Grand Cayman
When considering destinations in the Caribbean, you have many choices, and offer varying experiences depending on how far you would like to travel. The Caribbean is big, generally ranging from the Bahamas south to the ABC (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao), Latin America in the west (Belize, Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, Honduran Bay Islands). Grand Cayman is a popular destination due to relative ease of getting there, warm weather and water, shopping, exchange rate, and other factors.
Arriving in Grand Cayman by air is a pleasure compared to some islands. When you get off the plane, there are a large number of immigration kiosks set up, so all you have to do is put your passport in the scanner, it takes a picture, then you go to the immigration officers. At the baggage carousel, the bags were offloaded from the plane remarkably fast. By the time I cleared customs, my bags were already there, and it looked like most of the rest of the passengers had already collected their bags.
As a British territory, they drive on the left side of the road. But there are many other similarities with American culture. The electricity is 110 volts and English is widely spoken. Although the currency is the Cayman Islands dollar (KYD), the US dollar is accepted everywhere, and the exchange rate it about 0.8 KYD to 1 USD.
I stayed at Sunset House, known primarily for scuba diving, but also popular with locals and visitors for sunsets from the bar. A variety of food selections are suitable for all tastes, at a reasonable cost. There are many selections of wine, beer and wide variety of cocktails. While I enjoy wine, this is not the place to enjoy a good cabernet or other wines. Sunset House has a full dive shop, a large house reef where unlimited shore diving is available (no solo diving), along with many boats to visit offshore reefs. Most dive sites are within a 20 minute ride or less.
The first dive day, we went to the north side of the island, since conditions do not normally allow for diving. At Blue Pinnacles, a deep wall site with a collection of pinnacles. there were no other dive boats out, so we got the good site. Visibility was good, perhaps 60 feet, the water warm as expected, so no wetsuit required. At Bear Paw. the name comes from a reef formation that looks like a bear's paw. However due to storms the rock formation has fallen over and now is not as recognizable as a bear's paw. Visibility was only about 30 feet.
The second day of diving brought us to Holiday Inn Dropoff and Lonestar Ledge on the west side of the island. There were sponges, fans and corals bursting with color. As a result of a powerful storm that hit the island back in February, there was little evidence of certain types of corals such as staghorn and elkhorn. Other coral such as brain, great star seemed to be healthy.
After lunch, a visit out to the house reef with some new friends Dustie and Paul. They are regular visitors to Sunset House at Grand Cayman and know the house reef very well. We went to the garden eels, where I could photograph and take videos of the garden eels. This was the first time with them when I was not rushed by a dive guide, so I was able to spend several minutes with these very timid animals, patiently waiting out appearances. One trick was to leave the camera in the sand, then swim away so the garden eels would come back out of their holes.
On day three of diving, the first stop was Round Rock where a southern stingray had buried itself in the sand. We then move on the swimming around the rock there was a Channel Clinging crab, fireworms, and more coral and sponges. Towards the end, as we get higher into the profile before a surface interval, a small golden tail moray was poking out of its hole. The afternoon of day four took us to the USS Kittiwake off of Seven Mile Beach, a storied ship commissioned just after WWII and sunk in 2011 for divers to explore. Although originally resting on its keel, a storm in 2017 knocked it over onto a reef. This wreck is easy to explore and penetrate with wide openings and multiple exit points if you feel claustrophobic.
Day five took us to Dragon's Hole and Oro Verde (Green Gold). Dive masters like to tell an entertaining story about Oro Verde. A popular version is it was carrying marijuana (hence the Green Gold name), and after a mutiny, the crew was unfamiliar with the waters and hit a reef causing it to sink in 1980. It is in very shallow waters broken up into many pieces, likely as a result of storms over the years. You can also find a bicycle at this site, where dive masters purportedly toss into the water when leaving the island. Of course, depending on your dive master, the stories at this site may vary.