Love Is a Walk in the Park

On Thursday, February 13th, the Casa One and Casa Two classes enjoyed a fabulous, flora-and-fauna-filled field trip to the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park.

We were given a tour of the beautiful grounds by the animated and informative Mr. Hal, who taught us about many of the indigenous animals and plants of the Cayman Islands, such as the silver thatch palm, the “tourist” (red birch) trees and beautiful banana orchids. Did you know that banana orchids – our national flower – only bloom in June? We were introduced to three blue iguanas named Bobby, Johnny and Tootsie, who were living their best lizard life, lazing the day away basking in the warm Caribbean sun.

We strolled through the Colour Garden, where we saw plants in the same colour family featured together in groups along the quaint path. We traveled back in time for a glimpse of how Caymanians lived before the age of grocery stores and electricity. We walked through a traditional Caymanian cottage called the Heritage House and visited its Caboose, the outdoor kitchen containing vital tools such as a corn grinder used for making corn porridge, corn bread or corn cake. Yum! We also saw various items thatched from Cayman’s National tree, the Silver Thatch Palm, including a hat, rope and a giant basket strong enough to carry a couple of Casa students!  

As a special bonus, we visited the new schoolhouse where we got the inside scoop about the amazing features that will be included in the new Children’s Garden that is currently under construction and scheduled to be completed December, 2020.

 With our Casa-aged explorers, it is as much about the journey as the destination, and the bus trips are always one of the most-anticipated components of the field trip experience. On the way back to school, the buses were buzzing with enthusiastic chatter about the field trip, singing, and, as usual, a few cat nappers who were worn out from all of the excitement jam-packed into one, wonderful morning.