Grand Cayman Island: 10 Activities for Nature Lovers

When I was a young teen, I was aware that lots of people said they wanted to be marine biologists. I was going to be one. For Christmas, I’d ask for books about tropical fish and marine invertebrates. One of my first jobs was at an aquarium store. And when I was 15, my family’s first vacation out of the country (since I was two) was to Grand Cayman Island, where I got certified to SCUBA dive.

Alas, I abandoned my dream when I switched my major to journalism during my freshman year of college. Blame my wonderful senior English teacher for helping me realize that I loved to write. But I never abandoned my love of nature. So when my own teenaged son expressed a desire to learn to dive, we planned our own family trip to Grand Cayman. Ear trouble kept him from finishing his certification there, but fortunately, there’s plenty else to do on the island for a kid who loves nature.

Here are 10 fun adventures on Grand Cayman Island.

1. SCUBA Dive from boat or shore
Photo by Oleg Militsakh

The diving off Grand Cayman is world-class thanks to calm, clear waters and a barrier reef ringing the island. You can dive right from the shore—from a lovely tiki bar, Macabuca (I recommend their conch chowder) just north of Seven Mile Beach or from Eden Rock in Georgetown. Or take a boat from one of the many small diving operations (I went with the fine folks at Off the Wall Divers, who took care of everything from picking me up at my hotel to getting all the gear ready) to avoid the cattle-boat crowds. There’s nothing quite like diving the wall that drops from about 60 feet straight down into the disappearing blue—as deep 3,000 feet in places. I went nearly nose-to-nose with the Hawksbill turtle pictured above, watched a gorgeous spotted eagle ray soar past, and, on a night dive, saw an octopus and a nurse shark.

2. Snorkel all over the island
Photo by Oleg Militsakh

You don’t need to be certified to enjoy the underwater life around the Caymans—the snorkeling is also amazing. Places like Cheeseburger Reef (named for the Burger King that backs up to it) or Cemetery Reef (opposite a beachside graveyard) provide great spots to visit for free, where you can see giant tarpon, as well as a huge variety of colorful tropical fish, or you can book a wave runner snorkeling adventure through Red Sail Sports and zoom across the water on the way to snorkel spots like Boggy Sands. We were treated to two pairs of Green Turtles surfacing that we watched from our vehicles before hopping in the water with our personal guide.

3. Visit Stingray City and kiss a stingray

Probably the most memorable activity of our trip was taking a catamaran with Red Sail Sports to Stingray City, a spot where fishermen used to clean the day’s catch and populations of Southern stingrays would gather. They’ve become used to humans, who continue to feed the big female rays, which can grow to nearly five-feet wide and 200 pounds. With the help of guides, visitors can hold the stingrays and even give them a quick kiss—reportedly earning seven years of good luck in the process. The trip is usually paired with a quick snorkel at my favorite spot, Coral Gardens Reef, where we met a large, menacing-looking barracuda. Some outfits also add on a stop at Star Fish Point (a handful of starfish hanging out on a sandy bottom near shore).

4. Swim or wade with the turtles at the Cayman Turtle Centre

Turtle farming has been a long tradition on the island, but Cayman Turtle Farm has evolved into a turtle conservation center for the giant green sea turtles, releasing tens of thousands of turtles bred in captivity back into the wild, helping sustain populations that were in great decline. Visitors to the renamed Cayman Turtle Centre can have the unique and unforgettable opportunity of swimming and snorkeling in a lagoon with several green sea turtles or wading in smaller pools with younger turtles. The center also has an aviary where you can hand feed the local white-crowned pigeons, alongside other birds, and a pool where you can swim down and look through a window into a large aquarium.

5. Kayak through the mangroves
Photo of the author courtesy of Ambassadors for the Environment

The mangroves along the island’s large bay provide an important nursery for the reef fish, and a kayak tour is a great way to see the habitat up close. We stayed at the Grand Cayman Ritz-Carlton, whose Ambassadors of the Environment program offers a host of activities for kids and adults to get close to nature, including our kayak adventure. The friendly and knowledgeable staff guided us around and through a mangrove island, where we got close-up looks at some of the small creatures that call the roots of the saltwater trees home. I even found a tiny seahorse clinging onto the sargassum algae in the water.

