Happy Caymanniversary!

Today is my Caymanniversary! It is one year to the day since I landed in the Cayman Islands on 27 May 2016. 

My favourite spot on island - Smiths

Taking a break from paddle boarding

My morning commute

Gal pals at brunch

Aside from working in a job that I LOVE and that affords me both exciting and interesting work AND a good work/life balance, in the past 12 months I have been lucky enough to:

(a)   spend inordinate amounts of time on Seven Mile Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world;

(b)   frequently swim with tropical fish, turtles and stingrays;

(c)   sail the high seas (aka, 200 metres from shore) on numerous occasions like a pirate aboard the Jolly Roger;

(d)   on average, go on at least one boat party a month for someone’s birthday/arrival/departure/because we feel like it;

(e)   make countless new friends (some of whom even work outside of the accounting and legal fields!);

(f)    play huge amounts of sport – netball, touch football, tennis, Gaelic football, beach volleyball;

(g)   visit Cuba, the Bahamas and the USA (and Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney); and

(h)   parade down the street in feathers for carnival and a pirate outfit for Pirate's week.

Doing justice

Cuba

My fab Gaelic team

Boat trip to Kaibo 

In the interests of full disclosure and providing a balanced picture of life on the Rock, I have also:

(a)   failed (well, not really tried that hard) to remedy the tragic state of my love life (small pond, few fish);

(b)   been mauled by mosquitos more often that I care to remember;

(c)   sweated excessively in extreme heat and humidity (not in a light, glowing way, more in a drippy and awkward way);

(d)   consumed more cocktails than my hips and liver would like;

(e) dodged wild chickens, iguanas and crabs on a regular basis;

(f)   had heart palpitations when I’ve seen my grocery bill at Kirk’s or my monthly electricity bill (US$200 to $400 per month). 

Drink receptacle Cayman style

A day in hell

Standard breakfast views

Wild chickens to avoid at supermarket

Obviously packing up my life and moving by myself to a place I had never seen in person and where I didn't know anybody was a big, scary decision. But it was nowhere near as scary as the idea of where I would be now if I hadn’t taken the leap and I'm so glad that I did. It is definitely hard to live so far away from my family, on a remote little island in the Caribbean, but 365 days in to Cayman life, I figure it's not a bad place to spend a few years :) 

Cheers to Island life!

Cayman CARNIVAL!

One of the things I have been looking forward to most since I arrived on Island is CARNIVAL! I missed it by just two weeks last year so have had to wait for eleven and a half months to find out what all the fuss is about. And it was SO worth it.

If I had to describe Cayman carnival in one sentence it would be: a culturally sanctioned glittery and feathered street party slash orgy that has more in common with Mardi Gras than the Christian organisers would like to admit (fewer gays, same amount of glitter). 

History of Carnival 

Carnival season is big across the whole Caribbean and apparently began as a pre-Lenten tradition (the word "carnival" is thought to mean farewell to meat – thank God that tradition died, no jerk chicken or Burger Shack for 40 days?!?) brought over by European settlers and their accompanying slaves in the 1700s. The first carnival was apparently in Trinidad and Tobago and by all accounts, their carnival remains the biggest and best (something else to add to the every-growing to do list). 

The Cayman Islands carnival is positively youthful by comparison to some as it is only 34 years old (full disclosure - I have a vested interest in maintaining that early 30s is youthful), compared to, say, the Bahamian carnival which kicked off some time in the 1800s. Each country’s carnival has its own twist based on the local culture, such as salsa dancing in Antigua, calypso in Dominica and soca in Cayman. The Cayman carnival is traditionally called “Batabano” which refers to the tracks left in the sand by sea turtles when they crawl onto the beach to nest. While there may be deep cultural reasons for this comparison, I'm pretty sure it's because you feel like a beached turtle by the end of the day and leave a trail of feathers and glitter in your wake. 

