By Pam LeBlanc From My Statesman

Leave the crowds behind on a sleepy Caribbean island where iguanas outnumber humans

I tug on fins, press a mask to my face and gaze out over the blanket of ocean rippling in front of me. Then, with a splash, I step into the blue.

When the bubbles from my scuba tank clear, a whole new world appears.

Giant, barrel-shaped corals come into focus as I slowly sink 50 feet to the reef. A 2-foot, bullet-shaped barracuda approaches, then retreats. Schools of Crayola-colored fish flit past.

I’m spending a week on Little Cayman Island, the tinier, much-less-developed sibling of Grand Cayman Island. It’s a 30-minute hop by prop plane from that buzzing hive of tourism to this sleepy, 10-mile-by-1-mile spit of land, where iguanas outnumber humans and the airport “terminal” is hardly bigger than my bedroom.

IMAGES:

An iguana poses in front of Angela Pierce at a swimming pool at Little Cayman Beach Resort on Little Cayman Island. Photo by Pam LeBlanc
A diver jumps from the back of the boat into the water off of Little Cayman Island. Photo by Chris LeBlanc/For American-Statesman                                                                                                                                                                                     A hawksbill turtle cruises along Bloody Bay Wall at Little Cayman Island. Photo by Pam LeBlanc

For more on this story go to: http://specials.mystatesman.com/little-cayman-island/