There was a time in the 17th and early 18th Centuries when travelers steered clear of the Cayman Islands, three now very tranquil coral dots just to the south of Cuba and west of Jamaica, about 480 miles down from Miami.
In that violent, perilous buccaneering era of local legend and lore, the Caymans were the lair of such fearsome pirates as Blackbeard and Capt. Morgan, who liked to hide out and hide things in the islands’ labyrinthian caves and sheltered coves, and who found the location convenient as a base for assaulting the sailing ships that followed the trade winds around the western tip of Cuba and out to the Atlantic through the Gulf of Mexico.
Nowadays, the Caymans are a popular vacation draw in large part for quite the opposite reason. In addition to their allure in providing the best scuba and snorkel diving in the Western Hemisphere-“the best in the world after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef,” said the Caymans’ British governor, Michael Gore-they’re about the most crime-free spot in the Caribbean.
A recent two weeks’ scanning of the daily newspaper police reports revealed mostly minor burglaries, domestic quarrels and ganja (marijuana) smuggling and consumption. This uniquely lawful state is attributed to the Caymans’ relatively small population (27,000, of whom about 2,000 are English) and to the considerable prosperity generated by water-oriented tourism and the islands’ more than 500 international banks. As noted in the money-laundering plot of the recent hit movie “The Firm,” in part set and shot in the Caymans, some of those bank transactions may not be quite so lawful.
That’s for Gov. Gore to worry about (the Caymans are among the few surviving colonies of the British Empire). For tourists-singles, couples or families-the Caymans are carefree bliss. They may lack the dark mysteries, voodoo ambience and uninhibited night life of some of the region’s more adventurous destinations, but for tranquility and “that Caribbean moment,” they rate a 9 on a scale of 10 (docked a point for the hectoring taxi drivers scouting cruise ship passengers to take back to the docks and for those damnable Jet Ski-type waterborne motorcyles that plague one of the beaches).
In the Caymans, there’s excitement enough for even the most jaded traveler underwater.
Discovered by Columbus on his fourth voyage to the New World in 1503, the Caymans initially belonged to Spain, until ceded to Britain after some obscure war in the late 1600s. For two more centuries, they were considered part of and loosely governed from Jamaica, existing mostly as a maritime watering and revictualing stop and a slaughtering grounds for the sea turtle meat and shell product trade.
After steamships removed the mariners’ dependence on the trade winds and victualing ports, the Caymans almost dropped off the map, but were put back on by a post-World War II tourist boom enhanced greatly by an American project that virtually eliminated their once fearsome mosquito population.
Most of the people (and a courteous, friendly if rather shy lot they are) live on the 24-mile-long island of Grand Cayman. Some 1,700 inhabit Cayman Brac, a short airplane ride away, and a couple dozen can be turned up on Brac’s close neighbor, Little Cayman, though they’d rather not be.
The islands’ tourism is largely concentrated on Grand Cayman’s western or leeward shore-a fantastically picture-perfect stretch of pure white sand called Seven Mile Beach (though it’s only five miles long) running from George Town, the largest population center in the Caymans, up north to West End, an agglomeration of small settlements populated largely by native Caymanians.
In the West End is this village of Hell, named for its truly Dantean hellish formation of black coral outcroppings and gullies. Here is the post office bearing one of the world’s most sought-after postmarks, and of course a few shops offering T-shirts bearing similar inscriptions.
West End is also home to the Caymans’ politically incorrect turtle farm, where every size of seagoing turtle can be viewed close up in large tanks (some can be held in the hand). Though some of the grown turtles are released to nature, most end up as meat products that are banned in the U.S. as environmentally protected species.
Seven Mile Beach is lined with hotels (including an inordinately posh and elaborate Hyatt Regency), luxury condos (such as where Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman stayed in “The Firm”) and villas, as well as innumerable restaurants, a movie theater and mini-shopping centers.
But it’s the clear, crystal, life-filled waters they face that count. Waterside facilities all along Seven Mile Beach provide the wherewithal and transport for scuba diving and snorkeling, Sunfish and Hobie Cat sailing, banana and paddle boat riding, para-sailing, water-skiing, Jet Skiing (darn it) and windsurfing.
The surf on this western shore is seldom more than the gentlest swell or ripple, and the sea beyond runs clear and open to Yucatan to the west.
Scuba diving is a serious business. The numerous diving operations around the island offer one-day resort courses, which do take you out among all those kaleidoscopic-colored fish, and longer, more comprehensive certification courses.
