After a few days on Grand Cayman, I was starting to get a feel for the place. It was very civilized, but it felt a bit forced. I’d seen only one other interracial couple since we’d been there. Portraits of the Queen and Prince Charles hung at the airport. I’d made a joke about tea time one day only to have one of the Chaplain’s friends casually mention meeting someone for tea the next day.

I didn’t even know the names of the other Cayman Islands until after we landed on Grand Cayman – I’m usually the trip planner, but this was the Chaplain’s baby and I was happy to stay in the dark about our plans this time.

Before we left, the Chaplain had intimated there would be some kind of surprise as part of our trip. I know it was hard to keep it a secret. After we arrived, the Chaplain’s friend started talking about us going Cayman Brac.

We’ve always talked about wanting to go island hopping, and now we’d be doing it. I hadn’t tried to figure out what the surprise would be, but even if I had tried, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have figured it out. We took the first flight out to Cayman Brac the morning after our visit to the caves. There were three cars in the rental lot at the airport, and the lady at the desk let me us choose which one we wanted. The first thing we saw driving back out to the main road was one of these:What followed was perhaps my favorite part of the trip. Cayman Brac is about 1.2 miles wide and 12 miles long. It is unpretentious, quiet, and on the day we were there, empty. We saw a number of stretches of fences with posts like this one. Nicknamed the tourist tree, because it’s red and peeling, if used for fence posts, each post grows into its own tree. Once established, they make a durable, living fence. I’m pretty sure there’s a spiritual or life metaphor not far under that bark.This was one of many things we learned the day before from our tour guide, Rudy, that we saw in action on our trip to Cayman Brac.

We rarely saw other people or cars. A man waved as we drove past his house. It reminded me of the town where I grew up. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and that was OK.All along the roads were little signs for heritage sites. We pulled over a number of them and discovered trail heads and caves you could explore.

(I made the shorts.)

On the other side of the road were stretches of beach with free parking, shade, and often bathroom facilities. The beach access we found was full of seaweed or rocky, so we didn’t bathe there, but it was beautiful and tranquil.

We found the island’s lighthouse, and having been to Maine, I had to laugh.Here it is from a more flattering angle: It’s situated at the high point of all three of the Cayman Islands, a 200-foot bluff overlooking the water.

That afternoon after a fight, we agreed the Chaplain would drop me off at an idyllic little beach and take a drive. Perhaps some people have dreamy second honeymoons when they leave their kids at home and travel alone to the Caribbean, but that just isn’t our style.I sat and read my book in the shade and watched a lizard run back and forth in front of me. I wrote my postcards and mailed them at a tiny post office across the street. I explored the shoreline and chose a few little pieces of coral to bring back for the kids. The beach was full of bleached seashells, the kind you put up to your ear to hear the sea, as big as my head. I left them there but turned more than a few of them over to see the beautiful pinky peach inside glistening up at me.When the Chaplain swung back to get me, we headed for the local bakery. There’s only one on the island, and it came highly recommended. On the way, we spent the last of our local currency to top off the gas tank of the rental car, only to find out the bakery only accepted cash.The lone ATM on the island wasn’t near the bakery, although on a 12-mile long island, this is admittedly relative. We didn’t want to spend the rest of our time on the island driving around for cash, so I convinced the Chaplain to drive back to the gas station and ask the attendant to charge our card instead and give us the cash back. Bless both of their hearts, he did go back, and the man gave us our cash back.We went back to the bakery and blew all of our dough on bread. We got bulla, a Jamaican cake-like cookie flavored with cinnamon. It’s soft and not overly sweet. We also picked out coconut rolls, and the bakery’s famous round bread.

The bakery smelled like heaven, and when we got back to the car, we broke bread together. After our earlier discord and the book I was reading, Searching for Sunday, by Rachel Held Evans, the significance wasn’t lost on me.

We caught the late afternoon flight back to Grand Cayman after a day of meandering driving, and seeing lots of signs for iguanas, but no iguanas. Besides the iguanas, though, I wasn’t disappointed at all. I felt like I belonged on Cayman Brac, that I could just be myself there.I spent the evening alone at the beach that night so I could catch some photos of the sunset and read some more. Those moments of beach reading were just wonderful. A local Baptist church was having a cookout, and I enjoyed the cheerful sounds of kids splashing in the water and the smell of bar-b-que while I sat out on the rocks near the water and watched the golden sunlight disappear behind the clouds. An older woman was there with me taking photos of the sunset. We didn’t  talk much to each other, but shared the silence together.

Once the sun disappeared, I headed back to our apartment to go out to dinner with one of the Chaplain’s friends. We went to a local place (“no tourists, I promise.”) for Caribbean food, called Welly’s.

My experience with Caribbean food is, when you ask for vegetarian, they always look at you like you’re nuts. But then if you prod a little – “Do you have rice and peas? Veggies? Salad or Coleslaw?” – they will say yes, yes, and yes, and what follows is the most amazing dinner of your life.

The food was delicious.

I was exhausted from the day, and I sat at the little table in the restaurant, eating my veggies and staring off into space. I was thinking about how wonderful it would be to go to bed, while feeling I should be a more enthusiastic dinner guest.

The next day, we’d be hitting the main attraction on Grand Cayman: Seven Mile Beach.

Keep an eye out for Part IV, next week. Catch up on Part I and Part II.