I’ve been working down here for a while now, so I figure it’s finally time to talk a little bit about where I work. I work at Eden Rock Diving Center, located in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. My shop is relatively small, with four full time employees, including myself, and a part time boat captain. He is part time because most of the diving we do at our shop is shore diving (you swim out to the dive sites directly from shore), and we do not take the boat out every day.
Here are some pictures of the shop:
As I mentioned, most of the diving we do at Eden Rock is shore diving. We have two great sites we dive that are a 100 yard swim from our back ladder: Eden Rock and Devil’s Grotto. Both sites have a maximum depth of 48 feet (many boat dives go to 100 feet), which is actually an advantage, because the shallower depth allows for more bottom time. In addition, the sites are special because they have a number of swim-through patterns. These are similar to caves, but are not fully enclosed overhead, so light can get through. They look something like this:
Here are some video clips of swimming through those swim-throughs:
Today is my day off, and I’m sitting in my apartment as I write. I didn’t do much today, and it struck me that it’s a nice change of pace to stay inside and just be in air conditioning all day long. My typical day involves being outside all day, being active. This active lifestyle is a very nice change from my old workday, where I sat inside all day and was rarely outside during daylight. And while I had a great view of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty from my old office, the view from my new office isn’t bad either, and the water that I look out upon is much warmer!
I do miss all of my friends from my old job (shout-out to my S&K posse), though, but my new friends are ok too.
And there’s one other big difference between Eden Rock and my old work-place: everyone here is happy. I used to spend my day dealing with problems. It was one crisis after another, and it was a very stressful environment. As a result, no one was happy. People around the office were stressed an unhappy, and the clients we dealt with were rarely happy — they had their own problems and stresses, and even when you solved one emergency for them, there were always more on the horizon. Down here, everyone is happy. My co-workers are generally in good moods because we’re all doing something we love. And even if we have bad days, and any problems from one day are quickly forgotten the next. My customers are all on vacation, in good moods and enjoying themselves. They are doing what they love to do and (in most cases) only get to do a few times a year, so they are always happy. Even when we have a dive that I consider “bad” — where there are problems that I have to deal with, or where we don’t see any of the “big” forms of marine life (turtles, baracuda, stingray, eel, shark, etc.) — the customers still think they are great dives, and still had fun. So it’s a nice work environment. Happy people + lots of diving = good.
So that’s Eden Rock. Not a bad place to work! Next time you’re in Cayman, be sure to come check it out and see for yourself!