6. Tour the Crystal Caves

It’s a bit of a trek around the island to its north side near Rum Point, but worthwhile to both see more of Grand Cayman and to experience the Crystal Caves. For an island whose highest point is a mere 52 feet, finding a significant cave system surprised me. But the 90-minute tour through lush tropical forests and down into three stretches of the cave was a treat. In addition to the varied stalactite and stalagmite formations, we saw dozens of fruit-eating bats and a picturesque underground lagoon.

 

7. Visit the Blue Iguana Conservation Center

Not far from Crystal Caves, in the middle of Grand Cayman is the Botanic Park, a gorgeous trail through the island’s natural habitat, where you can see birds, like the Grand Cayman bullfinch or the Yellow-faced Grassquit. “We have our protected zones, like the Botanic Park, where we ensure all the elements the birds need and like are available and are never touched,” Cayman’s Minister of Tourism, the Hon. Kenneth Bryan, told me. “We have some nature trails, but it’s in a way where it doesn’t affect any of the trees, it’s under the foliage.”

It’s also home to nearly all of the total population of the endangered Grand Cayman blue iguana. If you go, arrange a personal tour with one of the wardens of the Blue Iguana Conservation Center, where they raise young iguanas for release in the park. In 2003, there were only about 15 of the native endemic iguanas left—their young had been killed by rats, cats and dogs and outcompeted by the invasive green iguanas to almost certain extinction. But conservation efforts have helped the population of the world’s only blue iguana to grow to more than 1,000 individuals. The herbivorous lizards are not shy, can reach five feet in length and live for several decades.

 

8. Go birding at Barker’s National Park

Barker’s National Park in West Bay is a large undeveloped trail that’s great for birding, biking or horseback riding. I made the long trek by foot, which got pretty hot as the morning wore on (bring sunscreen, bug spray and lots of water!). But the payoff was beautiful views along both the beach and inland ponds with plentiful yellow warblers, bananaquits, grey kingbirds, black-necked stilts and a variety of water birds including a West Indian wistling-duck. The few other people I saw were either on bikes or horseback.

 

9. Take a bioluminescent tour
I was skeptical about how impressive the underwater light show might be when our Captain Marvin’s boat headed across the bay to the quiet inlet near Rum Point. But when night fell and we climbed down into the water with masks and snorkel, the psychedelics began. As I moved my hand through the water in front of my face, tiny algea and bacteria lit up, outlining my skin with a shower of tiny yellow bursts. In the darkest shadows of the boat, their lone defense mechanism became my personal fireworks display.

 

10. Eat and drink with a view

I highly recommend a stop at the very unassuming shack that is Red Bay Jerk Chicken for a (very large, very delicious) plate of chicken or pork on the way to Cayman Islands Brewery on the south side of the island—the eastern half of Georgetown. But my favorite dining experience was dinner at Tillie’s, right on Seven Mile Beach. Ask for a table on the beach, order one of their tasty cocktails like the Sultana Sidecar, discreetly kick off your shoes under the table to get sand in your toes, and enjoy.

Bonus: Relax on the beach, wherever you are

After all the activities around the island, it was a treat to just head down to Seven Mile Beach and enjoy looking at nature from the comfort of a lounge chair. At the Ritz-Carlton (pictured at top), that included a canopy for much-needed shade from the July sun. And if we were still feeling energetic, complimentary kayaks, floating rafts and snorkeling gear were close at hand. But there are public beaches to be found all over the island, and randomly stopping at one for a different view was always a good choice. Our favorite time on Seven Mile Beach was just before sunset as our view of the horizon was directly west and the always scattered clouds made for some spectacular moments.

But another option is the much less-developed east side of the island. “Everybody obviously wants to be on our famous Seven Mile Beach, but there are only seven miles of it,” Bryan said. “But we want to start to carry some of that tourism element to the eastern side of the island, where that’s a lot richer heritage and culture because locals are around.”

Josh Jackson is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Paste Magazine. You can find him on twitter @joshjackson or see his bird photos on Instagram @atl_birds