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Diving The Cayman Sister IslandsScuba divers have gone soft. Diving in The Cayman Islands used to be a gung ho, black-geared, hard-rubber kind of sport.Scuba divers have gone soft. Diving used to be a gung ho, black-geared, hard-rubber kind of sport. And dive trips used to be more like safaris, with the added pleasure of lugging tanks. But in recent times, diving has evolved into a low-impact, neon-hued, Lycra-clad "activity" that anyone can do. Plus, it's getting really hard to tell a dive resort from a luxury hotel. Creature comforts are making divers soft. It's almost embarrassing, don't you think?"Huh?" Tiffany stopped working and looked up. A blonde and captivating Canadian masseuse who presses flesh in the spa at Little Cayman Beach Resort -- a quote, unquote, diver's resort -- Tiffany had spent the last half-hour oiling, kneading and rubbing her way down my body and was massaging my feet when I began my rant. "Don't you think divers have gone soft?" Tiffany shrugged. Still in her tender mid-20s, she lacked, perhaps, the historical perspective on this relatively young sport that an extra decade gave me. So I shrugged, too, and then I lay back down amid the aromatherapy oils and Celtic New Age music that filled the waterfront spa ... and thought about my next dive. I'd finally made it to Little Cayman. Back in the 1980s, I lived for a year on Grand Cayman, 90 miles to the west, around the time it was exploding into one of the most popular dive destinations on the planet. But I'd never ventured to Little Cayman or Cayman Brac -- now marketed as the "Sister Islands" to distinguish them from big brother Grand. The two smaller islands were just too far out, on the very frontier of the scuba world, almost mythical spots. Wall divers considered them heaven, and they were almost as hard to get to. Little Cayman's Bloody Bay Wall has long ranked as a must-do for experienced and well-traveled divers, but after all the trouble of getting there, you had to hitch a ride with a sport-fishing club that took out divers on the side. As recently as nine years ago, there wasn't even a power plant on the island. All that has changed. It still takes a little more effort and a little more money for the scenic hop aboard Island Air's picture-windowed Twin Otter to Little Cayman's dusty coral landing strip, but now there's electricity on the island and, with it, the air-conditioning that breeds vacation homes and hotels. There are also more dive resorts -- nine out of ten visitors to the island come to scuba dive -- but there are still less than 100 full-time residents, most of them expats, not genuine "Little Caymanians." |
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"We've been to Grand Cayman a dozen times," said Jim Hinckley a dive-store owner from Marlboro, Massachusetts, with a chowder-thick accent to prove it. Hinckley was leading a group of 10 divers, and like nearly every Sister Islands visitor I spoke with, he'd seen the big Cayman's walls and its famous Stingray City. He wanted to go a step further into diving and a step back from the big resorts of Seven Mile Beach while still enjoying all the perks of an English-speaking, affluent, visitor-friendly destination. "Cayman's great," Hinckley told me. "But we always heard Little Cayman was out of this world." We'd all made it to the rugged frontier, although the frontier now came with a spa, hot tubs, big rooms with satellite TV, a dive staff that wouldn't let you carry a tank if you begged them, a funky bar and gourmet meals prepared by a Jamaican chef named Chubby whose fare threatened to make us all that way before we left. It was almost too much to bear. At least, for gung ho's sake, the weather wasn't going to make it easy on us. On my first dive day, high winter winds forced the boat to turn back within drooling distance of Bloody Bay Wall, and we moored at a more protected site on the tip of the south side -- Lighthouse Wall. It was classic Cayman: 100-feet-plus visibility. If you can't see 100 feet, you're not in the Caymans. These islands are little more than dry chunks of rock with no rivers or streams that flow into the ocean, retarding the coral growth and mucking up the crystal blue clarity. It's prime territory for critters, too. At Lighthouse Wall, a pack of bronze-colored, big-shouldered sharks made a run down a long coral spur and then peeled off in five different directions when they hit the edge of the wall. Back on the boat, Hinckley told me about the dive the morning before I arrived. A typical fishing story: Ya shoulda been here yesterday. It seems that a male bottlenose dolphin, nicknamed Spot, has decided to call the Sister Islands home. Now, dolphin are not unusual in this part of the world, but one that spends his time swimming the seven miles between Little Cayman and the Brac just so he can play with scuba divers? That's something special. "He stayed with us for a half-hour," said Hinckley. "He'd just roll over to have his belly rubbed and follow us around playing like a big puppy, a really big puppy. It was one of the greatest experiences we've had underwater." After lunch on shore, where presentation and tastiness conspired to force me into trying all three entries, I decided to work it off by touring the island. Little Cayman, it should be noted, does not have much to tour: one church, one store and one bank that is open exactly one day a week. But there also is Tarpon Lake, a black-water pool surrounded by mahogany forest and filled with leaping game fish. Alongside the slender walkway that stretches out into the lake, sun-bleached, silver-white trunks of trees