February 23, 2004
Greetings Fellow Divers,
The following is a chronicle of my recent diving trip to Little Cayman with the Patowmack Divers Club. For the geographically challenged, the Cayman Islands are directly south of Cuba. The week before we left, I wondered if we would fly over Cuba or go around. The answer is that we flew over, somewhat east of Havana.
The contrast between South Florida and Cuba was dramatic. Florida looked like an urban jungle, with roads and buildings everywhere, while Cuba looked like time had passed it by, with a few two-land roads running through green fields. I hope to visit there before too long. To digress just a bit longer, Cuba has about the same population density as Florida, so the area around Havana must be really crowded.
Grand Cayman also looks pretty densely populated. The international airport is large and modern by Caribbean standards. The airport at Little Cayman is quite the opposite. Imagine a grass landing strip with a wooden shack that also houses the island's fire department, and that's what we found at Little Cayman, population 115 (1999 Census). The Little Cayman Beach Resort (LCBR) is just up the road from the airport. As we arrived at reception, there was a terrible stink in the air. I inquired about it, and was told that the pond across the road is a bird sanctuary, and when it rains, the bird droppings stink. Another explanation said that the source of the stink was vegetable matter, also related to rain. Fortunately, we had no rain during our stay, and the stink subsided so that it was not noticeable except while biking on the road by the pond. Also upon arrival, I was attacked by tiny insects. We opted for dinner inside instead of on the screened porch on our first night-but again, the insects seem to attack only for a short time during twilight. We ate most of our meals on the porch, and the bugs were not a problem. Speaking of meals, the food was uniformly excellent. One night, we had oysters on the half shell, stone crab legs, lobster bisque, and fried shrimp. Despite the excellent buffet, it is clear that the chef really pours his heart and soul into the desserts. I am not much of dessert eater, but I ate one at every meal. However, I must dissent from the rave reviews on the key lime pie. Real key lime pie is yellow and creamy, not iridescent green and gelatinous. The resort itself is very nice. The room are neat and clean. The bathroom has this funky wallpaper with reef fish blowing bubbles out of their mouths. The satellite TV gets pretty fuzzy reception on a limited number of channels, but you don't go to the Caymans to watch TV. There is a pool, a hot tub, some hammocks on the beach, and a tennis court. The dive facilities are first-rate, and the staff was highly professional. We had about 15 people on each boat-a very comfortable number for a 45-foot dive boat. Dottie, our diver master, had a pair of pink lycra suits that made her impossible to miss underwater. (For the ladies out there, she bought them from www.diverdiva.com With all the other Saturday arrivals, we were assigned to the Cayman Sister. The other boats were the Fantasea and the Island Sister. The next boat in the fleet will be named Twisted Sister (not!) On Sunday, we went out for our first dive, a relatively shallow dive just outside the reef in front of LCBR. The idea was to make sure everyone was up to speed before proceeding on to more difficult dives. Being on the same boat with the same crew and divers all week led to a feeling of camaraderie that was quite unusual. Some lasting friendships may come out of the experience. Anyway, there was lots of email address swapping at the end, and I have already received two emails from my new friends. Little Cayman is said to have the best diving in the Caymans, and I have heard (but not recently) the best diving in the world. Overall, I'd rate the experience four stars out of five: below Bonaire, Cozumel, and the offshore areas of Belize, which I'd rate the best I've ever seen. I had read about Little Cayman being covered with green algae, and I imagined a blanket of green scum covering everything, like the green scum on the bottom of an abandoned swimming pool. In fact, there were lots of little green plant-like things growing on dead coral. According to the boat crew, the Caymans suffered some major coral bleaching in a recent El Nino, and the algae moved in. Fortunately, there is evidence of a lot of new coral growth, and the algae doesn't stick to anything alive-including the many sponges, fan coral, and new-growth hard coral. When we arrived, a cold front in the US was making the wind blow from the north, overruling the prevailing southerly. For the first two days, we dived locations on the south side of the island. The Soto Trader is the wreck of a former island cargo ship that exploded in 1978 from gasoline in the bilge and sank upright in about 60 feet of water. The wreck is easy to