Snapshot of the Cayman Islands

Once upon a time the Cayman Islands lazed virtually lost, an afterthought south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica. Virtually all the islands remained blissfully undeveloped, tranquil on verge of tranquilizing. Only the occasional DuPont and Rockefeller or true dive and sportfishing aficionado came to Zen and zone out. No longer.

This British overseas territory, which consists of Grand Cayman, smaller Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, is one of the Caribbean's most popular destinations. Today's Cayman Islands are seasoned with suburban prosperity (particularly Grand Cayman, where residents joke that the national flower is the satellite dish and the national bird is the building crane) and stuffed with crowds (the hotels that line the famed Seven Mile Beach are often full, even in the slow summer season). Most of the 53,000-odd Cayman Islanders live on Grand Cayman, where the cost of living is at least 20% higher than in the United States, but you won't be hassled by panhandlers or feel afraid to walk around on a dark evening (the crime rate is very low). Add political and economic stability to the mix, and you have a fine island recipe indeed.

Grand Cayman has long been known for two offshore activities: banking (or as locals call it with a wink toward their own marauding history, "the new piracy," as corsairs gave way to corporate raiders) and scuba diving. With 296 banks and another 350-odd offshore financial institutions, not to mention insurance companies, the neat, prosperous capital, George Town, usually bustles with activity, but never more so than when two to seven cruise ships are docked in the harbor, an increasingly common occurrence.

It's an unprepossessingly flat, scrub-blanketed landfall. But, like the rest of the chain, Grand Cayman had water of such pristine purity that its rippling colors would defy gemologists' descriptions: Artists rave about it much as they do about the quality of the New Mexican sky. And it has a 6-mile-long beach. The hue of antique lace, powdery sand as refined as flour, with waving sea oats beckoning like come-hither courtesans and dunes as curvaceous as Goya's Naked Maja, it's one of those beaches that exude a scent and sensuality as potent as pheromones.

Even in the late 1970s, the beach was virtually unscathed. But the wildly famous, violently beautiful, and merely affluent are restless, forever seeking a new hot/cool sun spot as assiduously as pigs rooting for truffles. Grand Cayman couldn't remain undeveloped for long. Not when you throw in the islands' British tax-free status, government incentives to build, and the invitingly temperate subtropical climate. Today nonstop development creeps along Seven Mile Beach. Condo resorts and private homes rival those in the Hamptons and are as immaculately manicured as the clientele. How developed has Seven Mile Beach become? It's axiomatic that every Caribbean island produces a tourist magazine including a few pages on investment. The tiny Cayman Islands produce five or six glossies, which essentially devote half their editorial to banking, insurance, and real estate, relegating dining and sightseeing to secondary status.

While many seasoned, sophisticated travelers adore Grand Cayman, one fellow writer merely quotes Gertrude Stein: "There's no there there." Grand Cayman is definitely more developed, Americanized, and homogenized than some islands, particularly along Seven Mile Beach. What French politician Jack Lang long ago decried as Coca-colonization, the proliferation of KFC, Subway, Burger King, TCBY, and other chains littering the island-scape provides fast-food-for-thought; there's even a new multiplex cinema. So, yes, this is no longer an isolated paradise. But the Cayman government is determined to balance growth with environmental stewardship. Grand Cayman's allure is precisely that precarious balance and subliminal tension between its pockets of unspoiled natural beauty and something-for-everyone, sun-sand-surf mega-development along the calmer northwest coast.

Grand Cayman offers all the conveniences and convenience stores of home, a comforting sight for many repeat guests that also makes Grand Cayman the perfect entry-level Caribbean destination. Its phenomenal popularity lies in its dependability, ease, efficiency, safety, familiarity, and user-friendliness. There are nonstop flights from New York, Miami, and other major airports. Dollars are accepted everywhere (watch the exchange rate, as CI dollars are worth 20% more than their U.S. counterpart). Everyone speaks English, with a graceful tropical lilt. The locals are unusually friendly. The restaurants are uniformly above average, often innovative. Accommodations are reassuringly American-style: smaller glorified motels, all-suites and all-inclusive hotels, time-share condos, or self-contained glam resorts. The west coast, Seven Mile Beach, is one long, glorious, resort-lined swath of sand where you can indulge in almost every conceivable water sport, or bask undisturbed by obnoxious vendors.

