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Little Cayman Island

Many of the Donkey Divers have been to Grand Cayman Island more than once so we decided that we needed to see one of the sister islands. We chose Little Cayman Island for this trip. It was a great trip. Five of us were able to stay for 10 days.

To see pictures from our trips to Grand Cayman, click on the buttons below:

Cayman 2001          Cayman 2002

To see the resort we stayed at, click on the Little Cayman Beach Resort logo. The web site does not do justice to this fine resort. The rooms were nice (newly remodeled after hurricane damage), the service was good, the food was great, and the diving was outstanding.

The trip was great. The dive crew gave great dive briefings before each dive with accurate drawings of the dive site. The dive masters were from several different countries. Most that we had on our boat were from US, or UK. Christophe, however, was from France and had a strong accent. His briefings were very entertaining. He talked a lot like Inspector Jacques Clouseau as played by Peter Sellers. Our dive briefings sometimes sounded like dialogue from the Pink Panther movies. One of his briefings would go something like this:

Christophe: Once you get into the water you will see the wool.
Diver: The wool?
Christophe: Yes, the wool. And you may see shacks on the wool.
Diver: There are shacks on the wool?
Christophe: Yes.
Diver: How did shacks get on the wool? Were they washed into the ocean by the hurricane?
Christophe: No. The shacks have always been on the wool.
Diver: What type of shacks are these? Storage shacks? Beach shacks?
Christophe: No. Most are noose shacks or black teep rif shacks.
Diver: Oh! SHARKS!
Christophe: Yes. That is what I said SHACKS.
Diver: We will be sure to look for them on the wool.

Below are some pictures from this trip. If you click on the thumbnail, you will get an enlarged picture. Click on the "Back" button on your browser to return to this page from the enlarged pictures.

We flew from Grand Cayman to Little Cayman (about 65 miles) on this little plane and landed on a grass runway. I have been on golf courses that had wider cart paths than this runway.
Here I am at Edward Bodden Airfield on Little Cayman. The good thing is that we didn't have to arrive two hours before our departing flight and getting through security didn't take long at all. We had severe weight limits on our luggage and I am not a light traveler when I dive. I have all my scuba gear and underwater camera and video. I am also "Gadget Man", so I like to bring lots of extra gadgets. I had to cut over 50 pounds out of what I usually take.
The resort we stayed in was an all-inclusive and it was great (click on logo above if you haven't already done so). We walked out of our rooms and down this boardwalk to the dive boats. If you look closely at the dock, you will see an upper platform. Most nights we would end up there after dinner watching the stars in the clear sky. We got to see a meteor shower a few nights.
Shortly after arriving at the resort we checked out the resort's bar, "Beach Nuts". Service was good. In this picture you can see (l-r) Carol, Cindy, Terry, Wally Z, Linda and Wally R.
Here we are on the dive boat. Digital photography does not do justice to the color of the water. (Also, it makes me look 15 pounds heavier)
Check out the color of the water in this one. Linda, Cindy and Doreen pose with me between dives.
The water was warm (86 to 87 F) and crystal clear on most dives. The coral was healthy, plentiful and colorful.
We saw a lot of huge barracudas on this trip. Here is one just in front of Johnny. This guy was over five feet long.
While I could get close enough to take this picture with a wide angle lens (I am about a foot from his face here), the barracuda was not happy about it. He kept opening his mouth to show his teeth (about the size of a German Shepherd's) and jerking his head towards me to warn me that he meant business.
Huge coral formations made for dramatic dives as we swam between them.
Here are the Donkey Divers on the bottom of the ocean.
We didn't see many eels here, but here is one. I will be seeing plenty of eels next month when I visit Bonaire.
We saw lots of large groupers on most dives. This grouper is at a cleaning station. If you look closely at the enlarged picture, you will see a small cleaning fish cleaning his right eye. This is important since most fish do not have eye lids to keep their eyes clean.
This is a Lettuce Leaf Slug. They have ruffled skin on their backs that resembles leafs of lettuce. This slug is moving slowly across some coral. It is an uncommon blue color.
Angelfish were pretty common in Little Cayman. These are French Angelfish that we saw near the "wool".
Linda is swimming in a school of chubs.
Here Johnny and Robin are lying on the sand to get shots of this southern sting ray as it glides along the bottom looking for food.
School of jacks swimming above me.
This is a sergeant major fish guarding his eggs (that purple area on the coral behind him).
Turtles are common in the Caymans. We saw turtles on all but two dives and I am sure that they probably saw us on every dive.
The turtles are friendly and don't mind you getting close.
They would calmly swim along beside you.
They would let you swim above them.
Or below them.
They even allowed close ups.
They glide so gracefully through the water.
This little guy swam right up to Johnny and posed for a picture.
Then he seemed to turn and say to us, "Hey, look! This dude just took my picture."
Here Robin swims along getting some shots of this big turtle.
While swimming through this tunnel of coral, I ran into a turtle coming the other way. We swam past each other and went on our way.
I made 25 dives and spent 25 hours underwater (see chart below). I also hit dive number 500 on the sixth day of diving. Linda hit dive number 350 and Robin went over 150 dives on this trip. Wally R will hit number 300 next month in Bonaire. Johnny took this picture and the next two of me.
Coming through a little arch in the coral formation. The walls on Bloody Bay Wall are full of interesting swim-throughs.
Here I am looking at Johnny through an opening in the coral formation.
Four of the last five Donkey Divers (Johnny, Linda, Robin and I) on the island (Wally R took the picture) pose here with the sign we made to document our visit.
   

To see pictures from other dive trips, click on the button below to go to my SCUBA page. It has links to other pages of pictures and dive reports from many different dive trips over the years. 

                         Scuba Diving Page  

  

         

www.drizz.com

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  In case anyone is interested, this is a list of the dives I did on this trip:
Date Location Dive Site Max Depth (ft) Bottom Time (min)
8/8/2005 Little Cayman Mixing Bowl 100 49
8/8/2005 Little Cayman Ringer's Wall 52 62
8/8/2005 Little Cayman Eagle Ray Roundup 63 56
8/9/2005 Little Cayman Nancy's Cup of Tea 105 56
8/9/2005 Little Cayman Jackson's Hole 63 56
8/9/2005 Little Cayman Coconut Walk 61 60
8/9/2005 Little Cayman Soto Trader 51 Night Dive    64
8/10/2005 Little Cayman Bus Stop 99 55
8/10/2005 Little Cayman Black Tip Blvd 59 62
8/10/2005 Little Cayman Joy's Joy 69 59
8/11/2005 Little Cayman Comber's Caves 99 55
8/11/2005 Little Cayman Meadows 55 63
8/11/2005 Little Cayman Great Wall West 98 63
8/12/2005 Little Cayman Lea Lea's Lookout 75 61
8/12/2005 Little Cayman Meadows 70 60
8/12/2005 Little Cayman Donna's Delight 51 62
8/12/2005 Little Cayman Comber's Caves 40 Night Shore Dive 75
8/13/2005 Little Cayman Bus Stop 102 59
8/13/2005 Little Cayman Marlyn's Cut 65 62
8/13/2005 Little Cayman Mixing Bowl 58 63
8/14/2005 Little Cayman Paul's Anchor 97 53
8/14/2005 Little Cayman Great Wall East 50 59
8/14/2005 Little Cayman Comber's Caves 57 60
8/15/2005 Little Cayman Cascades 83 56
8/15/2005 Little Cayman Baracuda Bright 60 68
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