A lazy vacation for an active traveler

I’m a huge proponent of active vacations. By that I mean vacations in which I have every day jam packed with activities and sightseeing adventures. Lying around on the beach, sipping mudslides and lazing the days away is not an appealing use of vacation time for me.

However, with the right company, at the right point in the year, at a time when one ::ahem, I, ahem:: is feeling quite burned out from life, a vacation spent doing relatively nothing can be just what one needs.

The view from our room's balcony

Eating fresh-cut coconut jelly

My boyfriend and I just got back from a lazy week in Grand Cayman, where I mostly slept for practically 12 hours every night, drank pure coconut water, lounged around the pool and played Scrabble. True, part of me thought, what’s the point of spending the money on a flight (the hotel stay was a gift from my Dad) to do basically what I can do at home? But it’s not the same. Vacations bring on a different mindset, proved even truer by the fact that as soon as I landed in NYC, I immediately fell back into my pattern of worrying about everything. Yes, most of the things I did during my week away were things I could have done from my own living room, but at least my mind had a weeklong break that obviously was very necessary.

Stingrays flocked to the ship, knowing there was chow

Don’t worry; we did do things that we only could do in our destination. On the fifth day of our trip we partook in a Stingray City and snorkeling adventure organized by the concierge of our resort. My boyfriend very bravely conquered his fear of the ocean and we stood in the Caribbean together as stingrays gracefully floated around us, brushing their silky underbellies against our legs as they scented the squid being held out for them by the other people surrounding us.

I also overcame my discomfort with snorkeling after a terrifying incident my first time in Jamaica where I got stuck on the reef and scraped up my knees before finally wriggling out into open waters. This experience was much better and I saw some cool fish at the edge of the reef (though I was still a bit too panicky to go in much further).

Gazebo in the Gardens

A sign at Rum Point

On the last day before leaving we rented a car and, driving on the wrong side of the road, explored the entire island — in five hours. As you can imagine, on an island that it takes pretty much 2 hours to circle (we made a couple of stops on our exploration), there isn’t all that much to do EXCEPT lay around and soak up the sun. We did trek through the stunning Queen Elizabeth II Botanical Gardens and spotted the native blue iguana. We also ate turtle and conch steak, both of which were quite yummy. But other than that, it was a much-needed, fully relaxing vacation.

Overall, I concluded that unless you’re someone who enjoys a weeklong beach vacation (which I usually don’t) or are an avid diver, I would say that Grand Cayman is much better as a cruise destination where you get dropped off for a day, explore the town (which mostly is duty-free shopping outlets), maybe do a Stingray City excursion for a couple of hours and then return to your sailing resort and continue on to the next spot.

To see all of my Grand Cayman photos, click here.