Day two was a little less crazed.

I split from everyone to do more shots…. Nightclubs this time… Also owned by the partner in Cayman.

Yes… the theme from The Godfather started looping in my head at this point as I started to get my head around how much influence, cash and collection of seemingly random, disconnected companies this guy has.

Once I walked into their office, my paranoid fantasies of getting mixed up with the Caribbean mafia dissolved. These guys were just honest, extremely hard working east-indian entrepreneurs – who – despite the devastation of IVAN have picked up the pieces and are still going.

One club was more geared for tourists and quite snazzy and high-end… The second is for locals and well… quite hot-n’-sleezy in a sexy Wild Orchid sorta way…. The second was a real challenge to get to look like anything in the camera and required a lot of trickery. (*read as me running around with a hand-held strobe durring long exposures.)

Somewhere in there was the lunch adventure.

A word about Grand Cayman…. (Outside of the thin strip of commerce and hospitality that hug the beech).

Oh.. alright.. Two words.

THIRD WORLD.

A year after the category five hurricane that kicked the islands ass – a lot still looks like a warzone… Blown out shacks…Up-rooted trees… and Chickens… yes… chickens…. They seem to be their version of rabbits… They just loiter around… sorta how pigeons do and Japanese tourists don’t.

Warren assured me that the Chicken Rice Bowl I had the previous night came from Perdueâ„¢ and not from the sidewalk.

After I got some shots off of the first night club we hooked up with Aldo and a bunch of the Cayman staff for lunch at a local’s dive called “Welly’s Cool Spot”…

You could miss Welly’s if you weren’t careful… Their sign still looked hurricane damaged and the unlikely building sits nestled between roughed up non-descript industrial buildings inland.

We waited in the adjacent bar for a table in the single-room dining space.

The waitress finally came and got us, greeting members of our party by name with kisses and what my prudish American sensibilities would call “inappropriate touching”.

Inkjet printed menus stuck in little scratched Plexiglas holders on each of the 10 tables listed the specials and menu for that day: Things like Curry Goat and Ox Tail Soup were the specials for the day.

Aldo had the Curry Goat – I had the Cayman Style Shrimp.

I tried the goat but didn’t like it. It had bone-chips and chunks in it too… not my thing.

Now… The Cayman Style Shrimp? Woogah – VERRRY good… Big prawns mixed up with green peppers in a sweet and sour type gravy – served with rice and beans and a handful of iceberg lettuce as a garnish salad.

It kicked ass – as did the razor-thin piece of pepper one of the Indian guys let me try called a “Scotch Bonnet”.

It was a textbook scene of culture clash slapstick as he handed me the sample and said: “Go ahead and try it… It’s not that hot..”

I already started chewing before I caught the smirks on his and the other local’s faces on our end of the table… I’m sure they guessed that white-boy from Missouri would have the type of pallet that thinks BBQ potato chips are hot and spicy.

It was hellish hot… *but a good hot…. So I just held back the tears, took a couple of spoonfuls of rice, smiled and thanked him for letting me try it.

My sense of taste and smell returned before we finished eating.

I’d later pick up a few bottles of Scotch Bonnet hot sauce to bring back with me and thank the guy again before we left who gave me a nice handshake and accepting nod as if I had passed some sort of initiation.

I’d recount all this later while clipping along at twenty-seven-thousand-feet returning home.

I’d also deny this would be a blog entry.