The Parade
Several months ago, when I was thousands of miles away in Hong Kong and had plenty of time in which I was positive I could procure myself a runway model-esqe body, I agreed to participate in CayMAS and spent an unexpectedly large amount of money on a VERY small bejewelled bikini and inordinate quantum of feathers. 

"Oh crap, now I have to go outside dressed like this"

Fast forward several months to mid-May and I was staring down the barrel of CayMAS, having forgotten to give up carbs several months before, with only time left to fit in one salad and one hot yoga class in the hopes of sweating off 10kg in one hit, plus a last minute spray tan to camouflage everything else. Before I knew it, I found myself wearing my teeny weeny bejewelled bikini, more feathers than a wild Caymanian chicken and a ridiculous amount of glitter last Saturday morning, surrounded by several hundred of my closest scantily clad friends.  

From midday we started to gather in town, meeting our fellow paraders. I feel like you make a special bond with people you meet for the first time in your underwear. Needless to say I have many new, very close, friends. Once the parade started, it wound its way up West Bay road to finish at Public Beach, which is at the northern end of Seven Mile Beach and was the location for the evening after party on the beach. We literally walked (and danced / skipped / gyrated / grinded / sweated) 5 to 6 miles over the course of about 6 hours. I used ab and quad muscles to dance that I don’t think I’ve ever activated before and that reminded me of that fact for days later. In true Caymanian fashion, I also ran into many people I knew along the side of the road such that there can honestly be no more secrets between us. They have seen ALL of me.

Practicing our moves beforehand - I realise I look like I'm about to lay an egg
so for the sake of spectators, I promise I kept grinding moves to a minimum

Each “band” has its own truck with a bar on board and we all got water bottles for drink refills along the way. Procuring a drink in the course of the parade turned out to be the hardest part of the entire experience (though not without its reward). As the truck ranged from being stationery, to stop-starting, to swiftly moving along, once you pushed your way through the line of people to grab on to the bars on the side of the truck, you had to keep pace with it and hand up your bottle to the guys on board without (a) stepping on the heels of the people in front of you, (b) being trampled by the people behind you, and (c) without dropping the water bottle to be run over by the ever-advancing wheels of the truck (I managed two out of three and ended up going through two water bottles). If, however, you were able to master this daring feat of athleticism and grace, you were rewarded with the strongest drink you’ve ever had in your life, containing free poured rum (someone counted and the pours lasted up to 12 seconds) and mixer. Welcome to partying, Caribbean style. 

Drama at the Carnival

This year was the first year that Cayman carnival split over two weekends. The traditional Batabano remained on the first weekend in May, while a new carnival took place a week later - CayMAS. Alas this is not because they wanted to extend the party, but rather because there was a dramatic and acrimonious split between the organisers (if you think politics is divisive where you live, you haven’t seen Cayman politics - it's ridic). 

While the traditional contingent wanted to keep the carnival as it was, the more “progressive” groups wanted to move Batabano to the second weekend in May as (a) it would no longer clash with the Bahamian carnival and could therefore draw more tourism (b) the second weekend is a long weekend so allows for more events and higher turnout and (c) something else about modernising that I forget now and didn’t care that much about at the time anyway. The result was that of the 10 or so “bands” (i.e. floats) that usually participate in Batabano, 4 or 5 of them broke off and started CayMAS. Drama, drama, drama. There was even a lone woman on the side of the road holding a sign saying "One Cayman, One Batabano". 

 

I chose to participate in CayMAS over Batabano for complex cultural reasons because my friend told me to. But HER reasoning was that the biggest and best “band” to jump with, called Swanky International, had defected to CayMAS. I'm all about being surrounded by a big crowd when I'm in my underwear....

