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Bluegrass Dive Club |
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Little Cayman Island, Cayman Islands - 1998ReviewsWhat a week!!! Anyone having been to Little Cayman will know what I mean. The diving, the resort, the travel arrangements, everything was top-rated!!! Our 31-member group (24-divers) stayed at Little Cayman Beach Resort.The resort was full with our group, some other smaller groups and several independent couples. Folks, I’m here to tell you, there’s not many places that can top this place on customer service and amenities. They bend over backwards to accommodate their customers. In the last 4-years, they’ve added eight (8) separate condo units and also eight (8) additional units that are a little more upscale from their typical resort room. The food is buffet style (no menu) with multiple entrees, multiple vegetable-dishes, salad-bar, and desert bar, and in summary is just out of this world!!! There were no food complaints from our group and we have a few particular folks! Those having visited this resort before will know about the outdoor bar and the many, many, many dive group signs that hang from the rafters. You can spend a lot of time just looking and enjoying some of what you see. Some are very unique and well-done. All of the bartenders are especially enjoyable and entertaining. Aaron will delight you with tale after tale and Terri, will take you on in a mean game of Backgammon. They will also teach you an interesting game moving some kind of local "bean" around a board with 12 or so holes. The object being not to be the last one with "beans." If you haven’t been to the island in the last couple of years, you’l be interested to know that they’ve built some new stores: a general store with some groceries, and a couple of other stores offering more tourist items, but the clothing offered appeared to be nice quality. Little Cayman is definitely LITTLE, but between a couple of small historical museums and the amenities offered by the resort you will not want for much. Mid-way through our stay the resort operator held an open-house cocktail party especially for our group and several of our divers displayed their first sets of slides that they had just had developed. Reef Divers, the resort’s dive operation had three 40-plus foot boats that are specifically designed with divers in mind. All three boats had 3 boat crew that go out of their way to make sure you get world-class diving. And they all did a first-class job. This is a great dive operation & it earns the respect it gets!!! They make Nitrox available, for $10 additional charge per tank with a quantity discount (every 6th is free, but before you get that 1st free one, you must have used 10). I honestly don’t know if this is good or bad compared to other dive operations. I don’t know if others charge additionally for Nitrox tanks. The diving is just phenomenal. Walls, walls, and more walls. We got our fill of wall diving. Visibility seemed to be 100-plus on just about every dive (18 total for the week). The weather was terrific, but with winds. A couple of days, the waves were enough to prevent us from going to the north side of the island where the Bloody Bay Wall dive sites are. This area is now a nationally protected park and Dive-operators are only allowed to dive 2 of these sites within the designated area per day, but there are several just outside the park area that are just as good as those included. We saw lots of turtles! Fish-life on some sites were more abundant than others, but this is typical for most dive destinations with many dive sites. We did a couple wrecks, one being the Russian Frigate, which the Cayman government purchased from Cuba, and sunk in 1996 on the north-side of Brac. Coral & sponges are growing on it now, but it needs a few more years for this development. There are some open passageways & above-the-main-deck compartments are open, but most of the inner compartments which could be accessed from the main deck are sealed with steel bars to prevent entry. It was definitely prepared with diver safety in mind when it was sunk. On the 2nd wreck, the Soto Trader, which we did as a night dive, we saw beautiful 3 and 4 footer giant parrot fish. Their size & colors were something to behold. Only one shark was sighted during the week, but it was off one of the walls. Only one sighting of spotted eagle rays, although we did have a small one feeding in a shallow grassy area beside the resort’s dock. And we had quite a few moray eel sightings. Smaller fish-life in general was typical. In summary, the week was very pleasant. Ratings
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