. March 2016 .
Bonjour!
Welcome to March 2016, or what was March 2016. It was a pretty busy month by all accounts. After sitting around doing not much for the last few months, March was pretty hectic for us.
Michelle popped over to London for work, then we all headed south...after going north.
All will be explained!
And then there was some swimming, some diving and even a little bit of touring about!
Read on!
London.
As mentioned earlier, Michelle popped over to London for a week in early March.
It'd been a long time since she'd been there so she tried to make some time to have a bit of a look around. It was a beautiful clear day when she arrived so she wandered across the road to Hyde Park to get some fresh (quite fresh too!) air and enjoy the lake, statues and monuments (including the NZ and Australian war memorials at the Wellington Arch. She didn't have a lot of spare time but managed to go for a couple of runs on two lovely clear mornings - one around Green Park, St James Park and Buckingham Palace, and the other a lap around the outside of Hyde Park - both times freezing her face and ears off and ending up with very numb fingers. She also managed to catch up with a couple of friends, and squeeze in as a little sight seeing and shopping between appointments.
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| View from Hotel room! |
The great thing about travelling for work is that you get decent digs to stay in - her hotel was in a good location in Park Lane, right on the corner of Hyde Park - it had an awesome bar on the 28th floor and around the corner was a whole lot of boutique restaurants and bars, as well as the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia (hence all the flash cars in the area).
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| London, at night |
She caught up with "Coach Marie" Shepheard who used to coach the kids here in Cayman before moving back to London last year. She took Michelle to the famous Punch and Judy Pub in Covent Garden - a cool pub in a really neat cobble-stoned area. They had a great time catching up. Unfortunately, there's no photo of Marie as she was behind the camera!
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| Gotta be a fake tan... in London! |
This "statue" guy was pretty cool - how does he do that?
She also caught up with Sheena (McIntyre), who used to work at Carriganes in Johnsonville, Wellington. Carriganes was the kid's daycare centre when they were little! They had a a good old natter over dinner and later in a couple of different bars - so much to catch up on! Sorry - no picture of Sheena either!
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| New car! Nowhere to put the parking tickets. |
On her last night one of the guys from work took her out on the town in Leicester Square. They did a bit of sightseeing and she stopped every few minutes to take yet another photo), then went to a stand up comedy show which was awesome, and finished the evening with dinner at a cool Tapas restaurant, where they charge you by the stick (each plate of food that you choose has a stick in it)!
Fancy coming across this place!
Leicester Square
Meanwhile...
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| Meanwhile, back in Cayman, Dave celebrated his birthday with the kids and a few folk at the Beach, wearing his new Ironman shirt that Jake got him (not sure what happened to the rest of the suit)! |
There was also another mate's birthday - at the Wharf.
Martinique
A week after Michelle returned, we all headed north...because we were heading South. But to go south from here, you have to go North to Miami, and then head back South again.
The kids had both made the Cayman Islands CARIFTA swim team so they joined the team on the Friday morning and headed to Miami where they did a pool session, had a team dinner and then stayed the night before heading South on the direct flight to Martinique.
We picked up their trail on Saturday morning and headed to Miami, and then onto San Juan (Puerto Rico) where they caught a smaller plane for the final leg to Martinique.
Bit of a trek, but it all seemed to work OK at the time.
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| The San Juan bridge/motorway thingy - hadn't seen that since we were in BVI! |
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| Some low-level flying, but we made it to Martinique! |
Finally...welcome to Martinique!
WTF! (make up what ever words you like here, and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday probably aren't them).
Anyway, after that encouraging news we headed off to collect the rental car and find our Hotel. The kids were all staying in the 'Athletes' Village about 40 mins in the other direction. The Hotel was closer to the City. Driving a manual Right-hand drive at night in a french country was an experience to behold. Michelle was driving and Dave was beholding his seat! We are still waiting for the credit card to show the speeding fines...we were flashed a couple of times, and not in a good way. The bag actually arrived on Monday night...but wouldn't be available for collection until Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the kids were sleeping, eating, sleeping, swimming, eating and traveling back and forth from the pool as they prepared for the meet which would start on Tuesday.
So we'll do the swim meet stuff first, and then follow up with our account of Martinique.
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| Team Cayman! |
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| The Newbies/Rookies (first-timers) |
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| Cayman 15 - 17 year old Girls. |
The girls came so close to medalling in the relays.