Carnival Reflections
One of the best things about carnival is the number and variety of people participating - literally all shapes, sizes and colours. A lot of people commented to me (including the logical, left side of my own brain) before the event that I was crazy to voluntarily waltz down the street in a string bikini. I entirely agree of course, but that didn’t stop me doing it! I could always have waited until I have the perfect body – until I’m skinny enough, toned enough, tanned enough, but let's be honest, I would be wasting years of my life on the sidelines waiting to reach a goal that will likely always be just beyond my fingertips. So I went ahead and did it with the body I've got anyway and goddamn it was fun :) 

The Dark (i.e. stinging) Side of the Cayman Islands

Well folks I have finally encountered the dark side of the Caribbean isle I now call home. It turns out it’s not all pina coladas, sunshine, white sand and crystal blue water (to be fair, it’s still mostly that).  

I was naively oblivious to the evil lurking beneath the calm waters of the island until recently, when I was surprised, nay ravaged, by the linuche unguiculata aka Thimble Jellyfish larvae. Locally known (rather unimaginatively) as “sea itch”.

A thimble jellyfish, unlike a teacup
pig eating ice cream,  is not cute

Now, adding “thimble” to the start of the Jellyfish name I suspect was a devious attempt to make these little buggers sound cute – much like “teacup” pigs - but do not be fooled – these invisible little bastards are far from it. As it turns out, the larvae contain the same nematocysts (stinging cells) as their jellyfish parents, which they fire off when they come into contact with things, namely me.


These teeny tiny weapons of evil float around the Caribbean sea in clouds or “blooms” (again, just because you name it after a flower, doesn't make it pleasant) and are most prevalent along Caribbean coastlines in April and May. Apparently a Bahamian old wives tale warns against ocean swimming between Mothers Day and Fathers Day. Would have been nice information to have before I went swimming in the Caribbean in late April! 

Seaweed in Grand Cayman?! I should have known
there was evil afoot.....

It seems they are also commonly found around seaweed. And so it was that one Sunday afternoon I headed to the beach for a sunset swim with friends. We marvelled at the seaweed on the sand (noting that I don't think I’ve ever seen seaweed in the water in Cayman before – normally it’s pure white sand and crystal clear water for days - yes, feel free to hate me - you'll enjoy the karmic justice of this story if you keep reading) not knowing the evil that it concealed beneath the surface. 

After the first swim, I felt an itching and mildly stinging sensation around my bikini top. No worries, I thought, I’ll go back in and rinse off whatever it is. This was my first mistake. It turns out, the larvae get stuck in between swimmers and skin and when that happens, they fire off stingers. As you can't see them, the first warning you get is the initial mild itchiness. The best course of action at this time is leaving the water. Not, as it turns out, going back in for round two. 

Do you know what makes it worse? Rubbing the material. Know what I did? Rubbed the material. Do you knoww what also makes it worse and sets off more stingers? Rinsing in fresh water. Guess what I did immediately after the swim? Went home and jumped in the shower. And so it was that I spent a week covered in stinging, itchy red welts. You could literally make out the line of my bikini top by the red markings and my skin resembled the surface of planet Mars - red, hot and inhospitable to man. 

While this photo is taken from the
internet, my suffering is not dissimilar

And just when you think I'm at the end of my sorry tale, let me impart one additional pearl of wisdom to my Caribbean-based friends: If you do have the misfortune to get stung, I would HIGHLY recommend that you wash your swimmers in boiling water, set fire to them or throw them into the fiery pit of a live volcano in order to kill the stingers before you put them back on again. Should you fail to take this basic but necessary precautionary step, you may well find that when you put the swimmers back on and go back in the water a week later.....the bastards have survived and it happens all over again. 

Caribbean swimmers beware....

Pirates Week in Paradise

When the prospect of going to Hong Kong for a few months for work was first suggested to me, my first, panicked response to the Partner was "But...that means I'll miss Pirates Week..."

While he didn't seem to think this was a valid reason to turn down the secondment, I don't think he fully appreciates the amazingness that is Pirates Week in the Cayman Islands (then again, maybe he does but didn't know how to explain it to our international colleagues).