The so-called Sister Islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman appeal mostly to divers, but anyone seeking total tranquility and a green-conscious vacation for less green will delight in their old-time Caribbean ambience and pristine beaches. Even on Grand Cayman there are peaceful, untrammeled areas. Past Bodden Town going east you still find the "real" old-time Cayman. The joke on the East End is that you needn't worry if you're not from the British Commonwealth: "Drive right, you can drive on the left, you can drive in the middle." You'll find old ladies weaving thatch on the beach and the scent of jerk chicken commingling with the salt air while colorful laundry flutters on the line like so many pennants and flags.

In September 2004 Grand Cayman was hit hard by Hurricane Ivan, but the landscape has now largely regained its lush greenery, although the effects on the mangroves and large trees are still visible. There is a lot of new construction (including the mammoth, environmentally sensitive, and brilliantly engineered Camana Bay residential/commercial "city") and plenty of traffic, so check with a local to plan driving time. It can take 45 minutes during rush hours to go 8 mi (13 km) in the Seven Mile Beach/George Town area.

The Making of the Cayman Islands

Who else but Christopher Columbus would be credited with the first European sighting of the Cayman Islands? Given that no aboriginal remains have been discovered, there's even a slight chance that his crew's were the first human eyes to look upon the islands, though specks appear in the right place on the Cantino Planisphere map published in 1502. On his fourth and final voyage in 1503, Columbus, en route from Panama to Hispaniola, was blown off course by blustery winds and blundered onto Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. The former's distinctive bluff has long since been a navigational landmark for mariners. On May 10, 1503, his son Ferdinand wrote in his log: "We were in sight of two small low islands filled with tortoises, as was the sea all about, in so much as they resemble little rocks." Though the ships didn't stop, Columbus claimed them for Spain, dubbing them "Las Tortugas" (the turtles).

The islands slept for nearly a century, until Sir Francis Drake sailed by in 1585-86 and renamed them Caymanas, after the Carib word for the then-abundant 10-foot crocodiles, "many... large lizards which are edible." Fast-forward to the Treaty of Madrid in 1670, after England seized them and Jamaica from Spain as spoils in the endless colonial tug-of-war that embroiled the Caribbean.

The islands remained largely unsettled, used as a pit stop (especially for wood, fresh water, and turtles) by pirates and mercantile vessels alike. Slowly, immigrants arrived from all over Western Europe, including refugees from the Spanish Inquisition and deserters from the British army in Jamaica, although the population remained under 1,000 in 1800, half of it slaves. It was an inhospitable place, ill suited to agriculture, covered in jagged ironshore, and filled with pestilential swamps.

Legend has it that pirates buried loot here, though concrete evidence is lacking. The few settlers harvested cotton and turtles for export, leading hardscrabble lives, eking out an existence on what root crops and fruits they could grow for sustenance. Ships often ran aground on the treacherous reefs and were then salvaged by the locals (who weren't above disorienting vessels with beacon fires). Wrecking proved the most profitable sideline. The most famous such disaster, the wreck of the Ten Sails, occurred when a ship struck an East End reef in 1794, and nine others fell like dominoes. According to local lore, the Caymanians proved so resourceful—even heroic—that an appreciative King George III granted the islands tax-free status.

The first democratic elections were held in 1831. Slavery was abolished in 1835, and most freemen remained. By 1900 the population had quintupled, though islanders still led hard lives, largely isolated from the outside world. Cotton, mahogany, sarsaparilla, thatch rope (mostly exported to Jamaica), fishing, turtling, and shipbuilding were the primary sources of income until the mid-20th century.

