Grand Cayman 2013

[Solomander]

This was my third dive trip to Grand Cayman. Overall, it was a very good trip. Jet Blue has direct flights from JFK to GC. We took a 7:00 am flight and I was picked up by my dive op at 2:00. Getting in afternoon dives was essentially getting an extra day of diving. Not too shabby!

We stayed at the Marriott on Seven Mile Beach. It was somewhat expensive, but nice. It's worth using a Marriott Card or an AMEX platinum card- there are possible room upgrades and food credits that help make staying there a bit less expensive. The good things about the Marriott are that the common spaces are very nice and there are a number of good places that are within walking distance. If you stay here, you can get away without a car. The rooms are a bit tired. Our room had a balcony, which was great for drying dive gear out.

The water was a bit rougher than it had been in Januarys past. We wound up diving sites on the South End, which was a new area for us. On the first day, we dove Cayman Crossing reef. It had beautiful formations and swim throughs, but was not particularly fishy. Our second dive of the day was on Red Bay Reef. There were more gorgeous formations. We saw a lot of tarpon. The star of the show was an octopus who was jealously guarding a conch shell. He stood his ground and didn't vanish the way that octopi usually do. I got to observe him for a good long while. On day two, we dove Laura's Reef and Bullwinkle. Laura's reef had nice formations but not very many fish. Bullwinkle had gorgeous terrain. For some reason, there were a bunch of soapfish playing dead in various locations. We saw a lot of lionfish on this dive- some of the biggest that I have ever seen. Saw a nice spotted drum and a couple of flamingo tongues. On day 3, we did our first dive at Olin's Office. This wall dive was my least favorite. The wall was relatively uninteresting, without any compelling fish to look at. The vis wasn't too great either. For our second dive of the day, we swung around to the West side and dove La Mesa. There was a nice variety of fish. I saw one of the biggest green morays ever, free-swimming. Again, we saw a lot of lionfish. We wound up doing only one dive on our final day, at Cemetery Reef. It was the nicest dive of our trip. It has the greatest variety of fish, with burrfish, trunkfish and trumpet fish. We ended the dive by finding a very cooperative young hawksbill turtle.

We had a couple of weird diving experiences. The first three days we dove with one or two extremely rusty divers each day. I didn't expect this on a small dive boat. They displayed varying degrees of ineptitude. Most of them took a while to descend, flailed around and blew through their air tanks. This forced us to make a shorter circuit with the DM and then dive near the boat after these gentlemen ascended. One nimrod was particularly impressive- he lost a fin, his weight belt and had a panic attack by the time he got to the line. Fortunately, he was smart enough to give up. On the final day of diving, the waves didn't allow our dive boat to get close enough to the beach to pick us up, so the owner cancelled the dive. My buddy and I were unhappy. We scrambled and were able to sign up for a single tank pm dive with Red Sail Sports. We were plus minus about this because of the possibility of being on a cattle boat, but really wanted to dive. We were very pleasantly surprised. There were nine people on a very big boat. There were a few rusty divers, but RSS had them do a refresher course and gave them their own DM. My buddy and I are lazy about navigating and like to dive with a DM. A solo diver joined us and the three of us had our own DM. We were able to dive our profiles without any problem. The RSS boat was very professionally run. So much for expectations.

As far as restaurants go, our favorite is the Sunshine Grill. Their food is excellent and relatively inexpensive. It has become very crowded. One night we waited 30 minutes for a table, which isn't the end of the world. When we tried to go back, the wait was 90 minutes, which was too much. We ate at Rackham's one night. It's in George Town and the signs are hard to see at night. It looks like your typical beach bar, but the food was surprisingly good. We had very good pizza at XC. We had a good lunch at Cimboco. I think that it would be a good place for breakfast. We had a surprisingly good Italian meal at Casanova. They have their own parking lot. The restaurant is on the water and the outdoor tables have an awesome view. We had dinner at the Pirate's Den (or PD's, as it seems to be known). It's a pub/restaurant in a non-descript strip mall. They serve an impressive variety of artery clogging foods. The chicken wings, burgers and stuffed potatoes were good. There are a million TV screens, so we hung out and watched some football there. The waitress was very nice and let us linger long after we were done eating to watch the end of the game. PDs is a real local scene, which was fun to take in.

Grand Cayman has great diving and is really convenient if you can get a direct flight. While more expensive than Cozumel, it is easy and has a charm all it's own. I expect to go back.

Joel

[Cat]

Thanks for the trip report on Grand Cayman. We are headed to Cayman next week and staying at Comfort Suites, next door to the Marriott. The info on restaurants is nice, there are a few you listed we haven't tried. Nice pictures, the flounder is great the picture really shows how well they can camouflage themselves. Too bad the weather caused you to have to dive the south side - it happens in the winter. Who did you dive with the first few days?

Happy Diving! Cat

[Solomander]

Hi Cat,

Hope that you have a great trip and that conditions improve by the time that you get there. It was the choppiest that I have ever seen it in GC. The dive op that I used is Neptune's Divers.

Joel

[diverchaz]

I want to go back to GC............

[ellene]

Thanks for the report and the pics! One thing to note if you go back to the Marriott (or for anyone else contemplating it), you can usually get excellent deals through Priceline's 'Name Your Own Price.' The last time I stayed there we paid a total of $105 per night. Definitely better than rack rate!!

[Solomander]

Ellene- that's great to know. Thanks a lot.

Joel

[divingaround2]

diving in grand cayman is great, you can dive every time of the year, and the wall are amazing.
there are many dive center on the islands, to big ome to small segice.
i dove with dns diving, this people are so profesional, excellent service, and top gear.
no doubt to call dusty, you can fin them at www.divedns.com.
they provide you twells, cokkies, water, and awesome service.