Thanks to a few cheeky sacrifices to the Cracken and some minor visa processing delays, I was lucky enough to catch the first half of Pirates Week 2016 and firmly believe it is one of the most hilarious and amazing "cultural" festivals on the planet. Here's why....


It does what it says on the tin

Everyone keeps asking me, "what's this pirates week you're talking about" and I never know how to answer because Pirates Week basically does what it says. People dress up, act and party like pirates for a week. But those who have not lived it simply can't understand how a place can possibly have an entire week-long festival dedicated to piracy. Well my friends, welcome to the Cayman Islands. And it's not just a week - it's 10 whole days!

The week starts with a party on Thursday night, followed by fireworks and a street party on Friday night. The pirates land in the harbour on Saturday followed by a big parade and night party, then there's a swim of some sort and kids activities on Sunday. Then the next weekend there are more parties, boat races in the harbour, an illuminated night parade and a puppy pirate parade of all things! Now, I have a mortal fear of dogs but even I think a pooch in an eye patch is kind of cute. There are so many events, any serious Caymanian really needs more than one pirate costume.

Everyone loves a bad boy

Redcoats in handcuffs in the parade

So, on the Saturday of the first week, the pirates come ashore. This is when Pirates Week really gets going.

Normally, the pirates land on the Jolly Roger fight the redcoats and kidnap the Governor (and yes, in response to one query I received, the Governor does know it's coming). However this year, because the theme was "romance", they added a romantic twist and instead of kidnapping the Governor, her daughter ran off with the Pirates.Why oh why did my parents not become Governor(s) of a Caribbean island? So many missed dating opportunities....

Now I ask you, when since Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom took off after the Black Pearl has anyone celebrated the "bad guys" winning? Not only do the Pirates in George Town defeat the Redcoats and get the girl, the Redcoats then get taken down the main street in shackles as part of the subsequent parade.

They don't even pretend it has historical significance

Highly recommended if your housemate gets a bit too much

While there is definitely a history of piracy in and around the Cayman Islands, there is nothing remotely historical about this festival, no matter how many "local history days" they try to promote during the week. While pirates did frequent the Islands between the 1650s and 1730s (including the famous Blackbeard) due to the lack of formal government, abundance of turtles for food and coves for hiding ships and treasure, this ended at least two hundred years before Pirates Week was launched.

The Pirates Week Festival was actually started in 1977 as a brazen and shameless way to generate tourism before the high season kicks off. The organisers didn't even hide this purpose. It was literally announced in the Legislative Assembly and then published in the paper. Nevertheless, it's now been going strong for 38 years and gets bigger and better every year.

It makes no sense

It is incredibly weird to celebrate pirates - thieves, living outside the law, known for raping and pillaging -  in a country as Christian and conservative as Cayman. In the Cayman Islands gambling is illegal, retail trading is prohibited on Sundays, pornography is illegal, there's no gay marriage and good luck making plans with any locals at Church time on Sundays. THIS country has an entire week glorifying PIRATES??

The more you put in, the more you get out of it

I am now the proud owner of two pirate costumes, a fabulous pirate hat which I really need to find more occasions to wear, a sabre and a mixture of other pirate related paraphernalia. Joining in with the festivities makes it so much more fun. I may have even got slightly carried away (so unlike me, I know)....

Sorry, Cass.....

Those who don't throw themselves into it end up regretting it. One friend had not worn her costume into town on Saturday and was so bummed she went home to change (though to be fair she never actually made it as she was kidnapped by pirates and taken out on the ship, but that's a whole other story).

And THAT my friends, is why Pirates Week is so amazing. Bring on 2017!

Tales of a Caymanian Tour Guide

I have been SUCH a bad blogger lately...it turns out I haven't posted on here for over two months. However, it's not my fault - I blame my parents entirely.

