Grand Cayman Caution: May Cause Drowsiness

Grand Cayman Caution: May Cause Drowsiness

Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman Island is steambathy hot. Sprawled and spent on a beach recliner whose tented hood shades you like a cabriolet; you default to regularly “resting your eyes” and sinking to Never Never Land.

A half hour later, you wake to another dream: surreally beautiful beachscape (we’re talking Captain Picard’s Holodeck artifice) and Seven Miles of white, velvety sand. A lazy splat into the spa-warm sea doesn’t change the scene. Pinch yourself.

400ish km from Cuba in direction and Jamaica in another, Grand Cayman is pure Caribbean. The population numbers 70k-ish, many of whom weren’t born here. So, it’s small but thriving. At least that’s the impression you get between bouts of sedation.

For beach lovers, that’s all you need all you need to know. Bring on the rum cocktails. But I get bored of beaches, even beautiful ones, fast. We’re here five days and I’m ready for something else by 2pm on Day 2. If you’re like that, here are a few activities that amused, exercised and, at one point, nearly brought me to tears.

First, The Amusing

Cayman Spirits Seven Fathoms rum melts your lungs’ cilia. Treat it with respect. The distillers age it seven fathoms below sea level. Hence the name. Supposedly that underground process speeds distillation by years according to their wisecracking hostess, Athena.

This distillery’s other offerings look like they’d do better in cakes — or the medicine cabinet. Picture cough syrup with a pirate on the label. Bring a DD. After sampling all their products, coached by Athena’s hilarious hourly patter, you’re unable to drive.

Admission to the nearby Grand Cayman National Gallery (everything’s nearby) is free. Nearly all its art reflects life on the island, much of it wistful and nostalgic. Well curated, this museum’s a great way to sober up for a spell after, say, a distillery tour. Need a selfie to prove you have good taste, not just some beached bear sloshing mojitos? A massive metal piranha, fashioned completely from reclaimed discarded machinery, dominates a gallery on the second floor.

Now, back to the beach for your well-earned nap.

The Accommodation And Facilities

My co-visitors and I wonder if we’re playing a hidden game of Big Brother. For four nights and five days, we’re well looked after in Exclusive’s four-suite Villa 8 with a stocked kitchen, spacious living room and magnificent patio with picture-perfect views of palm treed golf holes beyond our infinity pool. (Actually, it’s finite but still plenty spacious to float in every yogi’s favourite pose, savasana, for hours.)

Back to the beach, as Frankie and Annette once said. Our soporific sandbox is 500m on the other side of this sprawling Ritz-Carlton campus but we’re supplied with golf carts to shrink the distance. We pass pickleball courts (whatever that means), the helipad, a good portion of the private golf course, and a cluster of Bond-villain mansions.

Ostensibly Exclusive Resorts is a club of vacation properties around the world which stores day-to-day essentials and vital luxuries in accommodations like ours, from flatscreen TVs to jacuzzis, Wi-Fi, and extra throw pillows. Depending on the destination, an Exclusive property has access to different resort services. We could visit the Ritz-Carlton’s beach, many pools, and hide beneath the shaded recliners, dollop ourselves with its sunscreen, dry off with its plushy beach towels, work out in the gym, and charge food from the restaurants to our villa. The more exclusive (with a lower case e) activities, from golf to enviro tours, spa treatments and $30,000-branded watches, were extra.

Exclusive membership includes access to an “Ambassador” who co-plans your vacation ahead of time online or by phone, and a personal onsite “Concierge” whose job is as it sounds. Ambassadors, Concierges, helipads: All this softly bounces round your head while you fall asleep again at the beach.

The Exercise

I intend to visit Grand Cayman again soon but next time will rent a car. This visit was a press trip. We were housed in a capacious private villa, supplied by the private travel club, Exclusive Resorts but integrated with the Ritz-Carlton campus. Our island-paced schedule included the occasional taxi but no car.

But if you’re crazy enough to ride a bike through a two-hour steam bath, you could always rent one to be delivered to the villa. This being our final morning, the wilder east side of Grand Cayman was too far but the nearby West Bay, mostly built-up, does contain a small traffic-, building- and construction-free nature preserve at its very tip.

Risking heatstroke, I join the mad dogs in the midday sun, cruising through what looks like a Cleveland suburb with palm trees. After 45 sweaty minutes, I’m solo in the scrubby but lovely Barker’s National Park. Stop. Breathe. Smile. Get a quick pics. Drain the (now hot) water bottle. Whistle a happy tune. Then turn around and ride quickly back through a powerful tropical wind for a late lunch this final day. Total distance there and back? 30 sweaty kms. Maybe a quick beer first. I just shed two pounds.

The Overwhelming

In the morning of our third full day, we board Captain Eric’s spacious new deep sea fishing boat. It’s floating cure for midlife crisis. But we’re to observe and interact with local sea life, not kill and stuff it.

Eric’s knowledgeable, charming and just cool: picture your biggest man-crush of 2024. “Back in the 1950s, my father and uncles would fish all night. They hated being bitten by the mosquitoes at the beach in the mornings and would clean the catches out here by the reef instead.”

