Week 13: Absolutely Fabulous Diving at the Grand Caymans

Staying on the Cayman Islands this week. This week’s shirt is one of my dive shirts. In fact, I believe this is my first one. I only started collecting them on this trip.

Diving in the Grand Caymans was a fabulous experience. I just earned my Open Water Certification the year before (when we went to Tahiti), so I still considered myself a beginner.

Given that diving the world famous Cayman Wall (wall diving is an advanced dive) which bottoms-out at around 6,000 feet, we decided to enjoy shallower diving along the beautiful Seven Mile Beach, where one can safely dive in 40 to 60 feet of water, just right for an intermediate (my husband) and a beginner (me).

My husband and I really wanted a small diver-to-divemaster (or guide) ratio. Unfortunately, the dive outfit at our hotel did not offer that luxury. Since ‘tourist-diving’ is such big business here, most of the dive shops seem to book as many people as the boat allows, often with a ratio of 20 divers to 1 divemaster: not ideal for any diving experience, let alone that for a beginner diver.

We found a dive shop that offers small group dives: Absolute Divers. The owner and divemaster, Mark, had a cold at that time so he could not dive with us, but he was able to take us to several interesting sites within our diving experience.  Before each dive, he gave us a site orientation and reminded us of various safety issues.

Diving along the famed Seven Mile Beach was awesome! We saw a great number of fishes, beautiful coral, sea fans, and barrel sponges (never saw those before and some 2 or 3 feet in diameter), and great (100 to 120 feet) visibility. It also included my first wreck dive, The Oro Verde. The Caymans sport an incredibly prolific reef life: we saw beautiful angelfish, wrasses, goatfish, yellow jacks, conchs, lobster, and even a garden of eels.

Mark is a great guide and a wonderful person. In one of our dives, we lost our new underwater camera. He probably spent 20 minutes looking for it.  Unfortunately, we did not find it. We figure either the camera was on its way to Cuba or a tarpon had it for a snack. He also drove across town to say goodbye to us and bring me this T-shirt. It would be quite challenging to find that kind of personal service with another dive shop.

For more info on Absolute Divers, check out their website at http://www.absolutedivers.com. For more info about diving the Cayman Islands, check out the diving page in the Cayman Activity Guide.