For most of September, I got to play tour guide for my parents (they are terrible tippers), immerse them in Cayman life and be a tourist in my own backyard for a few weekends. And I have to say, there is an incredible amount to do on an island this small, given I previously thought nothing much happened here. There are numerous activities we didn't even manage to fit in while they were here and had to go on the "next year" list (or in my case, next weekend list). Obviously, there are the stunning beaches, white sand, crystal blue water, yada, yada, yada...

Horrible spot to spend a day or three.

Booooring. So what ELSE is there to do once you've had enough of sunning yourself on Seven Mile Beach or paddle boarding around the island? Why is a trip all the way over here worthwhile (other than to visit me and my sparkling personality, of course)?

Not a wave in sight. And yet.....

Well, here are my top 5 reasons to come to Grand Cayman.

1. Snorkelling & Diving

Starting with the obvious. Given that Grand Cayman sits entirely on coral reef,  snorkelling and scuba diving opportunities abound. There are many hot spots around the island where you're guaranteed to see awesome fish, stingrays, reef sharks, star fish or turtles. The very first item I purchased on island was a snorkel which was a pretty good omen of life here. My favourite spot is Smith's Barcadere which is stunning little beach about 10 minutes' drive from my house. You can wander down in the afternoon, snorkel off to left, lie down on the beach for a bit, snorkel off to the right, lie down on the beach for a bit....repeat.

The gorgeous Smith Barcadere

I do not scuba dive because it is wholly unnatural for a human to be down that far and is very scary so you'll have to ask someone else about the diving, but by all accounts it's some of the best in the world.

2. Stingray City

Most Australians are horrified when they hear about Stingray city, which is a natural sandbar off the North Western tip of the island, where you swim with, feed and kiss stingrays. The entire country is clearly still scarred from the Steve Irwin story and in need of some exposure therapy. So come to Grand Cayman to overcome your fears, people! It's actually completely safe, they're super cute and it is honestly a once in a lifetime experience. They say if you kiss a stingray you get 7 years' good luck, so needless to say I was pashing as many as I could get my hands on.....

You might get 7 years' good luck but it doesn't make it any less gross and fishy!

3. Bioluminescence

Another once in a lifetime experience in Grand Cayman is visiting the bioluminescence bay where on a moonless night you can swim in water filled with teeny tiny plankton that light up in response to movement. When you put on your snorkel, put your head under the water and move your arms, the invisible plankton light up gold and you can conduct your own symphony underwater (humming aloud through your snorkel for the world to hear), pretend to be a wizard at Hogwarts (Hermione, obviously) or make golden water angels (below - mine were better). The photos make it look blue but in real life, it sparkles gold. Ah-may-zing. I may yet get my Hogwarts letter.....

4. Turtle Centre

I had always heard that Australia is the only country in the world where its people eat the animals on their coat of arms but it turns out we are not alone - hello Cayman Islands! The Cayman Islands has a little turtle on top of their national crest and one of the Island delicacies is in fact turtle meat.

So, the Cayman Islands turtle centre is a rather weird and uncomfortable combination of research, education and conservation centre plus theme park and tourist attraction plus turtle farm to harvest and sell turtle meat (so locals have a regular supply and don't try and catch the wild turtles to deplete the natural population). If you ignore the third part that's off behind a wall somewhere, you can snorkel with turtles, hold them, feed huge mama breeding turtles and ride a fun waterslide for hours.

Oh hey, Squirt. 

5. Restaurants

A big surprise for me when I arrived in Grand Cayman was the sophistication of the restaurant scene here on island. There are countless high quality, internationally recognised restaurants here with particularly good seafood (mahi, wahoo and snapper are caught fresh daily and conch is a local delicacy), great wine and superb cocktails. Having visitors in town is the perfect excuse to try them all*!

The Lighthouse restaurant at East End

Morgan's Restaurant

* you absolutely cannot try them all - there are too many - this will be a several-year project. More visitors would be appreciated to speed up the process. Thank you.

