During the summer of my future junior year, my mom and dad’s twenty-fifth anniversary came up. My parents really wanted to do something special and fun to celebrate. My dad knew that the owner of the company he works for owned a condo in the Grand Cayman Islands. We all knew that traveling overseas to an island would be so much fun and sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When my dad confronted his boss about his idea, his boss instantly said that it would be no problem if we wanted to stay there. He said that we could travel there anytime that we wanted. My mom and I started researching the prices of plane tickets. The Grand Cayman Islands is a foreign country, therefore, all seven of us in my family had to get a passport to fly there.

On the morning of our departure, we woke up at three in the morning because our plane was supposed to leave around seven. When we finally made it to the Dayton International Airport, we checked our bags and boarded the plane. It took us about an hour and a half until we were descending in Atlanta, Georgia. We ate and then waited here until our next plane scheduled to fly non-stop to the Cayman Islands arrived. After being on the second plane for approximately four hours, our plane was finally landing in the Cayman Islands.

My family started rolling our luggage to the parking lot across the street where our rental van was supposed to be parked. We packed all of our bags in the back and began driving to look for the condo we would be staying in for the next week. After looking at the road ahead of us, we realized that the people here drive on the opposite side of the road that we do in the United States. With the help of our trusty MapQuest directions and my dad’s driving, we eventually and safely arrived at our condo. After everyone piled out of the van, we began to unload our luggage and roll it into the condo. When we all walked in, we were amazed by how tropical and spacious it was. Immediately after settling in, we excitedly walked to the beach. The water was a beautiful turquoise blue rolling in on the white sand. The ocean was scattered with sailboats, skidoos, and parasailers enjoying the hot, mid-afternoon sun. Instantaneously, we began thinking of activities that we wanted to try. My mom and dad had already been to the Cayman Islands with my dad’s work group, as a result, they knew some fun activities to try. One activity that they both thought was really cool was taking a boat out to Stingray City where the water was really shallow. Thus, we all thought that it would be fun to attempt this.
The place that we chose to go with had a package with reef fishing, snorkeling, and a trip to Stingray City. We scheduled a day with this agency to take part in this activity. They also had a professional photographer that was going to come along with us to take a video and pictures during our adventures. When we got there, we got on the boat and began to go out to the deep blue sea. The first thing that we did was reef fishing. It was really fun, and the people who took us on the tour knew what they were doing. They taught us how to cast the line out and know when we caught a fish. I caught my first fish in the ocean, however, I’m not sure what it was called. After we all seemed to begin to see a slight sunburn on our arms, our adventure guides decided that it was time for us to go snorkeling.
Snorkeling was awesome! You see a whole other world as soon as you put your neon goggles under the water surface. There was beautiful coral and fish down there that were really fun to watch. The water was really clear, so we were easily able to see everything that the underwater ocean had to offer us. Sam, our British photographer, captured detailed snapshots of us while we were snorkeling. Sam scuba dived with us and was able to get really cool pictures and videos of the fish and underwater ocean creatures. The guides thought that we had thought that we had better get to Stingray City before it became fairly busy.
When we arrived at Stingray City, we were all a little apprehensive of jumping into the water swarming with stingrays. I slowly dipped myself into the warm water almost instantly they began to circle me. They were so familiar and friendly with people that they come swarming right up around you. The first time that one touched me, I almost screamed because it felt so weird. Their skin was really smooth and soft, and their tails were sharp and kind of prickly. When the photographer asked us to hold and kiss one so that she could get a picture of it, I was definitely taken by surprise. I picked up the stingray and hesitated as I kissed it. I know it’s weird and I’ll never have to do it again, but I will always have a picture to prove that I did it.
As the sun was lowering in the afternoon sky, we chose to head back to the docks. After only a day, we had managed to go reef fishing, snorkeling, and to visit Stingray City. We enjoyed our ride back to the dock, and then we tiredly got into the van we rented and left to go back to our condo. A few days after our journey, we picked up our pictures and DVDs from Sam and watched them at our condo. Then, we enjoyed the rest of our vacation by relaxing, parasailing, and swimming. I will always remember our wonderful vacation to the Cayman Islands, and I hope to go back someday.