Month: October 2015

Another catch up blog…

One of the required work activities for new hires is a Scavenger Hunt.  I don’t know who came up with this list, but they are devious, wicked and they were probably snickering when they heard we had our hunt day.

So a bit about Grand Cayman.  It is comprised of five districts.  George Town, which is the main city and the area which most tourists are familiar with, West Bay – which is another pretty well known location due to Hell and the Turtle Farm being in that area.  Bodden Town lies just east of George Town, beyond that is East End.  Last is North Side, also familiar to some tourists due to the Rum Point club being located there.

Armed with maps, guide books, a radio, cell phones and our lists of places to find, Candi and I loaded up and headed out to find things like The Liar’s Tree, Spott’s Jetty, Mostyn’s Esso, the South Sound Rugby Club, Welly’s Cool Spot and Wreck of the Ten Sails Monument (just to name a few).  Some of the places would be easy to find, The Turtle Farm, different police substations, Pedro St. James…  Then there were some places that even locals had never heard of.

So off we went.  We decided to start in the West Bay district.  We would work our way south from there, then to the east and hit the northern district last.  There was a distinct reason for this.  I wanted to be on the north side of the island with a clear view of the west to get pictures of the sunset while relaxing in a hammock.  My plan, however, had to be altered.  More on that later.

West Bay isn’t that big of an area.  Downtown Brunswick is larger.  However when you aren’t familiar with the area, it is possible to spend 2 hours trying to find obscure landmarks.  The rule of the scavenger hunt was that we had to talk to locals for directions and take pictures at each location.  I won’t post every picture, but I’ll give a decent showing of some of the places we went.  I only wish I had also gotten a picture of Junior, the very nice crackhead who gave us directions to the Liar’s Tree.

George Town was the only district that we missed a location and that was due to road construction.  We also had to return to George Town after going to the North Side because we were originally missing two places from our first run through.  Our savior for that area was Denise Bodden, a lady who works in the Visitor Bureau.

Bodden Town was easy to locate our places from because we had already ridden through the area the weekend prior to the hunt.  We just didn’t know at that time what we would eventually be looking for.

If I could chose any district on the island to live in, it would be East End.  It’s gorgeous, things are more spread apart.  It’s not a terrible ride and the commute wouldn’t be terrible for the hours I will be working on shift.  I’m trying to find something in that neck of the woods.  Thanks to a helpful person and Google, we were able to locate everything.  Oh!  And we found the prettiest beach on the island.  I can see myself spending a lot of time there.

I plan on exploring the North Side a bit more tomorrow as I will be going to the Botanic Garden to do some photography and walking about.  This will also be a good place to bring visitors when y’all come see me.

We had to circle back around and hit a few more spots, but this was another favorite place of mine, Spott’s Jetty.

And after 8 hours we managed to locate all but one place.  8 hours on a 22 mile long island.  It was a very long but fun day.

Tropical Regards,

Tori

Moving Day – Catch up blog #1

I’ve made it through the first two weeks here. There have been ups and downs during the short amount of time I’ve been here. Brutal honesty here at victoriainvictorialand. I’ve been tempted to return to Brunswick a few times since I’ve made this move. Not that I know what I would do. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be welcomed back to the 911 center and I don’t think I could bring myself to go back there. But I do miss the familiarity of home. I miss my family and other various loved ones. I made this commitment though and I am going to stick with it.

Let’s go through a run down of things that have occurred over the past two weeks. I’m going to break them down into different posts, however.

I moved out of the comfort of the hotel into a house in which I’m renting a room from a co-worker, Roberta. It’s nice. Three bedrooms, two baths. Roberta, Candi and I live here. Candi is renting the other spare room that Roberta had available. The day that we moved in was a bit…challenging… We arrived at the house and it was 92 degrees because the air was off, so we turned on the AC and waited. And waited. And waited. It took about 12 hours for the temperature to drop to 84 degrees. The air had been off because Roberta was out of the country for several weeks. She’d only been in the house for a day before she left on vacation and was returning the evening we moved into the house. During her absence, the landlord had the water turned off and locked because someone was stealing it from the outside hose. So we had no water for around 24 hours. Thankfully Erika, another co-worker who had been helping us out with moving and such went and picked up some bottled water for us. Oh, and since it was Sunday when we moved, I wasn’t even able to go to a grocery store since they’re closed on Sundays. I was hot, sweaty, unable to shower AND I had the hangries.

So, long story short, moving day was brutal.