In the following post I talk about my trip to Cayman Brac. For those not in the know, the Caymans are known for their visibility and easy diving. Did it stack up to all the hype? Read on to find out.

Cayman Brac is one of three Cayman Islands - Grand Cayman and Little Cayman being the other two. Grand Cayman has been "cozumelified" - Hiltons, Starbucks, McDonalds, you name it - chances are, it's on the island. Little Cayman is less developed and has some of the best diving in the area. Cayman Brac is known for good diving while also being very laid back. My personal preference is always towards seclusion - hence, I chose Cayman Brac. There are few places to stay on Cayman Brac - essentially two - Divi and Brac Reef Resort. Brac Reef seemed ever so slightly more high end, so I picked it. Getting to Cayman Brac was an interesting ordeal.

Getting There

The whole trip was planned rather last minute, so flight options were limited. I booked Chicago->Atlanta->Grand Cayman->Cayman Brac, departing at 5.30am arriving around 3.30pm. Delta however decided that a more exciting route would be Chicago to Atlanta to Miami to Grand Cayman to Cayman Brac - extending the trip to about 7.30pm. All told, this was a ridiculously long trip. Obviously, your travel time will depend on your location.

Diving

Lets start with the fun stuff. The diving. Was it amazing? No. Was it good? Yes. The visibility was impressive - 100ft or so (and during the summer months, it supposedly regularly reaches 150ft or better). The reefs were healthy but otherwise seemed to be lacking in life. It should be noted that Hurricane Ivan crashed through this area not too long ago - it's possible that the ecosystem is still recovering. That having been said, I can't recall seeing too much that was interesting on my trip. I saw a lettuce sea slug (which I had not seen before) and I saw a Trunk fish (or was it a cow fish) with a remora attached to it's bottom. That was unique. Otherwise, life was pretty much your standard fare of triggerfish, two turtles, no sharks, one ray (only seen from the boat - none while diving), no dolphins, a few parrotfish, a handful of angels, some sargeant majors etc. Compared to Roatan, the macro life here was pretty sad. On the micro side, a few lettuce sea slugs, a fire worm of sorts, a handful of other slugs, one anemone.... hmm... that’s about it. Compared to Bonaire, micro life here was downright pathetic.

So what was good about the diving? A few things - visibility was nice - especially when compared with Roatan and Bonaire. A complete lack of current made the dives easy. In the end it was the valet diving that really made the trip enjoyable. The resort does a two tank dive in the morning and a one tank in the afternoon. Brac Reef has two pro 46 boats - plenty of space and very comfy. You set up your gear in a dive bag the night you arrive, it gets picked up by staff and placed on the boat. When you step on the boat, everything is already set up for you. The staff helps you into your gear and you giant stride off the back. When coming back up, you sit on the platform, the staff takes your gear off you and sets you up on a fresh tank. When you get back, you grab your fins and mask and leave the boat. Everything else stays on for the next day. That's about as easy as you can get - and the service was a nice touch. The dive briefings were very good as well. Mandatory safety stops. They suggest 45 minutes bottom time, but they don't seem to be too strict on this. This is a bit of a double edged sword - there was always the diver who insisted on diving to the absolute maximum he could on his tank and sometimes the boat would be waiting on one person for 20 minutes. I always had at least 1000 psi after 45 minutes, but when I saw that 80% of the boat had surfaced I always did as well. Common courtesy you ask me. My only complaint was the lack of a rinse tank for camera gear. Seems like such an easy thing to add to a boat that size...

The dive shop offers rental gear, including camera gear and even underwater video gear, though at $75 for the morning alone, the cost is pretty steep. I rented an underwater strobe from them for $20/day. Reasonably priced, but it wasn't as nice of a strobe as I rented in Bonaire for the same price. For reasons I have yet to determine, I had a heck of a time getting the strobe to work the way I wanted to. No amount of fiddling on my camera or the strobe seemed to produce the desired results. I'm convinced there must have been something wrong with the strobe because, though it fired all the time,  the camera only picked up the results sporadically. I tried different settings (single vs. dual flash) with no visible difference. You can see the pathetic results on my site.