claw out of the dark water like skeletal fingers. The trees were killed after a hurricane swept across the island and the sea surged over the beach, spilling into the lake and wiping out much of the plant and animal life -- death by salt water. Booby Pond Nature Reserve is home to the Caribbean's largest nesting colony of red-footed boobies, which, for the record, are birds. At the nature center, powerful spotting scopes give you a close-up view of a booby population that's estimated at 7,000. Point of Sand, the best beach in the Sister Islands, offers a benevolent current that lets you jump in and be carried effortlessly above good reefs to an exit spot down the beach. And then there's the small green house which sits on an oceanfront lot that once belonged to actor Burgess Meredith. A sign reads: "No Trespassing Burgess Meredith." So, I can only assume that the actor wouldn't be allowed to go near the house these days -- even if he wasn't dead. I went on a bike ride with Chubby, covering just about the entire length of paved road on the 11-mile long, mile-and-a-half wide island. We stopped by Salt Rocks, Little Cayman's only deep-water approach, which was first used by pirates and then by miners who dragged carts filled with phosphate down to the rocks to load onto small ships. During my visit, high seas were keeping the supply boat from coming in, a potentially troubling dilemma since an extended period without supplies could send the island back to frontier days, especially if the power plant had to shut down from lack of fuel and the hotels ran out of rum and toilet paper. Chubby took me to see the famed banana-eating iguanas of Little Cayman. In the center of the island, where the seldom-used road dead-ends at a spot long ago planted with fruit trees, the forest is full of black-footed baby dinosaurs that have come to equate tourists with food. And take note: Judging by the way the big ones rumble from the jungle to devour bananas, any visitor garbed in Chiquita-yellow risks becoming the tourist who was food. The seas finally settled down enough that we could bounce our way to a Bloody Bay site called Cumber's Caves. As soon as I began my descent, I saw how the coral had grown into a massive buttress at the edge of the wall. Actually, "grow" is a feeble word for the coral's accomplishment here. It billowed, bloomed and erupted, creating a massive citadel of stone bordered on one side by sand and by abyssal blue on the other. At its base, hidden from view by overhangs, were caves, natural adaptations that allowed the sand behind the reef to spill down like grains in an hourglass and pass through the wall and over the edge without damaging the coral. I angled down and slipped under a coral overhang and suddenly I was inside the reef. Sunlight filtered in, allowing me to glimpse strange sponges that hung like stalactites and small fish that flitted like bats down dark side passages. After a long, slow tour through the belly of the reef, I came out deep over the edge. Other divers were gliding out of different caves along the wall, all staring out into the blue for long moments before kicking slowly up to the sunlit top of the reef. I spotted two hawksbill turtles, sisters maybe, that swam together and watched me approach. Then the flightier sibling turned away, leaving the other to escort me along the wall and almost up to my safety stop. A couple of the divers in the Massachusetts group had just been certified -- these were their first dives outside the North Atlantic. They watched the turtle, and I watched the newbie divers. One of their very first dives was one of my best dives ever -- after literally thousands of them. Where could they go from here I wondered? They had definitely been spoiled. Turtles were what Columbus took most notice of when he came upon the Caymans and christened the islands "Tortugas." This discovery was not such great luck for the Cayman |
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[CaRP] Can't open cache file.  The Weather Channel: Your Local Weather Outlook--George Town, Cayman Islands Local Weather Outlook for George Town, Cayman Islands. Since 1982, The Weather Channel has brought timely weather information to the world. Now via our Local Weather Outlook RSS feed we can keep you up-to-date on the latest weather affecting the cities of your choice including: current local conditions, local Doppler radar, pollen trends, regional video forecasts with expert commentary, and extended forecast details delivered right to your desktop. The Weather Channel...Bringing Weather To Life • Current Weather Conditions In George Town, Cayman Islands 21 Aug 2009 at 12:03pm Mostly Cloudy, and 90 ° F. For more details? • Your Local Doppler Radar 21 Aug 2009 at 12:03pm This map shows the location and intensity of precipitation in your area. The color of the precipi... • Pollen Trend for George Town, Cayman Islands 21 Aug 2009 at 12:03pm N/A. View complete PollenCast? • Video: Your Regional Weather Forecast 21 Aug 2009 at 12:03pm Watch what the experts at The Weather Channel® have to say about the weather trends in your area. • ADV: Upgrade to weather.com Gold! 21 Aug 2009 at 12:03pm Get advanced storm tracking maps and weather for 10 cities in one-click, all with no ads! Start ... • Your Weekend Forecast For George Town, Cayman Islands 21 Aug 2009 at 12:03pm Chance of Precipitation: Fri: 60% / Sat: 60% / Sun: 60%. For complete forecast details... • Your 10-Day Forecast for George Town, Cayman Islands 21 Aug 2009 at 12:03pm Today: Isolated T-Storms & High 89°F / Low 81°F.---- Sat: Isolated T-Storms & High 89°F / Low 81°...
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