Weekend

By Katie

Saturday morning we were supposed to get up at 6:30 to do another long ride out East but, predictably, we slept in, me much later than Scott. Around 9:00 we got up and made a big breakfast of turkey bacon, eggs, and pancakes. The pancake batter was too runny so it was actually more like thick crepes than pancakes as each pancake was about 12 inches in diameter.

We are getting really good use out of our three pans/pots, our dutch oven (not cast iron), skillet, and saucepan. The dutch oven doubles as a bowl a lot of the time as well.

Since it was too late in the morning, we couldn't go for the long ride so we opted to go to Pedro St. James, just about two miles from the college.

Pedro St. James is the birthplace of democracy in the Cayman Islands and the place where they read the proclamation freeing the slaves. We had to tiptoe around wedding preparations for a wedding taking place later on in the day (it was 7/7/07). We entered into their "theater" which was more like a stage set with three different stages with replications of the grounds. You sat in theater sets that were under tin roofs with gutters running down the sides. When you first entered, you could hear a storm inside the theater. They set it up so that the storm came closer and before the show started, "thunder and lighting" arrived, water started to pour from the gutters, and you were actually misted multiple times to feel like you were getting the spray from the rain dropping on the tin roof. The movie began by saying that the Cayman Islands have always been defined by the storms, which makes the first experience in the theater make sense. When the show started it moved between three different screens and the various stage sets that would light up when corresponding to a part of the story. It was really, really good. Both of us were definitely pleasantly surprised, a much better quality presentation than you usually see at historical sites.

The house was built by William Eden in the late 1700s when he came over from England and married a Bodden, one of the first families on the island. He built a big house at Pedro point modelled after a Jamaican plantation house. The house has 1-2 foot thick stone walls that go all the way from the bottom floor to the third floor of the house. Those walls are still standing and have lasted through multiple hurricanes, fires, storms, etc through the centuries.

The house was used as a courthouse, a jail, a meeting place, the location for the reading of public proclamations, a residence for the Edens and their descendants, a picnic ground in the early 1900s when it was abandoned, a tourist attraction(with false claims of it being a pirate castle) in the 1960s, and now a historical site (bought by the Cayman government in 1996).

In the early 1800s, the Caymanians realized that the Jamaicans, who were supposed to be governing them, were ignoring them and the British, who they were supposed to be a part of, hardly knew they existed so they decided they needed to create a government on the island. The Boddens, Edens, and Watlers got together and created a government. (The Boddens and the Watlers were the first families on the island and the Edens started with William Eden. All three of those families can still be found everywhere on the island.)

After the multimedia presentation, we toured the house. The stone is well preserved. All the wood had been destroyed in a 1877 fire so all of that is new but everything stone is original. We were limited when walking the grounds because of the wedding but we got some great cliff views down a small hiking trail, see pictures.

Today, Sunday, we decided to do a ride west instead of east and get a feel for what it is like riding towards George Town. We got started later than we wanted to, even though we woke up earlier, because we had a massive war with the ants and had to spray the house before we left.

We did about an 18 mile round trip ride today along the main road into George Town. Instead of turning up towards the airport, we rode along South Sound Road, a beautiful ride! There was definitely a lot more traffic going a lot faster than when we ride east. The road had more hills making the ride out and back just about the same difficulty, unlike when we ride East and it is climbing when we go out and downhill when we come back.

We discovered it will take us about a half hour to get to the book store two weeks from now to get Harry Potter and then about fifteen minutes to get back to the beach where we are going to read it out loud! We are excited! We are also making plans to see the movie next weekend, if we can.

Scott talked to his sister Jo and got to see his nephew Nicolas on the web cam tonight. We might have an interesting condo opportunity for rent that we will let you guys know more about as we find out more details.