Grand Cayman Vacation, Day 6

Friday, January 27th

Plan for today is to stay in the center of the island. The Mastic Trail has original old growth forest and is about 2 miles long. Across from the trailhead is the Queen Elizabeth Botanic Park. Should we take them in together? Too easy. Mastic trail in the morning with Miles and Jonah, and Botanic Park in the afternoon with Miles, Ruth and Isaac. Remarkably different experiences, but both really highlights of the week for me.

Mastic trail starts in a mangrove swamp, and it had rained quite a bit the day before and the night before that. Even though the really worst parts are covered with a few boardwalks, the normal pace on the trail is about half a mile an hour. So, we went about 1.2 miles in, turned around and came back out.

Time to walk across some swamp

More swamp

Mastic trees are camouflagey - if asked what color the bark is and you put down only one color, you would be wrong.Miles is next to an old Mastic tree.

Giant Mastic Tree

Not sure what this is, but it's a very old

Red birch trees

Young mastic trees

Back to the condo, lunch, and swapped children.  Jonah stayed home, and Ruth and Isaac came along.

The Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park was very different than the Mastic Trail, all manicured and beautiful (orchids alas not in bloom in December). There we saw our only Grand Cayman Parrot. In a cage.

Lush beautiful grounds. Don't know the names of anything, sorry.

Tranquil grounds. Well, maybe except the kids were a little less enthusiastic than we were.

Royal Palm rises above the trellis.

There were also blue iguanas, but I'm saving them for a different blog post. Much time was left for relaxing on the beach, reading in a hammock, walking to the point the other side of the yacht club. Friday night, for Shabbat we had special food for dinner - spaghetti and cheese ravioli. A little wine. Pumpkin pie for dessert (ice cream with a melted chocolate bar topping for me).