The Resort and a few of my gripes...

The rooms were basic but comfortable. TV, desk, king size bed, drawers and a phone. Little patios off the 1st floor, balcony's off the 2nd. There were a good dozen or so hammocks spread around the resort which were fabulous for lounging about in. The bar was nothing special though they did have darts, foosball and a ping pong table which gave you something to do (which, considering the total lack of other options is a good thing). Now for the not so good...

I should probably start by saying that I have a very very standard for places when I'm spending this kind of money. Much of my complaints may come across as frivolous - and some of them probably are, so take them with a grain of salt.

I'll start with the dining. One of the big things that was touted when I was booking was a buffet dinner option that was supposed to be very good. One lady I met told me it was the best food she'd ever had anywhere - not just on vacation - anywhere ever. The food was good, but unless Chili's is your idea of top notch food, I can't imagine how you could describe it as the best you've ever had. She was from Noblesville, Indiana. I suspect her hometown dining options may be a little limited. The setup was simple: Breakfast buffet, lunch buffet and dinner buffet - if you didn't want that, you could order from the bar menu from 12pm to 9pm. The bar menu was your usual fare - chicken wraps, burgers, one pasta option, salads, buffalo wings. Etc.

The first night we arrived the buffet was pretty good and included a large number of desert options. The breakfast buffets were not too bad either - pancakes, hash browns, bacon, coffee, toast, bagels, muffins, fresh fruit and made to order omelets. The problem came when the resort stopped doing the buffets. They only did the lunch buffet once the entire time we were down there. The reason? There were not enough guests. I can understand this to an extent, but can you really expect your guests to order from the bar menu for lunch and dinner for three days in a row? Lunch? Bar Menu. Dinner? Bar Menu... Lunch again? Bar Menu... Dinner? Bar Menu..... sigh. In fact, we would have ended up with the bar menu the entire time we were there were it not for a single night where a group of 20 people were coming from another resort. To me, this is pretty disappointing. Especially if you are paying for some kind of meal plan and are stuck picking between a "Burger, Chicken Wrap, Tuna Wrap, Salad, Buffalo Wings, horrible conch fritters and a single pasta option." Strike 1.

All told, I think we had twelve people at the resort. My fiance and I were the only divers. The cost cutting dripped into other parts of the trip as well. Monday nights were supposed to have a manager's rum punch party. After a few days of doing nothing but alternating between hammocks, the bar and ping pong, my fiance and I were really looking forward to something a bit more lively - even if it just included six or seven people listening to some local band. The party was cancelled (despite being included in the package price) - again - due to lack of people. I can understand this - but if you were going to be offering free rum punch to your guests and you cancel it, is it out of this world to at least offer a single free rum punch to your guests at the bar anyway - if nothing else, as a token gesture? Captain Don's Resort in Bonaire had the rum punch party despite a mostly empty resort. Trivial detail? Yes, but an irritating one none the less. Strike 2.

The lack of people issue continues... Being the only two divers at the resort, all the other divers were coming from other resorts. As a result, the decision to dive rested completely on us. If we didn't dive, the boat didn't depart. Why? We prepaid for 11 dives, so they were "contractually obligated" to let us dive our 11 dives. This bothered me for two reasons. (1) What if we had not prepaid? They would never have gone out because they didn't have enough people? I can't imagine what I would have said... (2) The rest of the boat was aware this was the situation. I wish the staff had not divulged this because it really put me in a tough spot. Everyone wants to dive but you feel like spending the afternoon in a hammock. Everyone's looking at you - and if the boat doesn't go out - all the other divers know its "your fault". Beyond that, the staff was always pressuring us to decide whether or not we would dive in the afternoon the minute we got back to the dock. Can't I just go have lunch and decide when I'm done? On top of that, the package included a "free video" of your dive. The photoshop guy was supposed to come on one of the dives and tape everyone and then give you a free VHS tape of your dive. Considering that this normally costs and arm and a leg, this was actually a pretty decent perk in the package. Except for one thing. They never sent the photoshop guy. I never got a VHS. Oh well...

