Little Cayman Island

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:

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.

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