National Geographic withdrawal
6 January 2008
Georgetown, Grand Cayman
Our first World Cruise port today, Georgetown, Grand Cayman and another one that is really familiar to me after having spent so much time here on my last contract. It was one of the ports where I started to feel really familiar and had gotten myself into a nice homey sort of routine. I would hit the Fort Street Supermarket for breakfast, sitting outside at one of the wooden tables under an umbrella, with a family of chickens usually pecking around my feet, looking for crumbs dropped by the diners who came and went at the tables. The chickens started out as just a rooster and a few hens but as I kept stopping by over the months there were little baby chickens that appeared, grew and disappeared. I don’t know where they came from each day or where they went after I finished breakfast but they were an important part of that familiarity for me and it was always good to see them and find out that they hadn’t gone under a car or into the chicken salad I was eating.
From the supermarket I walked to Hobbies and Books for my fortnightly fix of magazines. They have one of, if not the best, selection of magazines of any of the ports that I used to visit. The cost of them in Cayman dollars, usually a much stronger currency than the US, did make them a little more expensive than I could have gotten them from Fort Lauderdale but there was no place within easy walking distance of the port there that had the range of Hobbies and Books. It was also an important part of my routine to buy them on Grand Cayman and the prices were actually much less than I would have paid at home. The price of US magazines in Australia is horrendous, supposedly because of the cost of importing them and for a magazine junkie like me it makes it an expensive exercise.
Okay, maybe I should specify the type of magazines I buy, just in case you’re wondering. National Geographic, photography magazines, travel magazines, computer magazines…all the normal geeky type of stuff.
From Hobbies and Books I would walk to virtually the extreme end of the shopping area and the last building that held any shops before giving way to homes and gardens. Upstairs is a little coffee place called Carib Bean Coffee. I have never seen it really packed with people and sometimes I was the only one there but it was that feeling of having found a place that was exclusive and private and unknown to most that made it so attractive to me.
I would sit at a small table in the window with a view out over the harbour, open the bag holding my magazines, carefully select one, intending only to read a few pages, maybe the letters to the editor, before putting it away for reading later. I never managed to put it away. I would usually end up buying a few coffees, building up a small pile of empty sugar packets on the table, and reading large swathes of that first magazine, alternating tales of faraway places with my own view out the window of a place that was, until a short time before, a faraway dream of my own.
When we left Fort Lauderdale the day before yesterday I was looking forward to revisiting Grand Cayman, having that coffee with a view and especially looking forward to stocking up on magazines for that long journey across the Pacific, since I hadn’t been allowed off the ship in Fort Lauderdale to do it there. It wasn’t until last night that I realised today would be Sunday.
We had to wait this morning until the passengers disembarked, Grand Cayman being a tender port and moving everyone from the ship to the shore for their tours is a more involved process by tender than simply walking down the gangway. Once we were free to leave I eagerly climbed into the lifeboat/tender and settled back for the short trip. These tenders are much nicer than the ones on the Caribbean Princess. They feel roomier and had much better visibility and with the fact that we were moored closer to the dock than I had ever been before it made the trip short and sweet. I stepped onto the dock with some anticipation. Unfortunately it was for naught. Virtually the entire town was shut.
There were a few, maybe half a dozen, duty free store open but the vast majority were closed, along with many of the bars and restaurants. My first stop, the supermarket, was closed and dark and I figured if that was the case then it was highly unlikely that any other of my haunts would be open. All too true, as it turned out. The bookstore was closed and even my coffee shop was closed. A girl working in one of the few duty free places that was open told me that Grand Cayman is a very religious island and everything is closed by midnight Saturday night. Sunday is very much a day of worship. She even half jokingly said that she wouldn’t mind if her boss found religion so that she could have Sunday off too.
I wandered around for a short time, along with a few other lost looking passengers off the three ships in port. Like most places that you are used to seeing alive, active and thronging with people, it was a little sad to see it with no one home. Maybe it was my general feeling of disappointment but I succumbed to commercialism and had lunch in Jimmy Buffet’s Magarittaville. I know that I’ve said in the past that I wouldn’t, that I search out the local and the unusual, but today I didn’t and maybe it was because I realised it was probably my last visit to a Caribbean island.
I had a beer and the ribs and watched American football on TV in a large room that was virtually devoid of people. I walked out, having paid an exorbitant price, and realised exactly why I look for the local and unusual. The commercial and mass produced just doesn’t compare.
The people on the tender back to the ship were talking happily about the tours that they did but I went back magazineless and coffeeless. The next couple of ports are Spanish speaking so I don’t hold out much hope of finding the types of magazines I’m looking for in English. Luckily I have a number of books tucked away in my PDA so I still have something to read but magazines are ideal for picking up and reading in those short bursts of opportunity that are often the best I have.
I had a bit of a lump in my throat saying goodbye to Grand Cayman and probably the Caribbean as well. It’s unlikely that I’ll get back here again and I’ve really enjoyed all the time I’ve spent in this part of the world. I’d like to come back and do the islands again in more detail, really getting my teeth into parts that I haven’t seen yet. Maybe that’s an idea for a book in the future.