Turtle Farm

The other thing we heard a lot about on the airplane & as soon as we landed in Grand Cayman was the turtle farm:

 

Honestly I had never heard about this before we went but everyone told us we needed to take the kids. We kind of lucked out & met another family at dinner one evening who have lived on the island for 16 years & she is an attorney there. Her son, JR, was a little older than Sadie but he really wanted to play with them at dinner. After we visited, we exchanged contact information & kept in touch throughout the week. She works a lot so she has a nanny take care of JR during the day, so they came to the hotel water park & met us for a play date & then they offered to meet us at the Turtle Farm. So first we had our own, private tour guide who is a local & then we got the local discount so we saved a ton of money not having to pay the normal tourist amount! Thanks Wilma & JR!

 

As soon as we walked in, we saw the turtles & they were huge:

 

 

Literally I have never seen so many turtles in my life, especially ones this big! This is the breeding tank & there is a private beach behind here where they go to lay their eggs.

 

Next we walked through the life cycle areas where we got to see turtles in different development life stages:

 

 

And finally we ended up at the tank where you could get in & touch or hold the turtle. Sophie was too scared to get all the way in but Sadie, JR & Bryan did:

 

 

They have a large area where you can swim & snorkel with the turtles but we didn't go that with the kids. They also had a few sharks & we stopped by just in time to see them being fed:

 

 

Our next stop, the bird aviary. JR told Sadie all about the birds & how you can feed them but as soon as we got there, the girls got a little hesitant so Bryan helped out:

 

 

We called Bryan the bird man because he handled the birds so well! Our favorite bird the girls kept calling a flamingo because they (Sophie in particular) love flamingos:

 

 

Finally we got to Sadie's favorite part - the pool! The entire place was kind of like a natural habitat & they had a huge pool & slide where the kids played:

 

 

Ok, so Sophie didn't really play. She just walked around looking pretty :)

 

Sadie went down the slide several times with JR, Bryan & Wilma:

 

 

They also had a really deep end where hardly anyone was but Sadie had to check it out because she loved the waterfall:

 

We only spent the morning there & it was kind of crowded at first because there were a ton of visitors there from the cruise boats. But after they left, the place was empty so we went back to the turtle tanks & they got to hold some turtles again before we left. I tried to get a group shot of the 3 kids but they didn't really want to participate:

 

 

It was fun meeting new friends & having a play date on the island. The girls had fun at the turtle farm, but I don't know if we would really go back again. But I can see why it was recommended for us since we have young kids.