended up with 11people, so we waited for around 15-20min before we actually left. Along the way we stopped but not to get out, at the Governor’s house, the Old homestead and then we arrived in Hell! A very small place and we stayed for about 15 min. Here you can mail postcards, I think my friend paid $0.25 to mail to Canada. They also have a couple of gift shops where you can buy postcards “I’ve been to Hell and back” and just behind the post office it the infamous Hell rocks. These rocks are a bit creepy; it just felt like Satan himself was going to jump out at you! Definitely a site to see! After that we headed to the Tortuga Rum Cake Factory-sort of, it’s a gift shop/ liquor store (we had been to one in Nassau, and there you actually watch the people make the cakes, this was just a store) From there we went across the street to the Turtle Farm, here you have the option of either purchasing a ticket to go into the turtle farm or look around at the shops, I think it was $8USD to go in. I chose to do some shopping while my friends went in. We had 30mins here, so not a lot of time but enough. There were only a few shops to browse through-The Caymans are expensive, I’d have to say the most expensive port I’ve been to. After we were done here, our tour guide asked us if we wanted to be dropped off anywhere along the way, and we wanted to go to the beach so she dropped us off at Calico Jacks, a free beach. We spent about an hour or so here, collecting seashells and what not. We took the local “bus” back to the pier, now it’s not what you think, it’s a van but we only paid $2.50USD, there was a shuttle you could take back at the beach and he was charging $5USD and went down to $4USD but we decided to take the “bus” and we also met some fellow cruisers. Best Deal Ever: we found a gift shop that had FREE Internet and phone for visitors. I was able to phone home (to Canada) and send out an email at no cost! I can’t exactly remember where this shop was but I do remember that if you are getting off the pier it was to your right (head south) maybe a block or two away and on the right side of the street (if your heading east).