The population was approximately 3,000 in the 1950s; many islanders had left in search of a better life on Jamaica or elsewhere. Then Cayman struck the two sources of offshore gold that would revitalize the country. Divers discovered the precipitous walls and pristine reefs. The late Bob Soto established the Caribbean's first true dive operation on Grand Cayman in 1957, arguably establishing the regional birthplace of recreational scuba diving. Today there are more than 40 dive shops offering excursions to more than 200 dive sites for every level of enthusiast. The destination received a boost when Jacques Cousteau and his son Philippe raved about the underwater wonderland, naming Bloody Bay off Little Cayman one of the world's top three dive sites.

Sport fishermen also found the waters just fine; when the Southern Cross Club was built on Little Cayman in 1958 by the CEO of Sears-Roebuck and CFO of General Motors as a private club for their wealthy pals, the island's resident population was a grand total of three. With as many as 40,000 marlin and swordfish routinely hooked each year, the government established stringent rules; catch-and-release was vigorously promoted. The islands also helped pioneer ecotourism, creating several marine parks, bird sanctuaries, and other nature reserves.

The Owen Roberts Airport was constructed in the late 1950s, which in turn expedited the shipping of large machinery and materials. The first building boom resulted. Meanwhile, when Jamaica gained independence in 1962, the Cayman Islands opted to remain a British overseas territory; Cayman operates semi-autonomously, with parliamentary elections and a crown-appointed governor.

At the same time, the tax structure was fashioned as one giant incentive, luring hundreds of international financial institutions to the islands. Banking assets exceed (conservatively) US$500 billion. There are now 40,000 registered companies, including more than 600 banks and trusts—the world's fifth-largest financial center. In a mere three decades, a sleepy, mosquito-ridden backwater was transformed into a first-rate First World financial and tourism center, its infrastructure and standard of living the envy of the Caribbean. And now that the authorities have cleaned up after money-laundering scandals in the 1990s and the devastation of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the Cayman Islands can no longer promote their former catchy marketing campaign, "The Islands that Time Forgot." Well, at least not Grand Cayman.

The People of the Cayman Islands

The Cayman Islands are unique in that, unlike the rest of the Caribbean basin, no traces of habitation by indigenous people have been found by archaeologists or anthropologists. No haunting ruins attest to early settlement, though the wrecks just offshore attest to the cruel beauty of the reefs that ironically drive tourism. It may be that rare case where the politically incorrect term "discovered by Columbus" applies, though some scholars suggest that Arawaks and, especially, Caribs (skilled shipbuilders known for their 80-foot seaworthy canoes) would have stopped for provisioning between Jamaica and Cuba much as later mariners did.

Cayman was eventually settled by the British, who brought the slave trade with them (though the poor, porous soil was ill suited to cultivation). But after World War II the population had dwindled to a few thousand at most on the virtual ghost islands; most of the population had left for Jamaica and other islands in search of a better life.

That all changed with the advent of its two offshore bonanzas, which mushroomed in the 1960s. Today nearly everyone takes pride in pointing out that 113 nationalities compose the current full-time populace (that figure is as low as 87 depending on the source). Residents, especially dewy-eyed expats, cite their coexistence on these tiny specks of land as proof of harmony if not Utopia. So defining what exactly constitutes a Caymanian becomes as elusive as that proverbial sand slipping through your fingers, a mostly genteel controversy.

Indeed, more than half the population of Little Cayman (not counting the birds, though many are migratory as well) is North American or British. Then there are the Cayman-born, who take their own proprietary view and sometimes feel disenfranchised, especially on prosperous Grand Cayman. Several Cayman-born artists speak of feeling pressured to deliver less edgy, more generic work to the government-funded cultural institutions. And even the expats decry the high prices and harsh immigration, employment, and rollover laws.

Despite its geographic and cultural isolation from most of the region, Cayman (which is the preferred term for the country; never say "the Caymans") is close to its nearest island sisters in many respects. Culture is heavily influenced by Jamaica's proximity and sizable residential population. The area has developed close ties to the United States and Canada, as well as its mother country, Great Britain. U.S. products line grocery-store shelves, and U.S., Canadian, and British investors finance many of the large real-estate developments. Europeans have invested in some of the most exciting restaurants and small hotels.

