Misery in Paradise

Grand Cayman is gorgeous. Mrs. SFC B described it as Phoenix and Plymouth having a love child. And she's not far off. The buildings look like a combination of Colonial design with a Southwest color scheme. It's beautiful. I'd have loved to spend the day just cruising the streets and checking out the flavor.

Unfortunatly we didn't do that.

We attempted to kayak and snorkel.

To be fair, I really enjoyed myself while we were snorkleing. Apparently Grand Cayman has some of the nicest snorkeling areas in the world. I believe that. We were surrounded by a cast of extras from Finding Nemo, and the water was like a cool bath. It was heavenly. Too bad we had to ruin it by kayaking.

The misery was entirely mine, and of my own creation. When the tour group Mrs. SFC B and I were in hit the beach with the kayaks we attempted to row ourselves to the snorkeling portion. It failed. Terribly. Mrs. SFC B and I could never find anything vaguely resembling a rythym. And for the split second times when we'd both look like we might have, either I was rowing too hard, or she was rowing too soft. If we were trying to execute that zig-zag ships would do when trying to evade U-Boats in WWII, we were nearly perfect. However there wasn't a torpedo in the water to be found. It took us twice the time, and four times the effort, of the other pairs to make it to the beach.

This left me tired and frustrated. The snorkeling made up for it though.

Heavenly. Simply heavenly. Used the underwater camera and hopefully I'll add pictures from it when they're developed and ready.

The kayak back to the starting point was even worse. Anything you'd have thought we'd have learned on our trip out was never learned. About the only thing we did right was keep the thing afloat, and I think I came close to jacking that up a couple of times.

I was tired, frustrated, and now unpleasant to be around. We wound up just rowing to the shore and I proceeded to walk a half mile through surf to bring the kayak back to the starting point. I was already left with a series of blisters on my hands, a sore back and shoulders from the over-exertion while rowing. Now my quads are on fire from, basically, walking through three to four feet of water for half a mile, and having the soles of my feet cut up from the shells and coral fragments on that area of the shore. I was also a bit dehydrated and sun-burned from head to toe.

Had I tried to design the single most miserable cruise excursion I could have, which I'd have still been foolish enough to attempt, it would have looked an awful lot like what I did today. There is a reason people strove to invent an easier way to get across water. Because using manual power to do so sucks, and sucks terribly. Mrs. SFC B had kayaked on Costa Maya last year and loved it. She loved it so much that she got a brochure which showcased a kayak dealer in the Phoenix area. All the people in that magazine were smiling, happy people. I'm going to find those people and kick them in the shins.

Kayaking: I'm against it.