Miss Cleo gets her house rebuilt

A wonderful story in the Caymanian Compass today.

The Bergstrom family, who ran the original Tortuga Club, spearheaded a tremendous community effort to rebuild Miss Cleo's house from scratch.

The story in the Compass details everything, but Miss Cleo is indeed a highly respected and valued pillar of the East End community, and also with her literally thousands of friends who visit her at Morritts every year.

For the last several years, Miss Cleo has had the role of greeter at Morritts. She loves being around people and is a natural storyteller. After The Reef opened after the Hurricane, one of our community efforts was to work with the East End community officer on feeding the old folks, so one day Miss Cleo was in our restaurant with that group. We asked her if she would like to bring her talents to The Reef for the time being to greet our guests, as we thought she would like to be out and about... but she showed admirably loyalty to her place of work of the last 40 years and politely declined, saying she would wait for Morritts to re-open :)

BTW, re the Bergstrom family, that is some extended family ! On numerous occasions they have had family dinners out at The Reef, and I swear the group table is approaching 30 people ! They have been there all the way in the tourism industry, and are still totally involved to this day. A few examples :
- Eric Bergstrom - the late (of Cayman, I meant to say, he is still very much alive :) ) Mr. Bergstrom was the first head of the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism.
- Karie Bergstrom - Karie is the President of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association
- Suzy Soto - the matriarch ! Prominent personality and owner of Cracked Conch restaurant. Her children keep trying to get her to retire, but that seems not to be in her nature, she ain't the retiring type !
- Barrie Quappe - not directly working in tourism, but runs a popular radio talk show every morning (on Rooster 101.9 (see their website here), and occasionally is seen on backing vocals playing with the Barefoot Man, as well as being very involved with promoting the local music industry.
- Chuck Quappe - Barrie's husband, and keyboard/side man (and comedy straight man!) to Barefoot every Tuesday and Thursday at The Reef.
- Kris Bergstrom - long time Cayman Airways captain and entrepreneur, running Edgewater Development, who are rapidly building a great reputation as building contractors, and did a marvellous job assisting us as the Thompson Group in renovating our blue chip office building, the Grand Pavilion, after Ivan

I could go on (there are lots more in the family!), but you get the picture... Cayman has a number of prominent families like this, and the family nature of the island is definitely one of our strengths !

Cayman Squash Club to re-open

For many of us in Cayman, sport and exercise are an important part of life, and since Hurricane Ivan one major element has been missing for hundreds of avid squash players.

As you can see from the picture above, the squash club was massively damaged by Ivan, but, after almost exactly a year, it is coming back ! The grand re-opening is on Saturday morning September 3rd, with the Governor of the Cayman Islands to play the first shot on the new courts.

For more information on the squash club (who have, apparently, been too busy rebuilding to update their website!) visit www.squash.ky

Kids Ocean Adventure

This week we debuted the new "Ecoventures Kids Ocean Adventure"... Joey of EcoVentures and Leona, our Activities Director, took the kids out to see ship wrecks, go snorkelling, and do some reef fishing with hand lines.

Looks like they had a lot of fun.... and so did Joey and Leona.... looks like this idea is a big hit already !

World Class Murals - from South Africa

Our "family" at The Reef are spread far and wide.

Melany Pietersen is a very talented young South African artist who did quite a bit of commerical artwork for The Reef and other clients in Cayman while she was living here until a year or so ago.

Among these were murals inside the roof of the old beach bar of Castro the cockatoos travels around the world, from the Great Wall of China to the Grand Canyon. In addition, she did a lovely counter top on the bar, placing various objets under a clear acrylic finish.

Unfortunately, Ivan took the old bar with him.... so the bad new is that we lost the bar counter, but the good news is that the murals had so much lacquer on them that we managed to save them. They are in storage right now, but Phil has plans to mount them along a breezeway for guests to continue to enjoy.

Anyway, Melany emailed me the other day with her website information. You can see her website at www.murals.co.za

She does take commissions and I'm sure would be willing to travel far and wide to undertake them, so if you are interested, we highly recommend her work !

Oh, and I nearly forgot, Melany designed the logo for Castro's Hideaway, seen here :

Manure Happens

... is actually the title of one of the songs on Barefoot Man's latest CD, released Sep 12th and titled "Gone Coconutz".... the timing of the release is the one year anniversary of Hurricane Ivan.

For more information on how to purchase this CD or about the latest on "BFM", visit his website at www.barefootman.com

Wahoo !

Yesterday four guests from The Reef were treated to a Wahoo "double header" courtesy of Capt. Joey Welcome of EcoVentures.

Two gorgeous wahoo, plenty of steaks for everyone !

For more information visit EcoVentures, or email concierge@thereef.com.ky

Castro's Hideaway - a new beach bar is born

We have just set up a new "Dining at Castro's section" on The Reef website here

The highlight of this has to be the slideshow on the first link on the page, with a whole bunch of photos showing the damage done by Ivan, the process of demolition and rebuilding, through to the finished product.

In addition, there is Phil's unique form of wit, plus links to new menus, photos of choice dishes, and our "secret ingredient", our kitchen crew !

Roland's Garden - a unique dining experience

One of the dining experiences available to guests staying "out East" (and those willing to drive out in our direction) is to dine with Roland in his garden.

A unique concept, he has no menus, no prices (you just leave what you think the meal was worth).

(An article on this from the Cayman Observer is here)

Do remember though, this is custom dining, if you make a reservation, you had better show up, and if you say 6 people, don't make it 4 or 8 on the night, as Roland prepares food very carefully for your party.

Our concierge staff at The Reef are very familiar with Roland's Garden, so if you are staying with us at The Reef, do not hesitate to email us at concierge@thereef.com.ky to ask any questions or to make advance reservations.

Tough to Blog about The Reef from 5000 miles away :)

Sorry not to have any news to report from Cayman and The Reef, but The Reef crew report that all is quiet on the Eastern Front (of Cayman, that is).

Normal service will be resumed around August 18th. In the meantime, do check in with our colleagues at the Captains Blog.

Awrabest from a glorious summers day in the Highlands !

Boat pictures

A few photos from our trip on "Tara" the other day.

Alex at the helm :



Boy, Scotland is beautiful ! :



The boys on the boat :