Grand Cayman April 2007

I had not stayed on Grand Cayman since before Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and was anxious to see what has been going on there. I did travel through there last year on the way to Cayman Brac and at that time there were still quite a number of houses that looked in need of repair. This time was a bit different. My friend Tense and I picked up our rental car at Coconut Car Rentals and decided on a brief tour of the island before heading for our hotel. Of interest to both of us was what was going on at our former favorite hotel The Seaview. We knew that the hotel had been demolished after the hurricane and that the rumor was there were to be condos in its place. The rumor turned out to be true. The good news is that they are apparently keeping the historical name of Seaview though. This is nice because the Seaview hotel was one of the oldest hotels on the island dating back to the 1950’s.

We were also interested in what had happened to the Hyatt Hotel. It appears that the property on the North Sound side is still not in operation – although the golf course is open. The main focus of the hotel now appears to be on the beach side of the Seven Mile Beach Road. We learned later that the golf course side of the hotel had been built before some building codes were adopted and that this was slowing down the reconstruction of that part of the property.

Elsewhere on the Seven Mile Beach Road the Ritz Carlton seems to be in full swing with the hotel open and signs posted advertising condos for sale. The Weston and the Ramada Inn also looked like they have recovered from the storm as well as most of the condo properties along that stretch. Once we left the Seven Mile Beach area headed for West End and our destination of Cobalt Coast there did not appear to have been any storm damage – and apparently the only damage that Cobalt Coast received was to their dock.

The drive to Cobalt Coast was an adventure in itself because of the location of the property literally on the far west coast of the island. Small signs on street posts and telephone poles lead the traveler along a twisting and some what circuitous route to the final destination. We were both happy that we were making the drive in full daylight because I doubt if we could have found our way at night.

As usual we were warmly greeted by Dora the hotel manager and Arie the owner upon checking in to our two bedroom apartment right at pool side. The accommodations at Cobalt Coast are all awesome but the pool side units are especially nice. After we had unloaded bags we wandered over to the dive shop where Jay Esterbrook, co-owner of DiveTech was just getting back from a scooter dive. We spent a few minutes catching up on local gossip and then got registered for diving.

Our plan for the week was “no plan”. The idea being that we would do a bit of diving if the mood struck us and if not we would just “veg out” at the pool or drive around the island. On Sunday we drove down to Don Foster’s and decided on a shore dive. That did not go well because Tense did a perfect giant stride onto a piece of coral and injured her foot. Monday we checked out the medical facilities on the island and found that what might have taken all day at a Columbus hospital took us less than an hour – that includes the doctor’s visit, the trip to the X-Ray technician’s office, the review of the X-ray by the doctor and the trip to Cayman Drug to fill two prescriptions. Amazing!

One thing lead to another and another and we decided not to dive on Tuesday but to drive down to Morritt’s Tortuga Club and see how they have recovered from Ivan. Apparently they are doing fine except that a lot of the ground floor units have not yet been repaired. We did stop at Lighthouse for lunch on the way back and it was great as usual.

Wednesday we tried an afternoon boat dive on the west wall but the seas were a bit rough and Tense opted out. I did make two dives and I can say they were very nice. Getting back on the boat was a challenge however. Thursday and Friday I did the two tank morning dives with DiveTech and had three wonderful dives and one awesome dive. The wonderful dives were near Sand Chute and then on the Doc Paulson Wreck on Thursday and the north wall site of Mary’s Garden. The awesome dive was the last one at Bear’s Paw – also on the North wall. Up until Bear’s Paw a Key West dive and a dive at Tune Town in Honduras had been competing for my number one and number two favorite shallow water dives in the Caribbean. Well Bear’s Paw definitely knocks those two sites out of first place contenders. The site is relatively shallow (Max of 50 feet) but totally full of corals and colorful fish – including a resident puffer fish and dozens of trumpet fish.

I was speaking with Jay and Nancy at DiveTech about Bear’s Paw and Jay said that it is his favorite dive site. For photos from my trip my Photo Gallery.

I came away from that trip to Grand Cayman totally confident that Ivan might have really messed with the land top-side, but the reefs are still intact and offer great diving as usual.

I would recommend Grand Cayman and Cobalt Coast to everyone.