by Joe Koshuta, TravelPage.com

December 31, 1999 - Holiday greetings from the Cayman Islands, here's what happened today:

Today we arrived in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. The Cayman Islands are located directly south of Cuba and west-northwest of Jamaica. The island of Grand Cayman measures 76 square miles and is about 22 miles long and 8 miles wide. About 30,000 live on Grand Cayman.

The Caymans were "discovered" in 1503 by Christopher Columbus and originally named "Las Tortugas" after the many sea turtles in the area. Later the name was changed to Caimanau - the Carib Indian term for "crocodile". Which is a bit odd since there aren't any crocodiles here. There are however many iguanas which is probably what they were referring to.

We anchored in the harbor along with the CostaVictoria and HAL's Nieuw Amsterdam and took a tender ashore. The big things to do in Grand Cayman are: 1) visit Stingray City 2) visit the Turtle Farm and 3) go to Hell - the town of Hell that is. We had friends do all of the tours and the best reports were from the Stingray city tour.

That's the tour we took. Located on a sandbar about 35 minutes north of Grand Cayman, Stingray City is famous for its tame stingrays that will allow you to pet them and they will eat food out of your hand. We had the option of going by sail or power boat and ended up on the power boat Emerald Eyes. Snorkeling gear is provided on board. When we got to Stingray City there were about five other boats in the area and lots of people in the water. The weather was in the 80s and partly cloudy while we were there.

The depth of the water ranges from 2 to 5 feet in the area of the stingrays so even our 5.5 year old son and 4 year old daughter went with us and enjoyed the trip. It takes some getting used to having the stingrays float by and brush up against you. If the brush you with their tails you can feel the barb but they are so used to people you really don't have anything to worry about. Feeding them is different sensation. You hold some squid in your closed fist as a signal to them and as they approach you open the fist and let them take the food. When they take it, you feel suction about the same as a household vacuum cleaner.

After Stingray City, we returned to Georgetown and did a little shopping but didn't buy much other than the typical tourist stuff. We took the tender back to the Volendam and relaxed for a while to make sure everyone would be ready for the New Years Eve celebration. We pulled up anchor around 5:30 and headed out to sea and the dawn of a new millennium.

Our evening started with an invitation to the Captain's cocktail party. That's where we met Traci who is better know as Mrs. Holland America. She is an amazing lady who took her first cruise in August of 1995. Since then, she has been on 54 cruises on Holland America - that's an average of 1 a month! As she likes to say, she's been on all of the 'dam ships and her favorite one is always the one she is on.

After that we moved on to the Rotterdam dining room which as decorated with an white and sliver motif for the millennium celebration. Dinner choices include lobster and filet and both were outstanding. The special millennium desert was a very chocolate intensive creation that included a wafer thin wavy profile of the Volendam with New Years greeting printed on it. It's amazing what they can do with laser printers these days.

Click here to see the menu.

After dinner we picked up the kids and headed up to the Lido deck which had been transformed throughout the day into a big dance floor for the big event. A bandstand was set up and almost everyone was there either surrounding the pool area or on the decks looking down on the pool.

At the stroke of midnight the ships horn sounded loudly and the festivities began. Click here to find out what that was like.