I can pretty much forgive all of this and chalk it up to "island life". It's mostly petty stuff and it's not that big of a deal... but there's one thing that I just cannot swallow. I now present you with my one major gripe. I was planning on proposing while in Cayman Brac and I was planning to do it on their pier. See their website for what I'm talking about. It is a large double decker pier with hammocks and lights and apparently it's just amazing to go out to at night. I spoke with the reservation office about my plan to propose out there and they said "Oh fabulous... If you want we can arrange some champagne..." I then asked about Hurricane Ivan and how the diving/resort was. The response went something like this "Oh I was just down there. The boats got a bit banged up but they've been fixed. The diving’s great." The one minor thing she failed to mention? The dock no longer exists. To me, this is absolutely inexcusable - either she was lying about having recently visited or she willfully and knowingly failed to mention the lack of a dock. Either way, it's despicable. I would normally not make much of a deal about it but I had explained that I planned to propose on the dock. To neglect to point out that it no longer exists isn't only a bad business practice - it's downright scummy. Am I being overly harsh? Maybe, but planning a proposal is a pretty big deal and you want it to be perfect .... Note also that the website completely fails to mention the lack of a dock. Ivan was in September 04. I think that’s enough time to update the site, don't you? In my book, this is Strike 3.

Put that all together - a buffet that never was, a rum punch party that never was, a less than comfortable boat situation, a VHS tape I never got and a dock that doesn't exist.... it sure leaves you feeling a little sour about the whole thing. Especially when the trip, excluding flights, cost roughly $2200 for 5 nights. Factoring in flights, the cost was close to $1000 a day. That's steep. For comparisons sake, the total cost of my Bonaire trip was similar - but it was 7 days, not 4 and included unlimited shore dives and a rental car - and we ate out frequently with better food (lobster for example).

One other note. The resort is very very close to the airport. In fact, if you have a good arm, you could probably throw a rock at a landing plane and hit it. You can hear the 6.45am flight out in your room. If you cant' hear it, you can feel it. If you are diving it actually makes for a nice wake up call. If you are not, I imagine it would be very irritating.

Was the resort otherwise nice? Yes. The beach was beautiful and basically devoid of people, the hammocks were abundant (course, it helps that the resort was mostly empty) and the dive staff were quite good. Was it good enough to go back? No.

You may be wondering about the proposal. I did it anyway, on the beach during the sunset. Photos are here. Oh yea, almost forgot: She said yes. All considered, it was still a great location to do this - even without the dock. Does that make me feel better about the lying/omissions from the reservation office? No, not really.

The Island

The island itself basically has nothing on it. Two resorts, seven thousand parcels of land for sale (seriously, there's a sign every twenty feet), a few caves to explore, a parrot sanctuary (though its a 40 minute hike through the forest), a small town center with a small "grocery" store. No real shopping unless you like trinkets that are supposedly made on the island. In one store I saw fish made of balsa wood slats that shift. Definitely Ecuadorian in origin - I have a bunch of them from the days my father would travel there for work. It doesn't take long to drive the length of the island - maybe an hour each way - and there isn't much to see. The one thing that is worth doing is going up to the bluff - the high point of the island with cliffs in all directions. The view is pretty spectacular although the walk is tough on your feet (lots of loose rock next to hell rock - aptly named because it's as jagged as a knife). Bring tennis shoes, not sandals if you plan on going up here. Though the island had little to do, it did make for a relaxing "off the beaten path" feeling.

Overall

Decent easy diving probably better suited to a family atmosphere or to divers wishing to complete an open water cert. If valet diving is your thing, this is also a good choice. It really was about as easy as you can get. We were easily the youngest couple there - by at least ten years so making friends at the bar was not easy. Reasonable accommodations with reasonable food (when it's served). Worth the price? Probably not considering other options. Puerto Rico was comparable though less expensive and closer to home. Bonaire lacked macro life but more than made up for it with micro. Roatan lacked micro but made up for it with macro (and has plenty of nightlife). Mexico was a mixed bag, but the cave and cavern diving down there is pretty wild and definetly not run of the mill.

Photos

You can find photos of the whole trip here. Some have yet to be uploaded, so come back to check it out.