The snorkeling offers just as much fun and underwater spectacle, at considerably less expense and without the training requirements, dangers and health worries of scuba, whether right off shore or a short boat ride away on the reef.
Especially wonderful is the snorkeling in the flats of North Sound, a vast expanse of shallow (1 to 15 feet deep) water around which the western half of Grand Cayman is wrapped.
Of the many North Sound boats trips available, two are highly recommended: the Spirit of Ppalu, a 65-foot catamaran based on the Hyatt Regency’s dock with a natty, preppy crew that will sail you out to the reef in rich man’s yachting splendor; and the Cayman Delight, a scruffier, cheaper 57-foot house boat based at the Cayman Islands Yacht Club, whose Hemingwayesque Caymanian Capt. Buddy will tell you of his days as a world circling seaman and whose bearded, piratical-looking first mate Kerry has posed for photographers so often cradling sting rays in his arms that he figures his is one of the most famous faces in the world.
Obligatory for at least one’s first visit to the Caymans is a daytime or, better, nighttime ride in the Atlantis, a 45-passenger, genuine submarine that takes one 100 feet underwater to prowl among octopus, barracuda and barrel sponges along the gorgeously colored reefs off George Town-as well as to the brink of an underwater precipice that drops a sheer 1,200 feet, and slopes thence to the 27,000-foot-deep Cayman Trench, which figured in the underwater film epic “The Abyss.”
For greater, and more expensive underwater thrills, one can hire two-passenger, one-skipper Atlantis Research Submersibles that go down 800 feet.
High-end shopping, mostly in George Town, runs predictably to duty-free designer clothing, jewelry, perfumes and leather goods. Low-end, just as predictably, is mostly resort wear and trinkets. But the native black coral and shell jewelry-an industry closely regulated by the government-is superb and a great value, and there are some interesting finds to be made among the many old treasure coins and local folk art paintings as well.
The Caymans are expensive. Hotel rooms range from $85 or so to $200 and up a night a person, depending on season, and a decent, ocean-front condo will run from $250 to $300 and more a night. A bottle of the much prized Tortuga Rum is $20. Food is dear as well. As is true of most of the Caribbean, with the exception of a few of the French islands, the cuisine generally tops out at “good,” but the ambience of the shore-front restaurants is delightful.
Highly recommended are Chef Tell’s Grand Old House, a seaside establishment owned by the popular television chef and located just south of George Town, and its Wharf, another verandah-on-the-shore restaurant just north of the town. Also suggested is Hemingway’s, on the sands of Seven Mile Beach opposite the Hyatt. At all three, a full-course dinner for four can nudge $240 with tip.
Cheaper (under $80 Cayman for four) and very tasty eats-running to rice and beans and conch cooked assorted ways-can be had at Seven Mile’s lively The Cracked Conch, though it’s often hard to get in.
For a more realistic Hemingway experience, there are open-air drinking joints straight out of “To Have and Have Not” at Morgan’s Harbour in West End and, across North South, at the distant and fittingly named Rum Point. The Lighthouse restaurant, which sits on coral rocks overlooking the breakers out toward the eastern end of Grand Cayman, is obligatory for at least one lunch and a place where you’ll very likely find English people straight out of “Masterpiece Theatre” among the clientele.
Unlike Bermuda, which is overbuilt and overwhelmed by Americans throughout, Grand Cayman has confined its tourist glitz largely to the Seven Mile Beach area and has severely limited development elsewhere on the island, which in many sections is quite wild and desolate. Bermuda once banned automobile traffic and now limits it to locals, which, if once quaint, is annoyingly inconvenient. Rental cars are widely available on Grand Cayman and make it easy to truly get away from it all out among the parrots and iguanas.
Boddentown, the original capital on the south shore of the island where there’s an old pirate cave, could easily pass for a 19th Century town, and East End, on the far eastern tip-seemingly light years from the Seven Mile Beach Jet Skis-an 18th Century one.
It’s near there where you can sit perfectly alone on a coral bluff and watch the breakers roll in from the deep blue of the sea over the reef where a whole fleet of sailing ships foundered and sank in 1788 in the now legendary Wreck of the Ten Sails. At times, if you look carefully, you can see one of the anchors protruding from the turquoise shallows.
Now there’s a Caribbean moment.
For more information, contact the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, Suite 160, 9525 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., Rosemont, Ill. 60018; 708-678-6446.