Now, this list does not include visiting the Blue Iguanas at Queen Elizabeth II National Park, going to any of the museums on island, visiting the Crystal Caves or countless other activities that I haven't had a chance to do yet. But hopefully it's enough to whet your appetite for a Caribbean vacay. See you soon :)

Cruise Ships, Cruise Ships Everywhere.....

The Caribbean cruise ship industry is huge, one of the largest in the world in fact, delivering over $2 billion in revenue to the Caribbean islands annually. Unfortunately, this means us Caymanian residents have to welcome tolerate their passengers on our shores.

I didn't fully appreciate the size of the Caribbean cruising industry until I arrived on island and had to run down drive around hordes of cruise ship tourists to get to the office (which is on the waterfront just beyond the port, #caribbeanproblems) almost every day. The numbers are staggering. The average number of annual cruise ship visitors to Grand Cayman for the last 10 years is 1.4 million per year. In 2015, there were 1,716,812 cruise ship visitors. To put this into context - there are only 60,000 people living on the whole island!

A quiet cruise ship day
(my office is the cream building with the blue roof)

The Cayman Port Authority website helpfully allows you to see what ships are coming into Port and when (so you can plan to avoid the town if necessary and/or possible). At the moment it's summer on the island which is actually low season (rainy and humid) so we only get 1, 2 or 3 ships a day in port. Painful, but bearable. That's usually no more than 10,000 passengers. But in winter, the high season, there can be as many as 8 ships docked at once, pouring up to 20,000 tourists into town for the day for the duty free shopping, discount diamonds and day trips to the nearby sights. I cannot even imagine what that chaos is going to look like, but you may find me 'working from home' frequently in February and March. 

To make these numbers even more unmanageable, I should note that (1) because of the extensive coral reef surrounding the island, we have no cruise ship dock, so the ships park further out and the passengers are brought in by tender boat and (2) the ships can't stay overnight because gambling is illegal in the Cayman Islands, so they need to head back to international waters every evening so their delightful passengers can gamble the night away in the onboard casino. This means 20,000 tourists flood in and then recede, all within a horrifying 12 hour window. I'm imagining it looks a bit like that scene in Lord of the Rings Return of the King, where Aragorn calls the dead army to protect Gondor and they swarm in their ghostly green-ness all over Minas Tirith. 

Given the importance of the cruise ships to the Caymanian economy and the livelihoods of many locals, the Caymanian government is currently looking at how they can construct a long term solution full cruise ship dock, without decimating the underlying coral reef. Naturally, the discussions are heated. 

This was one proposal for an enormous concrete jetty but would have
dredged all of the underlying reef and caused massive damage.

Any solution is probably some time away yet, so for now, the cruise shippers continue to flood in on tenders every morning, swarming blindly across the footpaths and road as they do, and the rest of us count down to sunset when we get some peace and quiet again. 

Hurricane Preparedness 101

As I am writing this blog post, the wind is howling outside, rain is lashing the windows and there is a pretty spectacular lightning display happening across the horizon. This is not, however, a hurricane and a Tropical Storm warning has recently been lifted after Tropical Storm Earl veered West in the Caribbean sea and towards Belize and Mexico instead of the Cayman Islands (heads up, amigos!).

However, after two days of warnings and already two months into hurricane season, I thought it was about time I enlighten you all as to the wonders of living on a hurricane-prone island.

Hurricanes for the Uninitiated 

The short and sweet version of a hurricane is this: Wizard of Oz plus water minus munchkins. A more technical explanation might include mention that warm humid air rises up from warm ocean water, starts as a collection of thunder storms, moisture and heat energy fuel the storms and they start spiralling, when the speed of the cyclonic wind reaches 23mph, the storm is classified as a tropical depression, it then gets upgraded to a tropical storm when winds exceed 39mph and then voila! becomes a hurricane when wind speeds exceed 74mph and can hit up to 225mph. I obviously prefer my explanation.