Given that two of them aren't really sprinters, it was very impressive.
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| la Piscine! |
The pool and complex was brand new, purpose built for the Carifta meet. It was only finished about a month or two before the meet and no-one had been allowed to swim in it!
The kids traveled 40 minutes by Bus to and from the pool every day for the morning sessions, and then a rest at the hotel before returning for the evening sessions. Given that some of the evening sessions didn't finish until around 10 pm or so, and then they had to eat, there were some tired swimmers about by the end of the week.
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| Jake...first Carifta start coming up... |
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| And he's off! |
Jake did well in his first Carifta. There was some big competition. Jake said one of the guys he was swimming against (11 - 12 y/o) had a mustache!
But Jake made a few finals, which is no mean feat.
One of his finals he took off at the start, and led for most of the race, only to be overhauled by the bigger swimmers towards the end. It was a respectable fourth though!
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| Plenty of Support in the stands |
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| The team kit |
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| Relay time! |
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| Jake wearing his Chick-magnet gear, with his roomy, Jordan. |
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| In the pool-side team tent with the coaches |
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| Jake and Cory - on the dais! |
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| In the 200 IM |
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| Jake, being introduced to the crowd on the big screen. When the kids made finals, they were introduced on the big screen - after walking through the Diamond Rock curtain (more on that rock later) |
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| Relaxing, pre-event |
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| Sam's up and ready |
Sam had 'aged-up' this year, so was up against the big girls (15 - 17 y/o).
She also swam well, putting in some good times and leading their relay team from the front.
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| Sam and Lauren |
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| Some animated support now for Cayman! |
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| Sam flying |
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| Supporters look to the clock to get the times |
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| Sam 'n Ella |
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| 3/4's of the relay team! |
Little Miss Cheeky!
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| Catching up with friends |
Here's Sam's leg of the 4 x 50 Free Relay. She's in the far lane.
Hanging out at the Sea swim - the girl in the green won the 13-14 age group in the open water and many of her events in the pool - an amazing wee swimmer
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| Sam 'n Ella (say it fast) |
So the Cayman Team Came away with about 15 medals from the meet, which was apparently better than expected, given many of the team had aged up (like Sam). Sam and Jake didn't medal, but both performed admirably.
Maybe next year!
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| Some of the support crew during a quiet moment |
Le Plongee
So, while the kids were doing their pre-meet thing, we booked in for a dive (Plongee) with a local dive crew. After a little bit of unintentional touring about we found the place, kitted up and off we went on their little boat.
It was a pretty cool dive, with some fish and things that we don't see very often in Cayman. The colour of the coral was amazing and the fish were huge! The water was nice and clear but the current was a bit challenging at times.
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| And we came across this MONSTER crab. it was huge! It's nippers were bigger than Dave's hands! |
The dive guide spotted a Puffer Fish go under a rock and he was pointing out where it went. When we looked we saw this massive crab. When we pointed it out, he nearly packed himself. It looked big enough to rip off a limb!
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| Another wriggly critter |
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| Can you spot the girl in this picture? |
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| Busy little place |
After the dive we enjoyed the traditional French post-dive Punch de Planter (Rum punch), before doing some sightseeing enroute back to the hotel.
Le Plongee Deux
We had a spare couple of hours one other day between sessions so decided to get another dive in. This time it was a shore dive from our hotel. We didn't expect too much, but we were pleasantly surprised.
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| A Frog Fish (ironic really, given where we were) |
Right under the dock where we jumped in there was some quite cool coral and sponge, and we thought it odd that the dive master pulled some sponge off the pole, until he showed us that it was actually a fish - a frog fish!
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| Drum! And relatively slow moving as well! |
We headed out to a couple of wrecks and got to swim through one of them - it was a bit more challenging than in Cayman as the tanks were a lot heavier than we were used to so struggled to remain steady and horizontal at times. Certainly didn't need any weights!
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| Tourists |
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| Lots of fish about! |
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| Two more buddies hanging out |
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| This is under a wreck. Full of Lobster and Shrimp! |
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| More Frog Fish |
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| This one decided to cuddle up in Dave's BCD. They aren't great swimmers. |
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| A snake - although the Dive guy reckoned they don't have snakes |
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| Little Puffer |
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| The latest trend in Dive flags/markers - the good old wine cask bladder |
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| Drums everywhere! |
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| Shrimp |
And again, after the dive, we were presented with the Punch de Planter!
