Cayman Islands

Owen Roberts International Airport is 5km from Seven Mile Beach. Check into your resort and walk directly to the beach — Seven Mile Beach is exactly what the Caribbean promises: powdery white sand, calm turquoise water, and a lineup of luxury hotels and beach bars stretching north toward the quiet residential end of the beach. The water is extraordinarily clear — the sandy bottom visible at 10 meters. Calico Jack's beach bar at the southern end and the Ritz-Carlton's beach at the northern end are the two classic bookends of Seven Mile Beach evening culture. Dinner at Luca in the Caribbean Club for contemporary Italian-Caribbean cuisine, or Blue by Eric Ripert for the finest fine dining on the island (book well ahead). The Cayman Islands are US-dollar based and English-speaking — the most frictionless Caribbean destination from the US.

Stingray City is the most famous wildlife encounter in the Caribbean — a sandbar in the North Sound where southern stingray rays have been fed by fishing boats for 40 years and have become extraordinarily habituated to human presence. The rays approach boats and swimmers of their own accord, wrapping around waders' legs and accepting fish scraps from outstretched hands. A large female southern stingray can have a wingspan of 2 meters; the experience of being surrounded by a dozen of them in waist-deep water of extraordinary clarity is unlike anything available in any aquarium. Boat tours from Seven Mile Beach take 30 minutes to reach the sandbar. Most tours also include a snorkeling stop at the Coral Gardens reef — excellent shallow coral with healthy fish populations — and Rum Point for lunch on the North Sound.

The Cayman Wall — more properly the Cayman Trench wall on the south side of Grand Cayman — is one of the world's great dives: a vertical reef wall that drops from 15 meters to effectively infinite depth, covered in black coral, sea fans, and sponges, and frequented by eagle rays, hawksbill turtles, and large pelagic fish. The north wall is more sheltered and more colorful; the south wall more dramatic. For non-divers, snorkeling off the Seven Mile Beach shore in the morning (the reef begins at 6 meters just off the sand) is excellent. Eden Rock and Devil's Grotto, two dive sites at the southern end of George Town, are famous for the congregations of tarpon that shelter in the grottos — hundreds of 1-meter silver fish in a cave, visible from the surface by snorkelers. Many excellent PADI dive operators on the island run discover scuba courses for non-certified divers.

A 35-minute flight from Grand Cayman takes you to Little Cayman — an island of just 200 people and possibly the finest unspoiled dive destination in the Caribbean. Bloody Bay Wall on the north shore of Little Cayman drops from 6 meters to 1,800 meters and is considered by dive magazines the best wall dive in the western hemisphere: extraordinary visibility of 40-50 meters, extraordinary soft coral formations, and the fish life density of a fully protected marine park. The island is almost entirely protected National Trust land — frigate bird colony, red-footed boobies, and iguana everywhere. The Owen Island day trip (rowing a kayak 100 meters across the turquoise channel to an uninhabited sand cay) is the most pristine swimming experience available. Return to Grand Cayman by evening flight.

George Town, Grand Cayman's capital, is a surprisingly pleasant Caribbean city with excellent shopping (duty-free jewelry, watches, and rum are all significantly cheaper than on the US mainland) and the small but excellent Cayman Islands National Museum in a 1833 courthouse building. The museum covers the natural history of the Cayman Islands — the formation of the three islands, the endemic blue iguana (one of the world's rarest lizards, with fewer than 1,000 individuals remaining in the wild), and the maritime history of a nation whose men were among the Caribbean's finest boat builders and sailors. The Blue Iguana Recovery Programme at the Botanic Park has breeding iguanas and an excellent guided tour. Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park has Cayman's most complete collection of endemic plants and the best cross-section of the island's natural diversity.

The East End of Grand Cayman is the quietest and most unspoiled part of the island. Blowholes at the East End — natural limestone formations where the Atlantic swell forces water through holes in the ironshore rock, creating geysers of spray up to 6 meters high — are the island's most dramatic natural spectacle. Rum Point, on the North Sound, has the calmest and most turquoise water on the island, the best beach bar (Red Sail Sports), and the calmer family atmosphere of the North Sound compared to Seven Mile Beach. Kayaking through the North Sound mangrove channels — guided tours of 2 hours through the extraordinary nursery habitat of the Cayman marine ecosystem, with juvenile tarpon, upside-down jellyfish, and rays visible in the clear water — is one of the island's best environmental experiences.

Owen Roberts International Airport has direct flights to Miami (1 hour), New York (3.5 hours), Charlotte, Atlanta, and other US cities, plus London Gatwick direct. A final Seven Mile Beach morning swim, a last Dark and Stormy at the beach bar, and shopping in George Town for duty-free Cayman Spirits rum (one of the world's best small-batch rums, produced from locally grown sugarcane), Tortuga rum cake (the Cayman's most famous food export), and a piece of black coral jewelry (a specialty of Cayman craftsmen). The Cayman Islands deliver on every Caribbean promise while being simultaneously the most frictionless, English-speaking, and luxury-standard destination in the region.