Cayman Islands June 29, 2008 to July 9, 2008

 We arrived at JFK Sunday morning at 9:35 for an 11:30 flight from NY JFK to Miami with a 3 hour layover for a connecting flight to the Cayman Islands.  We should have arrived in Grand Cayman at 4 pm local time. In the middle of checking in at the electronic ticket machines I received a call from American Airlines (AA) that our flight was delayed from 11:30 to 1:30 and our connecting flight was to leave Miami at 7:16 pm to arrive in the Grand Cayman Islands at 7:35 pm local time.(they are in the central time zone)

After waiting for about 6 hours in JFK and after almost every possible further delay we finally took off at about 4pm NY time. We arrived at Miami at 7:12 pm.  Of course the AA staff was about as help full as talking to a brick wall and basically told us "Hey not my problem".  We deplaned, in a panic, and tried to find someone who could help up find our connecting flight.  Well it seems that in AA's effort to decline in national airline ratings they removed the flight from the departing schedule so not even the monitors could point us to our proper gate.  So we took off down the terminal in a random direction to find someone.  We saw one lonely AA terminal gate officer who looked bored.  We asked him if he could help.  We told him we were trying to find the connection to the Caymans and he said it was right here and about to leave.  When we gave him our boarding passes, he knew who we were, obviously waiting for us.  We ran on the plane, the time is now 7:13 for a 7:16 flight and barely sat down as we taxied to the runway.  We had made it of course minus luggage.

When we arrived in the Caymans we were told our luggage would be on the next flight due to arrive at 11:30 local time the next day.  Again working hard at reducing customer satisfaction, they proceeded to tell us the following day to call back in 20 minutes and they would know more. At 8pm we decided to take a taxi to the airport and look for our selves and found 4 of the 5 pieces of luggage.  The fifth piece did finally come on the 8:30 flight.  Not sure what the issue was but more people had problems with luggage that not as we met other hotel guest. 

After killing the first day wandering around the Caymans in "Not for Caymans clothes" we finally entered the pool for some relaxation. In the pool 8 out of nine people in the pool that night had luggage issues on the way down.  The moral of this is: bring half your clothes in a carry on.

This is the view from the hotel room.

We arrived in Hell and it was a cool day at about 87 degrees F.

But the landscape says it all.

Even in Hell you can still send letters home to your loved ones.

More to come ....