Travel with Christin

After a good nights sleep from the day before we wake up to see beautiful Grand Cayman. There are no docks for cruise ships inGrand Cayman, so they must anchor offshore and use tender boats to get everyone ashore. Typically, at least with Carnival, unless you have an excursion booked through Carnival or are Diamond or Platinum you have to pick up a ticket number to get your place in line for a tender boat. They are usually running two tender boats at a time so the process doesn’t take long. Being Platinum on Carnival we meet at our designated meeting point on the ship and are one of the first tenders to take the trip ashore.

To get on the tender boat you make your way down to deck zero where you typically debark, at least in the Carribean. It’s a fast process and once they fill the tender it is off you go. It is typically about a ten minute ride from the ship to shore but I sped up the video, but you still get the idea on how the process goes.

Once ashore we make our way out of the port area to Captain Marvin’s where we booked our excursion. We have used them before but since we had the boys this time we did the same excursion so they could experience the fun. Our excursion consisted of snorkeling at Coral Gardens, going to Stringray City and another snorkeling stop. They do provide snorkeling gear if needed but we always take our own.

Once at Captain Marvin’s we get checked in and wait for time to leave on their bus to take us to the dock. The bus ride left at 9:11 and we arrived at the dock at 9:23, so a much nicer and shorter ride then the day before. The boys were very thankful. Once onboard we waited for the rest of the groups to arrive and then we set sail to head to Coral Gardens, which was our first snorkeling stop. We departed the dock in 15 short minutes we were anchoring at Coral Gardens to snorkel for 30 minutes.

Once back onboard it’s a quick less then 5 minute travel to Stringray City. Stringray City is a sandbar out in the ocean where Stringrays congregate as they are fed in this spot everyday all day from different tours and individuals with their own boats. We would spend almost an hour at this stop so everyone could get to feed the Stringrays and of course get a kiss which is good luck.

Back onboard we prepare for our next and last stop more snorkeling. This snorkeling stop doesn’t have as much fish as Coral Gardens but I did manage to find some pretty coral and a parrotfish. The water is a little more choppy at this location, but was a little nicer as not everyone got in the water and I didn’t have to deal with people who can’t snorkel. Nothing like getting kicked in the face with a fin. The travel time to our stop was only 10 minutes and we would have 30 minutes to enjoy the water.

After snorkeling it was time to head back to shore. Travel time from the last stop to shore was 25 minutes, which was nice and relaxing. Once ashore it was a quick ride back to port to catch a tender back to the ship. The line for a tender boat was a little long when we arrived and did have to wait around 20 minutes to catch a tender. Everyone had a great time. Next up is our relaxing beach day in Cozumel, Mexico.