penetrate, and has a lot of big fish in residence. Other sites included Windsock, Garden, Charlie's Chimneys, Richards Reef, and Gay's Reef. All pretty good diving. We saw large groups of lobster, a huge (6 feet long with 10 inch diameter) moray eel sleeping on the bottom, and a couple of big tarpon. I measured the water temperature at 82 degrees. On Tuesday, the wind subsided and started to blow out of the south, allowing us to do the better dives in the Bloody Bay Wall Marine Park on the north side. Bus Stop was my favorite site, although all the Bloody Bay sites were excellent. Most has awesome swim-throughs, nice coral, healthy sponges, and plenty of fish, numerous turtles, enormous groupers, and lots of conch, making "conch-trails" across the sand. We saw some huge lobsters, we estimated were in the 5-25 pound range. You can tell a lobster is big when his legs are nine inches long and thick as crab claws. Visibility increased as the week wore on, as settled conditions allowed the water to clear. There were only a few sharks, a couple of which we found dozing it shark holes. I called the Mixing Bowl site "New Jack City" because there were horse-eyed jacks, black jacks, bar jacks, and yellow-tailed jacks. Possibly the "signature fish" for Little Cayman is the fairy basslet-a member of the wrasse family that's got a blue head and a yellow tail. They were quite plentiful and beautiful. I tried my hand at underwater photography for the first time, and preliminary results are encouraging. Many of my pictures came out rather well, for a first effort. I bought an "el-cheapo" camera from Adventure Scuba for $40. It's a little automatic camera, made in China, in a case rated to 80 feet. In practice, it didn't implode when I accidentally descended to 90 feet. I come away from the experience believing that I should buy a digital camera. I think there are more wasted pictures underwater than on the surface, and with a digital camera you can throw out the culls without paying for film and developing. Besides, your new digital camera can be used on the surface too. The underwater case for a Canon Powershot S400 is only $189 list, not a bad investment. I think the Powershot will be my next major purchase. We did a night dive on the Soto Trader-the same wreck as one of our day dives. About three quarters through the dive, I was thinking "this is a bust". We saw no crabs, no octopuses, just one lobster, and only two big sleeping fish. Furthering my annoyance were these little orange things that were swarming all around my light-and all over my hand too, like gnats-different for sure, but annoying. About three-quarters through the dive, things started to get interesting. We noticed the clams inside the anchor capstan-with these orange "teeth" inside their shells. Then I noticed the bio-luminescence. With every kick, there were a couple of little stars. When I kicked furiously, I was surrounded by a constellation of stars! Finally, on the ascent, we noticed a mirror-winged flying fish, swimming circles around us. The guys on the boat told us that the flying fish had landed in the boat, and they had thrown him back in the water-thus accounting for his stunned mullet behavior. As you might expect, there's not a lot of night-life in an island with only 115 residents, but that is not to say that the place is completely dead. In fact, the bar at the LCBR is a hopping little place. Friday night was karaoke night, and under the influence of too much rum, I decided to sing the lovely Lennon/McCartney ballad, "I Should Have Known Better". Unfortunately, my voice was pretty well trashed from all the rum and cigars, and the song was pitched half an octave too high for my voice, so instead of a sweet McCartneyesque ballad, I pretty much screamed it like Lennon did on "Twist and Shout". Except badly off-key. During an intermission in the karaoke, we were entertained by a belly dancer-a tourist from Canada with a great enthusiasm and talent for her chosen artform. From there, we went down to the Hungry Iguana for "disco night" and more drinks. The place was packed-which was not too surprising since it's the only bar on the island outside the resorts. I had a nice chat with the belly dancer, now dressed in civilan attire. It was all downhill from there-literally. I stumbled out the front door and skinned my knee in the parking lot. Much has been made about the excess baggage fees imposed by Island Air to and from LC. I am pleased to report that my dive gear and personal gear slid under the 55 pound threshold with pounds to spare. It helped that I was carrying my regulator and computer in my carry-on bag, which was not weighed. I turn to the subject of weight because I weighed myself on the baggage scale while waiting at the LC airport and discovered that I had returned to my all-time record weight-too many desserts and Heinekens, I'm afraid. So now I'm on the South Beach diet. So far, so good!Cheers, Bruce