Grand Cayman Part 1 -Brittany Brock Photography, Grand Cayman Photographer

Keith and I try to take birthday trips every year. I turned 30 last September, and Keith turned 30 in March, so we set off for our 3rd trip to Grand Cayman! This time our friends Morgan and Vannah came with us. We met them while diving in Ft. Lauderdale and we were so lucky to become fast friends with them! Grand Cayman is one of the most beautiful places on the planet (for a scuba-diver!) The shore diving is pretty easy. Just a short swim out and you are on a reef!

Photographing sunsets from the water with my “big camera” is one of my favorite things to do on vacation! These were both taken from an evening dive at Cobalt Coast – note – this was our favorite reef and the farthest swim. I’m talking “muscle cramps, call the coast guard to rescue me-it’s too hot-my face is burning-i think i’m dying-no way will I ever do this again” swims! – We did it at least 5 more times, complaining just makes me feel alive! The swim out was so worth it!

The second day in Grand Cayman we saw turtles all over the place… and my strobes failed. When you’re 100ft. deep you just literally “go with the flow.” I shot the turtles anyway. You lose color underwater so not having working strobes was a huge disappointment, but a bad day of underwater photography still beats a good day in any office! This first turtle was on a night dive, lit with video lights. The second was about 80 ft. deep in the middle of the day.  Big. Ugly. Grouper… At least the strobes were working here! This was shot at Sunset House as were the squid pictured below!Last year my favorite part of our trip was visiting stingray city on a sunset catamaran cruise. I had awesome over/under shots. It was calm and beautiful. This year I had an elaborate plan to photograph our friends kissing underwater surrounded by stingrays. Awesome, right. Well, it would have been, except it was totally choppy. I nearly drowned 10 times from being over my head with a camera and no fins on. The visibility stunk! 10 minuted in we ditched my idea and just had fun. There were only 6-8 of us in the water, I think most people were a little freaked out that the stingrays are pretty much snuggling you! The first picture is a stingray mouth, it was suctioned to the dome port on my camera housing. I had rays all over me. Keith had been cleaning lionfish so he was basically the stingray whisperer. He had 4-5 stingrays trying to hug him at any given moment. I tried feeding the stingrays some squid this year and wound up nearly getting my hand taken off. I had a stingray hickey for about two weeks. Those things can suck a conch out of its shell, imagine what it can do to your hand! Cell phone shots! The day we arrived Keith and I had several bags… it was borderline embarrassing. A dive suitcase for each of us, the pelican case for my underwater housing. A suit case of clothes. All my camera equipment…Morgan and Vannah brought 2 bags. Total. Vannah and I barely fit in the backseat and we had to ride with luggage all over us!

This is from our favorite spot in Grand Cayman, Macabuca Beach Bar. The restaurant sits right on top of Turtle Reef. The food is so good and so is the diving!  Terrible shot, but proof we dove the Kittiwake! Some of our mermaid loot pictures below. Live shelling is prohibited unless you’re a Cayman citizen and then you can take live conch. I think I took 1000 cell phone pics, but I’ll limit it to these 5.Our favorite reef to dive is the big wall at Cobalt Coast Resort! We stayed around the 100ft range, but you’re staring down a wall that drops off into 4000 ft. depth. It’s breathtaking!  Every time we dove we saw turtles, eels and the guys slayed lion-fish. Because these invasive fish our such a problem the resort encourages spearing them and then they will weigh and buy the fish from you and serve them up fresh for dinner! In Florida you can spear lionfish with no worries, but in Grand Cayman spearfishing is illegal except for lionfish. Even then you have to take a certification course and the spears themselves are regulated by the Department of Environment. The bartender at this resort was one of my favorite people we met in Grand Cayman! Collin kept us in absolute stitches with his dive stories. Everything is funnier with an Scottish accent! On our last day in Grand Cayman, which was Keith’s actual birthday, we had chartered a private boat. We woke up to gusty winds and a cancelled charter. By total chance, Vannah wanted to go back to the Guy Harvey store for a t-shirt she had eyed earlier in the trip. While she was upstairs looking in the gallery she “saw a guy throw his keys on Guy Harvey’s desk.” She came and told me and we rushed upstairs just in time to meet Guy Harvey himself! We wound up with signed visors and t-shirts and Keith got a signed birthday print. I don’t care much for celebrities, I’m more about personal heroes – Guy’s massive support for ocean conservation puts him pretty high up on our list! If you’re traveling to Grand Cayman anytime soon I’m happy to be your tour guide! We had so much fun while we were there and can’t wait to go back next year!