We’re about two miles from shore; the water’s only four feet deep here and bright blue green. Imagine them standing in the ocean, gutting the catch. Stingrays would come to feed on the chum that Eric’s dad left to float to the sandy bottom. “At first the rays were cautious and kept their distance.” But before long, his dad’s friendly crew had tamed the stingrays into eating out of their hands.

“Tamed?” we asked. “STINGrays?” Yes! After anchoring, Eric jumps into the water with quality fish chum — mmm, who can resist? — spreads it about. Within 30 seconds, we’re surrounded by a flock of these beautiful living kites. Graceful as aquatic gazelles, their movements are mellow sine waves. “They must have an incredible sense of smell,” I venture.

“Yes,” agrees Eric “and they recognize my boat. It’s the only one with the good fish.” Not only are they clever enough to recognize different boat bottoms, but they’re also affectionate. “Stingrays?”

“Yes, these big ones are the females.” Eric shows us how to feed then cuddle with one. And yes, again, cuddle! You drop fish before her eyes — nobody likes a surprise from strangers — then flank her midsection from beneath, holding her up with extended arms under her wings, never cracking the surface. Then experience her snuggling into your chest. We hug for a good 20 seconds. It’s a beautiful moment and — later, we all agreed — the highlight of our trip.

Just thinking about the encounter still brings a lump in my throat. The only thing that could’ve come close to such a humbling communion with another living creature would be to observe a deep-sea turtle here. “Sometimes we see them,” Eric had said earlier, with little encouragement in his voice.

Eric enjoys giving smaller tours like ours but worries about the effects of the massive cruise ships vomiting thousands of shoppers into George Town daily. “You can smell sunblock from miles away.” All that sunblock can’t be any good for the aquatic life like my affectionate and unjustly named stingray. The coral reef we’re snorkeling around (baking our backs a nuclear red) was scorched last summer, from innumerable weeks of hundred-plus temps. “Things are coming back pretty good,” he responds to my question. “But this year’s supposed to get hot again,” he adds with a touch less good cheer. Even in this heat, that’s chilling to hear.

The Dining

The Ritz-Carlton in Grand Cayman is built for busy multigeneration upper-middle American families. It has several restaurants, the most expensive of which we didn’t get to, though most of the others served the sort of corporate hotel fare that’s perfect for sunstroked grandparents with cranky toddlers between naps. If you like your meals spicier, dare to venture off-campus.

A few mega hotel complexes down Seven Mile Beach, Tillies restaurant serves those commendable breakfasts you see art directed on Angstagram. On Day 3, we lunched on the shaded patio at Kaibo Restaurant on that wilder northeast side of Grand Cayman. The fish was so fresh it was practically still spitting out the hook. On our final night, we were fortunate to enjoy an in-villa meal, cooked here and served by local Ragazzi restaurateurs; an example of the bespoke vacationing Exclusive’s Concierges will perform. My steak was exquisite.

And on our final day, quayside at the George Town Yacht Club, the free range jerk chicken was magnificent, clearly created by a local. We’d just spent our week counting chickens freely ranging everywhere, cockle-doodling us awake each morning. They were gorgeous … and, ultimately, delicious.

Beautiful, Orderly And Not Cheap: Ask What’s Included

Be prepared to pay a lot of money, even if you’ve pre-bought some package. I observe some sweltering cows during my parting-day bike ride but pretty much everything else has been imported. Locals like to negotiate with cash, sometimes only with cash. You’ll be withdrawing from ATMs, many of which are attached, incongruently, to Canadian banks.

And don’t pretend for a second that this is some tropical paradise whose governors life figured out. Cruise ships dwarf the harbour; construction’s ubiquitous (Seven Mile Beach is now only 6.3 miles); and all purchases are costly.

On the other hand, Grand Cayman is a tranquil haven with a strong culture of following the rules. It’s no Singapore but still significantly more orderly than other Caribbean destinations.

Signs everywhere threaten litterers with $500 fines or “SIX MONTHS IN JAIL”! A huge handwritten sign in front of the ferry dock liquor store warns anyone who drinks near their premises of an accompanying $1,000. Beware: that’s a thousand CI dollars. Greenbacks cost an extra 20¢ per local dollar and our Canadian rupees an extra 60¢. My two-hour bike ride cost $40 CI, $70 Canadian.

But I wouldn’t trade the experience for another hundred.

Epilogue: Your Turtle

 One last memory: It’s late morning on Captain Eric’s boat, just after viewing vast schools of multicoloured fish on the reef. One was bright yellow and blue like a tiny Ukrainian flag; another that looks a fat shoelace popped in and out of its seabed hole, scanning the area around like a meercat. I’m babbling with the housemates about how we’d never expected to have such human/animal connection with sea life when another writer bursts from the sea and belts out “Steve, a turtle. It’s your sea turtle. Look!” I quickly wrap my head again in the snorkel and mask and dive in.

And there she is. A big beautiful old turtle gently gliding not four metres away. Startled at first by my inelegant entry, she consents to drift with us for a good 300m before we realize how far we’ve floated and must swim back to the boat. Pinch me.