I knew getting to Little Cayman to attend The Digital Shootout was going to be a challenge, but it was still quite intense.   My first leg of the trip was quite comfortable flying on Delta to get from Seattle (where I live) to Atlanta (where I am originally from).  I decided to spend the night in The ATL in order to see family and have dinner with them, and then caught another Delta flight to Grand Cayman the next morning.   This is where the jet travel stopped and where “pray you don’t die” travel started.   We flew Cayman Airways on a Twin Otter prop plane holding a maximum of 13 passengers.  I sat in “first class” (no not really)  which was basically the seat right behind the cockpit, did I mention there was no wall between me and cockpit, so I was watching the pilots fly the plane the entire way?  It was crazy, but kind of cool.   On the way over we first stopped in Cayman Brac (another island about 35 minutes away from Grand Cayman), and then flew to Little Cayman (about 10 more minutes away).   I will say one thing that is great about flying a small plane like this, baggage claim is very easy, we just took our bags right off as we get out of the plane and that was it.

After we landed in Little Cayman, the Little Cayman Beach Resort came and picked us up and took us to the resort.  Keep in mind that was only about a 5 minute ride as the entire island of Little Cayman is only 10 miles long and 1 mile wide, and has a total of about 160 residents.  The resort itself is quite lovely and the people working at both the hotel part of the resort and the dive shop are just amazing.   One of the best run dive operations I have ever seen.   And the kitchen staff was very accommodating to my crazy “no grain/no starch” paleo-like diet.

After getting checked in, I took my dive gear down to the dive shop to get it ready for the morning dives, got my nitrox tanks analyzed, and then setup my camera gear that I used for the trip (see next post for details on that).

That was it, my 4 flight, 2 day travel to get from Seattle to lovely Little Cayman to start my grand adventure to dive, learn, and compete at The Digital Shootout 2012.