John down under: Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico and Barbados

The Caribbean

After I was done in Cuba the trip went to Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico and Barbados! A lot of beaches, diving, old forts, not some many pirates as I hoped, and I did not meet Rihanna!

Cayman Islands

So I had no really made so much research when I bought the plane tickets for Cayman Islands, I needed them so I could get in to Cuba. I had looked briefly for accommodation and saw that they had a fairly priced hostel there. Fast forward to when I'm actually in the immigration queue and it says on the immigration form: Where are you staying? So I look up the hostel again online and it looks kinda shitty, but you know, it's cheap, so I write the name down. One of the reviews said the following though Don't write this name down or you will get stopped in immigration, yeah, the hostel is that shitty apparently. And lo and behold the lady in behind the counter asked, are you going to stay there? I'm like: Yep! She's like: nope! I'll keep your passport here, go and talk to that lady she will sort you out with another place to stay. Apparently the hostel hadn't passed some governmental inspection and taxis would not even drive you there.... Oh, the pictures also looked like they were taken from inside a horror hostel. Anyhow, I get to the counter and there is a girl there with the exact same problem, and she has already gotten a price of a 100dollars a night... Cayman Islands is not backpacker friendly like that. Anyhow, I introduced myself and ask if we can share the apartment and split the bill, Clea as here name is is damn cool and agrees to this (thank you!) so we end up in quite a nice apartment with a king size bed and a sleeping couch, and we even got it cheaper than first advertised, 40 bucks a night each. Still, on a backpacker budget, ouch.

We head out for a bar that evening and we meet some American guys there down for a bachelor party, and we start chatting, and they say they are going scuba diving and ask if I wanna join in. Of course, that's why I am here! (You could tick off diving as one of the reasons to enter Cayman Islands) really not that much else to do on the Cayman Islands, jewelry shops, cruise ships and restaurants, or have your offshore account I guess :)

Anyhow, what I did not know was that these four guys had chartered the whole diving boat for the whole day. We started off with two dives, went for lunch, went snorkeling, and then went to Stingray City where the Stingrays are like cats/puppies or whatever, playful and they brush up against you and you can pick them up!

So again, just a lot of diving pictures basically, have a look!

A huge ass lobster out on a stroll, I usually only see them hiding in between rocks, like the one below!

Seaslug/snail something!

A punk fish!

A coral forest close to the surface, quite beautiful :)

And here, Stingray City, this was awesome!

Hello?

So we had to watch our step when we were there so we didn't step on them, they camouflage themselves in the sand.

Check out the video!

Also one funny story, while I was standing around filming I suddenly hear: Floater! from one of the guys, and yup, there it was in all it's glory, a human poo surfing by in waist deep water, a proper log So yeah, here it is in all its glory.

Some local animals, cocks and lizards.

Quite the beautiful views in Cayman!

Puerto Rico

Next on the list was Puerto Rico, one of the reasons why I wanted to go there was because I own a boardgame called Puerto Rico which is one of my all time favourites, so I thought, why not while in the neighborhood, I'm am a huge nerd. I only spent time in San Juan here, so I explored the town, old town and the forts!

Oh, I also met a total weirdo from Texas here, I meet him in the hostel and before I even say hi he asks me if I got any weed. When I see him the next day in the kitchen he is pressing a spoon to his face, he is trying to burn a tattoo off his face with a spoon he had heated on the stove. Apparently he had done this before, next time I see him he is carrying around a bag of ice, tattoo still there. He is mentioned in a conversation with the hostel owner, really cool guy btw (I mixed up the dates and got there one day to early during the night, so I called him at 0300 and hi I'm here where are you? Uhm, you are not supposed to arrive until tomorrow, anyhow he comes over gets me accommodated and doesn't charge me for the night!), and he says he found the same guy passed/drugged out on the concrete the previous night with groceries bag in both hands, so god knows what he is on. Later on I hear that the police came looking for a guy, because a pickup truck was stolen and parked outside the hostel, big surprise the Texan was gone with the wind. However the next day he returns and starts rifling through the trashcan in the kitchen and throwing the trash everywhere, I ask him what's up and he says he lost his ID card and could not get off the islands (did he throw it away in the trash? I do not know). He promptly leaves without cleaning up after himself. Douchebag.

The main fort.

Drawings made by prisoners.

The previous house of the governor, wonder where he/she is staying now.

Living quarters/barracks.

This is the hill you needed to get up if you wanted to attack the fort by land, you would get shot to pieces.

A local graveyard.

The view from the fort into town.

On the small island there, you can maybe see another small fort, it had cannons as well so you could get ships into a deadly cross fire.

Cannon batteries.

Apparently there lives a huge nerd here as well, a Modern Warfare 3 customized car.

Barbados

Next on the list was Barbados, there there weren't any hostels that I could find, so I ended up booking a room through airbnb, and I got to stay with a local artist called Winslow, what a cool guy, he showed me Bridgetown, the "red light district", local bars, and some other parts of the island, really nice guy! So what did I do here? Well, wandering around and exploring as usual! Barbados is if I remember correctly populated with 97% blacks, so when I went past some guys on the street they just said: Yo white dude! Hahah, I replied hi! I met a native white dude there while diving, it's so weird to hear the Barbados accent on a white dude. Anyhow, onwards to more important things, diving! Here the we (not me) dove with spears so we could kill/catch Lion fish, and sell them to restaurants, also, just go get rid of them since they basically eat everything and destroys the reefs. So we killed them and fed them to the Moray Eels.

Spear fishing!

Feeding the Moray Eels

A catch/kill

SOme really huge crabs here as well.

Pipe (might not be the actual name) fish in holes on the sandy bottom!

A cool fish with "wings" that spread out when it feels threatened so I might have scared it a little.

Water snake.

It is difficult to see, but here is a Moray eel doing a death knot on a Lion fish to kill it.

Haha yeah, I also got a new family when diving here, this small school of fish followed me fore several minutes while diving, just circling me, check out the video below!