One noteworthy aspect of Caymanian culture is its conservatism. This isn't surprising given the billions stowed in its banks. But between its British overseas territory status and proximity to the United States, Cayman can seem downright puritanical, especially for a fun-in-the-sun vacation destination. Churches are ubiquitous, and even Grand Cayman virtually shuts down on Sundays and religious holidays. The island's conservatism was partly responsible for the one major P.R. nightmare, when a gay-chartered cruise ship was denied berthing rights in 1998 (the minister of tourism allegedly voiced concern that the passengers could not "uphold the standards of appropriate behavior"). In the ensuing fracas, the British government decriminalized homosexuality, but even a decade later the debate simmers.

In most respects, however, Caymanians adopt a live-and-let-live philosophy. They're genuinely welcoming, especially on the sister islands, and expect the same courtesies to be observed. If you really want to fit in, address islanders as Mr. and Miss (even married women) followed by their first, not surname.

Spanish Galleons and Pirates

In 1586 Sir Francis Drake and his privateers, with the tacit approval of Queen Elizabeth I, were the first raiders to arrive in the Cayman Islands, finding safe harbors aplenty from which to prey on Spain's gold-laden galleons. So began a history of piracy, both encouraged and downplayed by Caymanian historians, the former because it makes for colorful copy, the latter because the locals were hardly models of moral behavior themselves, deliberately wrecking then plundering ships on the hazardous reefs.

Like any other mariners during the 17th and 18th centuries, buccaneers prowled these waters, especially in search of provisions, crew replacements, and a remote spot to effect repairs. The islands lay squarely on the trade route from Central America to Cuba and back to Spain. Local lore swears that bountiful treasure remains buried, especially in Bodden Town and the Brac's many caves and coves, to this day.

Reputedly the era's most infamous rapscallions sought hideouts both for themselves and their booty: Henry Morgan, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, Anne Bonney, Edward Low, George Lowther, and Neal Walker, to name-drop a few. Though undoubtedly buccaneers knew these waters, most historians suggest they played a relatively small role in Caymanian history. Whatever the truth, divers and snorkelers believe they've discovered buried treasure in the glittering underwater tiara of bejeweled coral reefs.

Geography, Flora, and Fauna of the Cayman Islands

These isolated slivers of sun-seared limestone offer an astonishing variety of terrains (above and below water), with richly diverse flora and fauna to match. That very geographic separation enabled species to evolve slightly differently from their mainland—even Jamaican and Cuban—counterparts, developing unique mutations and other characteristics.

A felicitous combination of factors—climate, underwater currents, water temperature, and geology—painted Cayman's multifaceted aquatic canvas. Other than the Brac's dramatic vaulting bluff, the Cayman Islands are pancake-flat. Few realize that they perch upon the peaks of a sheer submerged mountain range that defines the Cayman Trench, whose northern ridge plummets more than 25,000 feet, the deepest point in the Caribbean Sea. These topographical features form the stunning drop-offs and vertical walls within a few hundred yards of shore that seduce scuba divers from the world over. It seems a perfect setting for a Jules Verne adventure.

The healthy coral reef systems provide homes for hundreds of species of marine life, from Lilliputian grunts to leviathan groupers, not to mention mollusks, crustaceans, sponges, and sea fans, all in showy colors. Cayman is world-renowned for its marine life, but terra firma is almost as varied. Mangrove swamp composes almost half the total landmass, providing an important breeding ground for fish and birds; their protection is a major mandate of the National Trust for the Cayman Islands.

Almost half the 250 avian species identified in Cayman are seacoast or open-sea birds, including the migrants traversing the North and South American continents. Species include several types of boobies, West Indian whistling ducks, frigate birds, ospreys, purple gallinules, and coots. The colorful Cayman Brac parrot has earned its own protected reserve, as has the red-footed booby, making the Brac and Little Cayman particular favorites with birders. More than 650 different plant species have been documented, and the forests are far more diverse than those at northern latitudes; in parts of the Brac, cacti incongruously grow next to orchids and mahogany trees. Grand Cayman is home to one of the planet's most endangered species, the blue iguana, and an ongoing project is attempting with some success to breed and reintroduce the animal to the wild.