A Week on Cayman Brac

It had been two years since Samuel and I had last dived (in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty). It was also his penultimate Spring Break before college graduation and marriage. Cayman Brac had been on Janet’s bucket list for a long time as she had visited on a mission trip while in college and had remained in touch with a local resident. We had a great week on Brac, and there was so much more to do than the diving!

This post is my photo diary grouped by topics. You can jump directly to the topics: Getting There and Around, Places to Stay, Eating, Exploring, and Diving.

Overview of the Cayman Islands

The Cayman Islands are a self-governing British Overseas Territory which comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman. Grand Cayman is the largest and most populous island by orders of magnitude. Cayman Brac is about 12 miles long and a mile wide. It is located about 5 miles from Little Cayman and 90 miles from Grand Cayman. The island has a prominent bluff rising 140ft above sea level at its eastern end, with “brac” being the Gaelic word for a bluff. The islands lie on the Cayman Ridge, a prominent undersea mountain range that runs from Cuba to Belize.

Cayman Brac and Little Caymans, known as the Sister Islands, were sighted by Christopher Columbus on May 10, 1503. No evidence has been found of indigenous inhabitants before the arrival of Europeans. With caves and fresh water wells, pirates used Cayman Brac for resupply. The lack of indigenous inhabitants, its Caribbean history, its continued link with Great Britain, and its proximity to the US give the Caymans a unique flavour (the “u” is intentional :)). While Grand Cayman is a major offshore financial center and tourist magnet, Cayman Brac remains a quiet, remote escape with a population of about 2,000 people.

Summary of What We Did

We stayed seven nights in a spacious, 3-bedroom VRBO, “Sonscape,” in Brac’s West End, on the beach near the end of the airport’s runway. We rented a car from Four D’s car rental. The near-constant 76 degF (~24 degC) and 15-20mph winds yielded a perfect temperature, though the seas were a bit choppier than ideal for water-based activities.

Samuel and I did four, two-tank dives with Brac Scuba Shack. On land, we explored most of the island’s sights and ate at the majority of the island’s restaurants. We self-catered for most breakfasts and lunches, so we got to know some of the island’s various grocery stores. Everything went very well, we had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere. The attractions made this a great holiday even without diving, though don’t expect anything fast-paced!

The following table summarizes what we did.

Date	Day	Activities	Restaurants
22 Mar	Sunday	Fly IAH to GCB to CYB. Pick up rental car. Check into Sonscape VRBO.	Wendy’s (GCB airport).
23 Mar	Monday	Dive (P&S). Supermarkets (J&K). Chill.	Bfast at Star Island. Dinner at Coral Isle.
24 Mar	Tuesday	Dive (P&S). Walk (J&K). Rebecca’s Cave, Bat Cave, Great Cave, Blowhole.	Coffee at Cafe Dior. Taco Tuesday at Captain’s Table. Ice Cream from Crossroads.
25 Mar	Wednesday	Parrot preserve, Peter’s Cave, walk to Lighthouse, NIM’s things.	Lunch at Brac Snack Shack. Dinner at Barracuda’s.
26 Mar	Thursday	Dive (P&S) Geocaching: Columbus Gardens, Skull Cave, Mass Grave from 1932 hurricane.	Coffee at Cafe Dior. Dinner at Dutchie’s.
27 Mar	Friday	Dive (P&S). Farm tour (J&K).	Dinner at Tipsy Turtle.
28 Mar	Saturday	Coffee with Lori. Get Cayman licence plate from scrapyard. Hang out at Beach Club. Check out Long Beach for Booby birds.	Coffee at Kabana Kai. Lunch at The Beach Club. Dinner at The Farm.
29 March	Sunday	Fly CYB to GCM. Walk to Starbucks for a Cayman mug. Fly GCM to IAH.	Coffee at Starbucks.

Getting There and Around

It took about 3 hours to fly with United from Houston (IAH) to Grand Cayman (GCM), and about 40 minutes onward to Cayman Brac (CYB) after a layover. While much smaller than Houston’s airport, Grand Cayman’s airport was busy with multiple international flights and connections to Brac and Little Cayman. Our connecting flight was the last flight of the day, by which time the airport was closing down.

While our flight to Brac was on “the jet” (a 737), our return was on “the Saab”, a twin turboprop with room for about thirty passengers.

We rented a car from Four D’s Rental as it was recommended by our dive shop and there were no international rental companies. The car was perfect for us, though it spoke to us in Chinese each time we started it. Its speedo in km/hr was rather confusing with the island’s speed limits in mph. At least we were accustomed to driving on the left!

Places to stay

We stayed in a VRBO with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and great views of the sea. We could even see Little Cayman on the horizon, and the sound of the breaking waves made it special. We had the whole of the house’s upstairs, and a separate, one-bedroom apartment downstairs was occupied by someone else for about half of our stay. The kitchen was well equipped for our self-catered lunches and dinners.

We were located right on the shore with our own beach, though it was rocky with seasonal seaweed. The prevailing winds prevented entering the water here during our stay, though Samuel and I did a couple of great dives where our boat was visible from the house. I had fun exploring the beach, though walking was difficult, either in soft sand or on sharp, vuggy limestone.

As well as plenty of VRBOs to choose from, there was a selection of more traditional resorts. The main one is the Cayman Brac Beach Resort, which primarily caters to divers and features a swimming pool and beach. You can stay here without a car (they arrange taxis to the airport) with no need to leave the resort, except to dive!

