Cayman Islands Best Viewed From Underwater
C A Y M A N B R A C, Cayman Islands, Jan. 9 -- There's not much reason to goto Cayman Brac. No casinos. Only a few restaurants. Not muchshopping. No golf.
So what do you do with a week to kill on a Caribbean island withone of the world's best reef systems?
S-C-U-B-A.
And snorkeling. And hiking, climbing and birding. And theall-important sitting on the beach.
If you want luxury, Grand Cayman is fine, but diving there canget crowded and expensive. If you prefer the type of place whereChocolate, the dive shop dog, plays hostess to her friends in lateafternoon romps on the beach, then consider this sister island.
Cayman Brac is much smaller than Grand Cayman. It has apopulation of under 1,300 on an island about 12 miles (20kilometers) by 2 miles (3 kilometers). The third sister, LittleCayman, is smaller still, with under 170 residents on a10-mile-by-1-mile (16-kilometer-by-1.6 kilometer) island. Bothislands are regularly ranked among the best dive locations in theworld by readers of Scuba Diving magazine. Reef Divers runs thedive operation at Brac Reef Resort on Cayman Brac, and the shop,boats and staff were all first-rate.
The Lure of Diverse Diving
Leila McWhorter, a 63-year-old American, has been diving for 20years with over 300 dives mostly in the Caribbean, Bahamas andFlorida. A retired librarian and former teacher from Georgia, shemakes at least one dive trip out of the country each year. Forland-based diving, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman are her favoritespots; she's been to each three times.
"Bloody Bay Wall on Little Cayman is considered the best divesite in the world, but if you've been on it six days, it loses someof its luster," she said. "Cayman Brac has so much diversity.
"Every day that you make a dive, it's not like the day before.Every day it seemed to me that the dive was different," she added.
The visibility is excellent and water temperatures are acomfortable 86 F (30 C) in the summer and fall, a degree or twocooler in winter.
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