Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 24, 1991 TAG: 9102240288
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KATTI GRAY NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
We spent five days on the island last month, a British colony south of Cuba and west of Jamaica. My companion ventured to such diving attractions as the North Wall. He swam to depths of 115 feet in waters that were 80-degrees warm and still enough sometimes to appear as glass and let him clearly see 80 feet below. It was, he said, incredible.
To his hours of trailing parrotfish, starfish, angelfish, eel, sea cucumber, grouper, crab, octopus, barracuda and feeding squid to stingrays by hand, I devoted one morning to snorkeling off Seven Mile Beach, which flanked our hotel and a cluster of other tourist accommodations in the island's West Bay. Occasionally, I stopped snorkeling, stood upright, kneeled over with my masked face in the sea and watched fish of fuchsia, turquoise and canary yellow dart around my ankles.
But, too skittish for more adventurous aquatics, I mostly set out daily by foot and Jeep - which, along with rented mopeds and bicycles, are a primary source of tourist travel - to uncover the oh-so-chichi, or pretentious, cachet of an island 21 miles long and 8 miles at its widest point.
And chichi it is, from its pricey restaurants to its designer boutiques. The government claims every employable Caymanian has a job.
From Seven Mile Beach, which harbors one of Grand Cayman's two main centers of hotels and such, there is a 25-minute walk into George Town, the capital of Grand Cayman and its smaller sister islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. They collectively boast 25,000 residents, descendants of English, Welsh and Irish settlers and African slaves.
Downtown George Town is replete with the usual souvenir shops but also has stores peddling everything from Gucci leathers to Waterford crystal to Rolex watches. The shops are overshadowed by several multistory government and office buildings, international and Caymanian banks reputed in the past for money laundering. Even as Cayman tries to shake that seedy image, its tourist pamphlets and magazines still encourage investment and tout the fact that Cayman levies no corporate or personal income tax. The government solicits corporations hoping to "prevent enquiries into tax-related transactions."
The hotel our travel agent chose, the Ramada Treasure Island Resort - a 4-year-old facility with a lovely lobby and swimming pools but needing new carpet and paint elsewhere - cost roughly $250 a night. The package included three diving excursions for my companion. (Posher condos near our hotel start at $290 a night.) A gallon of gas was $1.90, and a one-way taxi ride to a location 4 minutes from our hotel brought a $5 charge.
One lunch of turtle steak, fish, rice-and-peas and such came to $57 for two people. But the eatery in question, Cookrum, had the best cuisine of six Caymanian restaurants we tried.
A decidedly touristy place in George Town, Cookrum offers such West Indian traditions as frittered or marinated conch (giant snails) and rice-and-peas and such local specialties as turtle, cracked conch or fish prepared with the Caymanian blend of onions, peppers and tomatoes in gravy. Jamin' Smoke House, a Jamaican eatery in George Town that is popular with the locals, did not offer much decor - with its water-stained walls and inoperative ceiling fans - but its jerk chicken was superb. With lunch for two priced at $18, Jamin' was our least expensive meal except for one midnight run to Wendy's for hamburgers.
When not eating or cavorting by the sea, we were traveling by Jeep from Cayman's westernmost tip in West Bay to the beach at Rum Point on the easternmost end of the isle, which is a projected peak of the underwater Cayman Ridge.
Remote Rum Point, 25 minutes away from the center of activity in George Town, is in the second major tourist spot to develop on Grand Cayman.
It has fewer condominiums, hotels, guest houses and other accommodations for tourists than West Bay's Seven Mile Beach, but it is far more bucolic.
Where West Bay has multistory hotels, Rum Point has single-level condos and bungalows that give a wider view of the environs - making the Caribbean seem bigger and bluer, the sand whiter, the palm trees bending deeper in the breeze.
The entire journey from West Bay to Rum Point takes about 40 minutes by car. It meanders through a mix of historical, residential and rural districts where, at various spots, one can see old pirates' castles, fish for themselves or watch fisherman clean and sell their catch to passersby.
There are places to take submarine and glass-bottom boat tours of the sea and an area called Hell, a 500,000-year-old black, lava-like shore that turns waves into behemoth sprays of water.
There is a farm that breeds turtles, the island's earliest cash resource. Until the 1980s brought curbs on harvesting turtles for food or their shells for jewelry and such, turtles were nearly extinct. And except for sea shells and black coral jewelry - crafted locally of imported material since the government banned use of Cayman coral - turtles are among the few home-grown items here. Even mangoes are shipped in.
One of the island's largest craft markets for tourists, Heritage, had shelves stocked with mahogany carvings and acrylic paintings from Haiti, curios from China, T-shirts from Hong Kong. So for those hoping, as I was, to bring a piece of Cayman home, the island can be a disappointment.
We did not meet a single street vendor and saw no artisans at work. We were not serenaded with calypso or reggae by any street-corner musicians. Steel-drum and other bands mainly are confined to hotels or nightclubs that close at midnight and do not open at all on Sundays because Cayman is said to be very religious and is dotted with churches. And the local radio station spun as much Whitney Houston and Anita Baker as West Indian tunes.
It was this non-Caribbean influence - coupled with the burgeoning resort industry, the for-sale signs on condos and huge acres of lush, vacant land - that left me feeling Grand Cayman risks growing increasingly chichi and, in time, less affordable to working-class Caymanians.
The government touts "100 percent employment" on an island with one of the highest standards of living in the Caribbean. But, for three days straight, I saw the same grimy, barefoot man on the post office steps, accepting change from whoever gave it. Begging is banned here.
I met another man applying for work on a hotel construction site bustling with temporary workers from the United States. I photographed a fisherman in his 50s who whiled away one afternoon under a shade tree and talked of repairing his boat, as soon as the part he ordered comes in.
For his sake, and the travelers who savor Grand Cayman's untouched spaces, maybe this island is about to exit its natural heyday.
by CNB