Cayman Character

By Kirk Brown

We were floating weightlessly in the shadow of a towering wall. Moments later, the first rays of sunlight transform what had been a study in grays and blues into a shimmering rainbow of corals and tropical fish.

The aquatic daybreak signals the start to another diving adventure near the ''sister islands'' of Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. On the next dive, two hawksbill turtles lead their eager guests on a leisurely tour of another sun-drenched reef.

Consistently superb conditions, breathtaking underwater sights and top-notch dive operations are taken for granted on the Cayman sister islands, which are situated 89 miles northeast and a world away from Grand Cayman.

But the real charm of these lightly populated Caribbean outposts is their colorful characters - both in and out of the water.

This is a place where a precocious wild dolphin and a pair of groupers named Ben and Jerry wait patiently for divers to arrive as eagle rays glide across sandy bottoms. It is also a place where you can catch a glimpse of Norman, a camera-shy moray living on the only sunken Soviet warship in the Western Hemisphere that divers can explore.

And Little Cayman and Cayman Brac are places where happy hour is truly an event. You'll probably meet the unassuming resort manager best known for his Elvis impersonation, the retired New York City cop who outran the Cuban Navy in his dive boat and the affable bartender who is an expert on the Grateful Dead.

There hasn't exactly been a population boom since a wayward Christopher Columbus discovered the uninhabited Cayman sister islands in 1503.

Columbus, who was far off course on his final voyage to the New World, named the islands Las Tortugas because of their abundance of sea turtles.

The three Cayman islands had already been renamed after the Carib word for crocodiles when the notorious Blackbeard and other pirates began using Cayman Brac and Little Cayman as hideouts in the late 1600s.

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