Scuba Diving At Little Cayman
I have wanted to scuba dive at Little Cayman for quite some time now and finally made it there in May 2024. I’ve already dived off Grand Cayman (see the link for my past review on diving there), the main tourist island of Cayman Islands on two different trips before but never Little Cayman which is often voted as the best overall diving in the Caribbean.
Little Cayman is isolated with barely 200 people living there and the only way to get there is by Twin Otter propellor plane with Cayman Airways. In addition to a handful of private villas, there are currently two small dive resorts which are all inclusive and another which is not inclusive (of meals and diving) called Paradise Villas. I chose to stay at Paradise Villas because the all inclusive resorts are very expensive at almost liveaboard dive rates. Paradise Villas was not cheap either at $280 US per night and this was at low season too and diving was extra through Little Cayman Divers. So I came with high expectations just because of the high cost I would be paying for staying four nights and three days of diving.
Getting To Little Cayman
Getting to Little Cayman was a bit of an adventure in itself because of the propellor plane ride required. The flight was smoother than I had expected for a small prop plane but it was noisy. This extra transit would of course increase the overall costs of this trip. But after landing at the tiny airport in Little Cayman, it was just a short walk over to Paradise Villas since the resort is right next door (Paradise Villas did help in bringing over luggage from the airport right to my front door at the villa I booked). Here’s a video of the flights I took which added some more fun to a dive trip.
Paradise Villas
Paradise Villas has only twelve villa units so it’s not a large resort. But as shown in the video below, although not a five star accommodation, it’s pretty comfortable at about a three star or equivalent to a Comfort Inn or Days Inn room. The back door and deck faces the ocean which is nice but the beach itself is not that nice as it’s only part sand and the area closest to the water are rocks. But 99% of travellers who come to Little Cayman come here to dive.
In the beach area where I sometimes relaxed after diving, I saw cute little geckos and tiny hermit crabs. One great thing is that not once did I encounter any cockroaches and mosquitoes inside my villa.
Over on the main road on Little Cayman with just a few minutes walk is the island’s only grocery store/hardware shop where I got some price sticker shock. I knew this in advance so I did bring most of my own food for my stay since my villa does have a kitchenette and I didn’t feel like dining at any of the three restaurants on the island.
The Scuba Diving
Okay so what’s the scuba diving like at Little Cayman? Well I can confirm with all the diver votes on Little Cayman that I agree with their assessment that the best overall diving in the Caribbean is there at least for a land based dive trip. The coral reefs are among the healthiest and also the most diverse I’ve ever seen in the Caribbean. Both the walls off Bloody Bay Wall and the shallower reefs are in very good shape resulting in lots of marine life. In addition to the usual Caribbean fish life, there was that something extra on every single dive that made it a great dive whether it was sightings of stingrays, sea turtles, barracuda, sharks, lobsters or breath taking swim throughs. Water temperatures were constant from 28 to 30 degrees C by my dive computer.
Although there were many such awesome encounters with marine life, my top one was when I came across a school of grunt fish and instead of swimming away, they all stood their ground and just stared at me. Of course I stared back at them with probably a huge smile underwater.
The dive operator Little Cayman Divers operates out of the dock over at Little Cayman Beach Resort, one of the all inclusive dive resorts. Each morning, they picked divers up from Paradise Villas and brought us over to the dock and back. They also used a valet type of service where they had divers sit at the end of their dive boat and they would bring us the tanks/bcd and the same when we returned to the boat at the end of the dive. I wasn’t sure why they did this whether it was an additional service they wanted to provide or they didn’t want divers to walk around the dive boat with all gear strapped on.
In the water, the divemasters were good at leading divers through the dive sites after informative briefings before each dive. They were fairly relaxed and casual in terms of how they ran each dive though as we didn’t have to necessarily keep up with the divemasters. I also saw divers at times going off on their own especially near the end of dives when the divemasters always went back on the boats first (as they said they would during the briefings). Divers were allowed to stay underwater as long as time limits and air permitted. I along with other divers I observed often just spent much of the last part of our dives on our own but not far from the dive boat and the divemasters didn’t really mind.
This might have been because the typical diver profile at Little Cayman tended to be experienced and older divers compared to those at many of the popular tourist islands in the tropics. This kind of makes sense since given the high cost of diving Little Cayman, it’s usually the veteran diver who can afford such a trip who comes here. Many of the divers I met were repeat visitors to Little Cayman and perhaps of a higher level of diver experience, Little Cayman Divers permitted quite a lot of freedom on dives.
So is Little Cayman worth it? This is not easy to answer. The best overall diving is there for sure as far as a land based dive destination but it is very expensive. Divers who are less experienced and/or have less budget should probably travel to Cozumel, Roatan/Utila, Bahamas and other less costly destinations that offer decent diving first. But once you’ve dived most of the Caribbean and are willing to pay more for the top diving in the region, then it’s probably worth coming here but only when you are ready. This is the same with liveaboard trips. Here’s my video commentary on this as well as a video tour of Paradise Villas where I stayed.
Also, this is not a destination with non-divers as there is nothing much to do on Little Cayman except dive. There are some iguanas and red footed boobie birds to see but no shopping and no party bars. Little Cayman is very quiet and is a place to get away from busy tourist spots. But it’s all about the diving here.