The hurricane season in the Caribbean runs from 1 June to 30 November every year and in this time, about 10 to 12 tropical storms develop in the region, about half of which become hurricanes. Statistically, Cayman is brushed or hit by a tropical storm or hurricane every 1.68 years and sustains a direct hit from a hurricane every 5.3 years. I am only mildly (i.e. quite) concerned that we are now 5 years overdue for a hurricane. No biggie....

Hurricane Ivan

The last serious hurricane to affect the island was Hurricane Ivan in 2004. It hit Grand Cayman at category 5 (technically known as the Voldemort/Lord Sauron category) on 12 September 2004. The eye of the storm was just 8 miles from Grand Cayman and wind speeds during the storm were between 160 and 217mph. The storm surge, which caused much of the damage, was between 8 and 10 feet and covered most of the island because Grand Cayman is largely flat.

One quarter of the island remained submerged by water 2 days later, 90% of buildings on the island were damaged to some extent, 25% of homes were uninhabitable and 2 people died. It took months to reconnect power, water or sewerage to some parts of the island and 5 months later only half of the hotel rooms on the island were habitable. The damage to the island was estimated to be US$2.86 billion, which is 1.8 times the GDP. It was the 10th most intense hurricane ever recorded.


These three pictures show the before-Ivan, post-Ivan and present-day images of the Grand Cayman Hyatt Britannia Resort, which was one of the nicest hotels on the island and was used for shooting the movie “The Firm.” The damage from Ivan was so severe that it was never rebuilt and remains a shell. 

How to Survive a Hurricane

In view of the Cayman experience of hurricanes, the Cayman Islands motto is BE PREPARED! This is their official brochure which really induces calm, I think.

The whole first week of June is dedicated to talking about hurricane preparedness, which my friends and I realised we had completely ignored when storm warnings started coming in this week. And so it was that I and three of my fellow relatively-new-expats (for whom this is the first hurricane season on island) resolved on Monday night to go hurricane survival kit shopping together. It was obviously a very serious and somber affair.

Luckily, we all live in the same building so could divvy up the supplies a bit so for example, one person has the chocolate (not me thankfully or it wouldn't be there when the hurricane hits) one person has lollies, one takes paper plates while the other takes plastic cutlery etc. On Monday night we headed off to Cost u Less (like Costco) with our checklists (from which I wasn't allowed to deviate, notwithstanding that I think I made a compelling argument that a pool noodle would be helpful in an emergency)

About $150 later we had a selection of the following:

• tinned food (soup, salmon/tuna, vegetables)
• snacks (crackers, muesli bars, fruit cups)
• fun food (Reese's pieces, Hershey's chocolate, sour worms) - not strictly on the list but we felt it was important for morale
• torches
• batteries
• duct tape
• tarpaulin
• thick gloves
• plastic bags
• baby wipes
• hand sanitizer
• 24 bottles of water per person
• toilet rolls
• plastic cutlery and plates
• first aid kit
• mosquito coils
• insect repellant. 

Just to be absolutely clear, all of this stuff sits in a sealed box somewhere in your apartment so you have it when a hurricane hits. That's $150 of stuff you don't even get to use! They also recommend getting battery powered fans, oil lamps, sleeping bags - all of which become outrageously expensive unless you're Bear Grylls, which I am clearly not. If the shopping hadn't been so much fun, I would really have resented the expense. And I'm pretty sure by the time something actually happens, the water will have leaked, the batteries will be dead, the baby wipes will have dried up and the snacks will have gone mouldy, but apparently that's the risk you have to take in paradise!

In any event, I'm now prepared for anything that comes my way (whether it's a hurricane or I decide to become a hermit) between now and the end of November! If anyone is planning to visit me around that time, there is a good chance that the only thing I will be offering you are muesli bars, crackers, tinned fish and sour worms on paper plates with plastic cutlery, washed down with stale bottled water, offset with mood lighting provided by a torch, fragranced courtesy of mosquito coils. Don't all RSVP at once!