Little Cayman Beach Resort, Cayman Islands: Undercurrent 07/2022

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Dear Fellow Diver:

On my first visit to Little Cayman Beach Resort shortly after their 1993 opening, all I had to do on arrival was present my C-card, a credit card, and my smiling face. Not these days.

Little Cayman In 2022, l before I departed home, I had to present online my passport credentials, diving certifications, divers profile, medical history, medical diving waiver, COVID-19 vaccination record, signed legal liability waivers, dietary preferences, proof of trip insurance, temporary trip medical insurance, results of a recent COVID test . . . and pay with my credit card.

But, when I arrived in March at the 40-room LCBR, it was simply, "Hello, we know all about you. Here's your room key, and the bar is open." The days of a welcome drink are long gone.

Undercurrent's undercover reviewers and readers alike have always given high marks to LCBR's diving, food, atmosphere, and hospitality. Arriving six weeks after their nearly two-year COVID shutdown, I wondered if they could pick up as they left off. Complicating matters, last year the owner, Clearly Cayman, shuttled their Little Cayman boats and crew to South Caicos Island, well over a 600-mile journey, to open their new East Bay Resort (see Undercurrent, January 2022, for a full review). Did they take LCBR's magic with them?

I was eager to get into the water at the famous Bloody Bay Wall, but the first morning the brisk wind and 2- to 3-foot swells concerned me. Sure enough, we were relegated to a small protected area on the south side for our first dive, not far from LCBR. My 28 group members from a Missouri dive store have a wide range of physical abilities and diving skills, so it was too rough for us to reach the north side and Bloody Bay. As it turned out, Grays Reef was well above the Caribbean average. I was impressed with the healthy hard and soft corals, the colorful tube sponges, gorgonians, and the usual Caribbean reef citizens. Creole wrasse mingled with Bermuda chubs, while Nassau and black groupers allowed me to get close if I approached slowly. I watched a yellow wrasse clean the inside of a grouper's mouth while a Pederson's cleaner shrimp poked around inside its gills. I spotted plenty of bottom dwellers, including spiny lobsters, channel crabs, neck crabs hiding on branching coral, arrowline crabs, and small colonies of garden eels and yellow-headed jawfish ... even southern stingrays with bar jacks watching over them. Our divemaster, Tom, found a rare pipehorse hiding in Sargassum weed. Seventy-five-foot visibility and 79° to 82°F water portended a great week ahead. Indeed, I made 17 boat dives (there is no beach diving or snorkeling) in six days; however, no night dives due to the swollen seas....

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