Cayman Adventure: Carnival, Cooking and the Courts

Another day, another dollar, or so the saying goes...

Yes, in the past two weeks Barn has been settling in to work and Bon has been settling in to the house and setting up home. We've also been exploring more of the island and getting to know a few more people and places.

A couple of Saturdays ago we went to the Cayman Islands Brewery to drop off some empty bottles for recycling, and ended up coming away with a pair of tickets to an event they were running...

Yes, it was carnival day and courtesy of the Cayman Brewery we attended a party at the Clubhouse for the Cayman Carnival BATABANO, which is a salute to Cayman's turtling heritage.

They have a huge parade down seven mile beach and lots of companies have floats and wear colourful costumes in celebration.

It's not quite the Rio Carnival, but it was very colourful and a lot of fun. It also brings the island together, and is even something of a spectator sport - some of the people we came across were very well prepared.

Some costumes gave Bon great inspiration for Ascot next year.....

Others.... not so much.

But we do need to get prepared for Pirate's Week in November so we both got into the spirit.

Even Granny got involved.

We continued the celebrations into the early hours and Barn thought it would be a good idea to walk the 4 miles home. In flip flops. Needless to say we made it over an hour later but probably won't be repeating the experience for a while. We also provided a great evening snack for many of the passing mosquitoes on the way....

While Barn has been at work, inspired by some of the fantastic dishes we have sampled so far, Bon has been occupying herself by trying to cook local dishes such as sweet potato soup, goat curry, jerk chicken, beef stew and a hugely fiddly Jamaican dish called Callaloo. It's a veggie dish like spinach and very healthy. But it starts off life looking like this;

And eventually, after a huge amount of peeling, washing, shredding, chopping and stewing it ends up looking like this.

The main excitement in the past two weeks has been Barn's admission to practice as an Attorney-at-law in the Cayman Islands. Unlike the admission procedure in the UK, here in the Cayman Islands they take things a little more seriously. Rather than just signing a few forms and submitting them to the law society, here you are summoned to the courts, where you are then presented by one of the partners to a judge as being a fit and proper person. The judge will consider your 'case' and then rule on whether or not to admit you.

There were three Lawyers (including Barn) due to be 'sworn in', so we went down to the Courts for the morning.

This pretty square in George Town is called Hero's Square and it's a memorial to the heritage, people and bravery of the Cayman people.

Inside the courts, all three chaps were ushered into the court room to appear before the judge. The proud LaWAGs sat at the back ready with the cameras.

Once new friends had been made Bon spent a day doing this;

And joined the National Gallery and looked at the exhibitions there. It's a beautiful modern building with huge light spaces inside. There is a local art area and a temporary exhibition space. They have family fun days on a Saturday morning and run art courses most weekday evenings, abstract, live drawing to name but two. Bon has even signed up for one of the live drawing classes they run, so look out for some efforts in the coming weeks!

After a day at the beach, Bon came home to find this waiting for her...

Yes - customs have eventually cleared our goods. There are still a few left to be delivered, but the majority of our things out of the warehouse and in our living room!
Barn was incredibly please to have his bike and erg back and celebrated with a victory lap round the local area. He came back grinning like a cheshire cat so I assumed he had fun!

As a reward, we treated ourselves to a sundowner, while watching the sun go down over the harbour.

On Saturday we visited the National Museum on the Harbour front in George Town. It tells you all about the local indigenous species of animals, how people came to live in Cayman and what life here is like. The building itself has a rich history of being a courthouse, gaol house, school, church, entertainment hall, refuge and home.

It even gives details of the big hurricanes throughout history - partly disconcerting, but partly encouraging that the island has continued to survive through all of this;

On Sunday we had a wonderful lunch at Morgan's Harbour with our new friends and then had a few drinks Harbour side in George Town. Bon found a new favourite drink in the cocktail Cayman Lemonade, whose side effects may include blurred vision, wobbly legs and a bedtime of about 8.30pm