Tour de Martinique!
So, back to us. Our Hotel was on the beach just north of Fort de France, the Capital. It was somewhere between 12 and 40 minutes from the pool - depending on traffic (and the desired number of speeding tickets).
Nice views!
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| Hotel pool (although we didn't get in it!) |
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| View from room - can't complain really! In fact, this is just half the view. The balcony was huge! |
The swim meet sessions went from about 9 am to about 12 each day, with the finals in the evening from about 5.30-10pm. That gave us free afternoons to go and explore the island.
One day was the diving.
Another day we headed across to the other coast to check out that side. We drove around the Caravel Peninsula which had some lovely beaches and a National Park area where you could go on hikes.
We found an old Sugar/Rum plantation which was now a tourist attraction.
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| Some resident crabs living in the mud. |
We also cruised around and found a few cool little spots.
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| Michelle: Hey look, that church has a big cock on it. Dave: What!!??? .........Oh...I see.... Coq. |
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| This is Diamond Rock - the one they used at the swim meet for the curtain when swimmers name's were announced. We had hoped to dive here, as apparently you can go under it (partly, I am assuming) but the timing didn't work. |
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| A cool memorial for some slaves that drowned when their ship sunk... they were still shackled to the hull when the ship went down.. This is close to Diamond Rock. |
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| Down town Fort de France - lots of one way streets, so we had a few navigational issues trying to get out of there! |
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| "The" Fort de France |
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| Martinique's answer to the Pink Pussycat |
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| The Schoelcher Library - amazing inside and out. Apparently it was built for the Paris Exhibition of 1889, then dismantled and shipped to Martinique in pieces. Some very old books in there! |
Another day we went to the Clement Rhum Distillery. A friend of ours who was down with us at the swimming is in the industry and arranged a private tour, which was pretty cool. There was something for everyone there - lovely gardens with sculptures and a lake, an old Creole homestead that has been restored and you could look right through it, an old rum distillery, rum storage houses, an art gallery and of course, rum tasting - loads of things to keep us busy for the afternoon.
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| They had lots of sculptures on their estate - it was popular with the local art students |
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| The Rhum was popular too. |
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| The estate homestead |
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| Not a bad picture really! (see the display case in the background of the pic below) |
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| As you can see, the tasting would take a while... ...and yes, we did go to the end. |
So after a tour of the estate, the distillery and the art gallery, they set us loose in the tasting room. It's gotta be said that this Rhum is a little harsher than what we were used to. It was a little like whisky really. Although after we'd gone through a few, revisited a few others and then progressed through a few more, things were looking up!
Michelle left Matt and Dave to that while she went and took some pictures of the sculptures.
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| By the cask! For the discerning rhum connoisseur |
It probably doesn't need to be said that support for the Cayman swimmers was a little more vocal from a small section of the group after this particular afternoon.
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| Some of the coastline to the North |
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| The country is either covered by Bananas or Sugar cane. Sugar for the Rhum, and Bananas for export. Bananas in the supermarket were pretty cheap! |
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| The Volcano (Mt Pelee) that erupted in 1902. Of the 2000 inhabitants of the town that got wiped out by the eruption, there was one sole survivor...and he was in jail. Who said crime doesn't pay! In total, about 30,000 people lost their lives. |
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| I think we are being watched |
So, another successful visit to somewhere new!
And guess what?
We arrived back in Cayman on Sunday morning (after an overnight in Miami). We had time to unpack, then head out to our friend's place for the annual "Easter at the Galways" which is always a big affair. Food, Friends, Fun! We don't often get to go as we are usually away at Easter. But this year we made it!
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| Post-food... |
Last but not least!
The day after returning from Martinique, we had Skyler arrive from Vancouver.
Then, soon enough, Sami arrives (from around the corner), Jake moves out for a few days (to hang out with his mate Derek - Sami's brother).
The three girls hung out for the last week of the school holidays. Plenty of beach time, boat time and sleeping time! They had a blast! Now they're planning their next catch-up...
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| Trouble (x3) |
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| At Spott's |
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| Sneaking in to one of the local hotels |
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| Some cool clouds at the beach |
So, that's it for March!
Not sure what's going on in April!
We'll let you know!
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