Shore thing: summertime delights on the Cayman Islands
By Jo Fernandez From London Evening Standard
With cheaper prices, summer is a good time to discover the natural — and luxurious — delights of the Cayman Islands, says Jo Fernàndez
I’ll be honest. Before I went to the Cayman Islands I wasn’t particularly excited. I love the Caribbean for its climate, its beaches and its food. By contrast, the group of three islands, a British Overseas Territory, are ironically more often associated with hedge funds and lawyers than the typical Caribbean hot-peppered food and reggae-on-the-beach vibe.
But it wasn’t always so. Acquired by the British Crown in 1670, until the 20th century the economy remained tied to the sea — predominantly shipbuilding, fishing and turtling. Slavery, abolished in 1835, was less prolific here than in the rest of the Caribbean due to the unsuitability of the land. By the Fifties a hint of tourism arrived in the form of divers, and by the Sixties offshore financial services quickly became the basis for the other major economy.
Here, as holidaymakers rather than investors, my family and I pulled up outside the towering, turreted sand-coloured Ritz Carlton on Seven Mile Beach. The North American chain’s outpost takes up so much space that it spans 144 acres from coast to coast with 365 rooms, generous in size if some a little staid in style, some with soothing views of the phosphorescent sea. With Marriot, this is the main high-end hotel brand on the island.
Dinner was in Seven, a sophisticated restaurant with a fusion menu of juicy jerk chicken spring rolls, fresh shrimp cocktail and steak and lobster. Breakfast kept the Caribbean flavours coming, with caramelised plantain among the mounds of muffins and pastries.
The hotel is big on brands — it has Blue Tip, the nine-hole (eight of them on water) golf course designed by the Shark, Greg Norman, the La Prairie Silver Rain Spa and the Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ambassadors of the Environment children’s, whose snorkel odyssey is a safe way for children over eight to explore the marine life under the ocean.
Kitted out with flippers and snorkels, two naturalists led our small group a short swim out from George Town, guiding us towards a mossy-shipwrecked schooner illuminated by shoals of rainbow-hued fish.
Another way to see the sea life is the ubiquitous swimming with stingrays (most Caymanians tell you you’ll love it — it is said if you kiss them you get seven years’ good luck). We pulled faces but took Captain Marvin’s boat to Stingray City, a shallow sand bar three miles out to sea populated by de-barbed Southern stingrays.
Standing waist deep in warm waters surrounded by these strange-looking diamond-shaped silky creatures, we were all a bit squeamish. More so when a six-foot one was “humorously” placed cloak-like on my back. After kissing them farewell (really) we swapped the choreographed service of the Ritz Carlton for a luxurious apartment at the Caribbean Club just along the beach.
By night we sat outside in the balmy climate over a dinner of wholewheat linguine with scallops at Luca, the buzzy in-house restaurant. We swapped the sea for land, with a drive over to North Side and the 65-acre Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park, with 650 types of sub-tropical flora and fauna among the floral gardens and woodland trails and the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme.
Under the paternal eye of warden Alberto Estevanovich, these endangered iguanas are monitored and selectively mated to ensure their survival (car accidents in the main as they sunbathe on hot tarmac). Stunning in their turquoise skins, they gulped whole mangos fed to them by Alberto looking on like a proud father.
But a deeper understanding of the Cayman Islands, and its natural wonders, comes with a small-plane hop over to Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, the most unpopulated of the two. Without banks, malls and five-star hotels, these are of interest chiefly to divers.
A 40-minute trip took us back in time to virtually car-free, 10 square-mile Little Cayman, an island that only got electricity in 1990. We stay in the Club Condos, the luxe offering at Little Cayman Beach Resort, with divers comprising most of the guests, and rooms either centred around the pool or facing directly onto the unpopulated beach and reef.
It was this unspoilt environment that lured American expat diving instructor Mike Valle here. He runs his own conservation programme for the rare brown Cuban Rock iguanas. These grumpy-looking reptiles — the males have torn faces from fighting — outnumber a human population on Little Cayman of around 150.
Around the island we encountered a snowstorm-like flock of rare white butterflies (the island claims the largest colony of red-footed boobies in the Western Hemisphere).
At Point of Sand, a strip of seemingly untouched powder white sand fringed by dazzling blue sea, no one is on it but us. It is remote but beautiful. A far cry from the malls and hotels on Grand
Cayman yet just a short plane ride away. You choose.
PHOTOS:
Close encounter: stingrays at Stingray City (Picture: Alamy)
Summertime vibes: a church on Little Cayman (Picture: Alamy)
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