An extraordinary trip. Fabulous underwater terrain, perfect weather, the best possible diving buddy (unirdna, Ted), a great place to stay with people who were eager to take care of our every need. Wow!
The underwater terrain was the best I’ve ever run into. Some places, you swim out over a 30 ft deep, flat reef with soft corals and small heads, nothing special until you come to a knife edge drop off, The Wall, absolutely no roll-off, straight down, bottomless. Electric blue looking out and spooky black blue looking down. Feels like you are going to fall off. The visual impact of this is impossible to put into words. Doing dives down the wall, barrel sponges big as small cars, all kinds of weird stuff growing 5-10 feet off the wall, a occasional shark off in the blue. Make your turn at 100 feet and there is 70 feet of vertical wall above you, and you can see the surface, incredible! It looks like forever.
Other places the reef was cut by deep narrow channels, open at the top. Some of these you could use negative buoyancy to fly through , using your fins to steer through twisting passages maybe 5-6 feet wide and 20+ deep, soft corals growing out of the walls, almost touching you. As you get to the end, the wall, the electric blue of open water contrasts with the dark walls in a heart stopping picture. Enter the reef at 30-40, come out maybe 60 feet away on the wall at 80. Almost like an amusement park ride, one of the most fun things we did.
At other places, the wall is convoluted and not so vertical, but just as spectacular, plate coral and brain coral heads piled on top of one another, growing up and over the wall, swim throughs, caves, deep cuts in the reef that are fabulous to dive down and up. Sometimes there were sand chutes through the reef. You bottom out on flat sand at say 65 ft and swim along when you suddenly realize the sand isn’t flat, it is starting down at a 40 degree angle into the maw of a king size cave. Feels like you are about to be swallowed. If you could follow it, it comes out on the wall at 100 plus and the sand rains off the edge.
There was a ton of wildlife, words are insufficient, but Ted’s pictures speak for themselves. Two exceptions, for an old spearo to get so close to 60 pound black grouper was a real kick. Tip toeing up to almost touching distance to mutton snapper is right up there. The pics are great, but the emotional impact is hard to record. I haven't been able yet to get my computer to run the pics, but don't miss the vid of the big hogfish and the sting ray. Wonderful!
The vis was good all the time and fabulous on the last day, 40 meters + is my best guess. When it gets that clear it is very hard to come up with a meaningful number. I did one dive to sand that I thought was about 60 ft, you could see detail on the bottom so perfectly. It was 90.
I normally run several trips to the Bahamas every summer on my boat, but last year 2 out of 3 were interrupted by hurricanes, Blah! Anyway, thought we should try something different this year and fly somewhere. Researched Roatan, Utila, San Salvador, Bonaire, Cozumel and several other places in Mexico before deciding on Little Cayman. My thanks to all the DBers that helped that research. For us, LC seemed like the best combination of underwater sights, shore diving, access and cost. We reserved a week at McCoys Dive Lodge, which was perfect for what we wanted to do. Let me plug these folks a little. If you are a free diver and are going to Little Cayman, this is THE PLACE to stay, decent facilities, decent to excellent food, wonderful people willing to help you do exactly what you want to do, the right set up for free divers and absolutely, by far, the best location.
Truly, a good time was had by all, and it is fun to share it.
Connor