We met people staying at the CaribSands Beach Resort (next to Captain’s Table on the map below) or The Alexander Hotel. The Soleil d’Or is a boutique hotel, and we enjoyed its restaurant, farm tour, and beach club.

There used to be a Divi Beach Resort next to the Cayman Brac Beach Resort, but it was damaged by Hurricane Paloma in 2008 and demolished in 2019. Hurricane Melissa, which caused devastating destruction to Jamaica in 2025, did not impact Cayman Brac.

Eating

Google Maps shows about twenty places to eat on the island, with the vast majority on the West End. We ate at about half of them and particularly enjoyed how different they were from each other.

Star Island Restaurant

We enjoyed our first morning’s breakfast at the Star Island restaurant. Tasty omelets were filling, though unfortunately they were out of donuts, which was what they were famous for. There was a constant stream of locals picking up takeaway orders.

Coral Isle Restaurant

The Coral Isle Restaurant treated us to homecooking. The chef verbally offered us a choice of four dishes, and we enjoyed her chicken stew and fried fish. Again, there was a constant stream of locals picking up takeaway orders, and a couple of others dining in.

Cafe Dior

Janet and Kylie savored well-earned iced lattes at Cafe Dior after walking across the island. We were getting used to places being quiet!

Taco Tuesday at The Captain’s Table

A couple of people had recommended the Captain’s Table for Taco Tuesday, and it soon filled up. We were impressed by the tacos and enjoyed a peaceful sunset. In contrast to the previous restaurants, this was more of an expat crowd, with a few short-term “tourists” like us thrown in!

Ice Cream from Crossroads Grocery Store

A sign offering 24 flavors of soft serve ice cream caught our eye as we drove past the Crossroads General Store after Taco Tuesday. Inside was a grocery store, like several others on the island, which sold a wide variety of goods. The list included soft serve from a remarkable machine. Watching the ice cream artist blend the ice cream was almost as satisfying as eating it!

Brac Snack Shack

The Brac Snack Shack provided timely hamburgers after a morning of exploring the island. The food was made to order, so it took a while. There was shaded seating, and we passed the time watching a crab crossing the road!

Barracuda’s Bar and Grill

Barracuda’s was the place to get pizza, so we did, and enjoyed conch fritters as an appetizer! We went on karaoke night, but left before the activities started, though we were unsure whether anything happened, as it was very quiet. The old sea dog who propped up the bar didn’t have much to say.

Dutchie’s Bar and Grill

Dutchie’s was in the Alexander Hotel and served what was the most “western” of the food we ate. It seemed to cater mostly for hotel guests. It was tasty and a good contrast to the other places we’d eaten at.

BBQ Night at the Tipsy Turtle

The Beach Resort’s restaurant, the Tipsy Turtle, was packed for their barbecue night. Chicken, steak, and whole fish were offered, with unlimited extras. We very much enjoyed the resort vibe, though it did not feel like the rest of Cayman Brac.

Kabana Kai Cafe

We met Lori, Janet’s friend from Cayman Brac, and enjoyed a long chat over fine coffees at Kabana Kai.

The Beach Club

When Janet and Kylie toured the farm at Soleil d’Or resort, the Beach Club was recommended for lunch as it used fresh food from the farm, as did the resort’s more upscale The Farm restaurant in the evenings. We had the place to ourselves! They told us that their busy time is November through January, and I continued to be amazed at how quiet and peaceful these places were.

The Farm Restaurant

Our final dinner on Cayman Brac was a fine “farm to table” meal at the Farm Restaurant. While it was all yummy, the standout dish was Samuel’s octopus tentacle! Lori, whose daughter had worked at the farm, arranged for a special dessert for us, which was a very sweet surprise! The large Cayman rock iguanas that roamed the grounds provided the evening’s entertainment.

Grocery Stores

There was a selection of several grocery stores selling the basics, and a broad range of other goods, including Chick-fil-A sauce, mattresses, playing cards, and seasickness medication. We were able to find what we needed, including aloe vera for Samuel, though the prices reflected the island’s isolation. A weekly barge brought fresh supplies to the island, but bad weather could delay its arrival, leading to food spoiling. We learned the Farm had a weekly market of its fresh, local produce, but we missed it.

We enjoyed the variety of restaurants and accepted that the high prices were not elevated for tourists. We missed out on some, like Barry’s Golden Jerk, as we did not have time to visit them all. We enjoyed relaxing over quiet breakfasts and lunches by ourselves.

Exploring

Janet used Fodor’s Cayman Islands as the basis for planning, and its 28 pages on Brac assisted internet exploring. Towards the end of our trip, I spotted a dedicated 190-page guide Adventuring on Cayman Brac by Skip Harper that looked interesting, though it was published in 2002. The back of this book lists the main activities: SCUBA/snorkeling/swimming, rock climbing, hiking, caving/beachcombing, fishing and birding, and biking. Our adventuring involved caving, beachcombing, hiking, birding, and SCUBA. I cover our diving in the next section. We combined these activities with Geocaching, which complemented our research well. A highlight for Janet and Kylie was the farm tour at Soleil d’Or. Other extras included the mass gravesite from the 1932 hurricane and a visit to the island’s junk yard to get a Cayman number plate!

Caving

A unique feature of the Brac is its limestone bluff, which leads to many fascinating caves and beaches that are calling out to be explored. Cave accessibility and depth varied, as did their history, with some used as refuges during hurricanes where they are above the storm surge. Exploring them independently suited our style.

On the southern shore, we visited three caves: Rebecca’s, Bat, and Great. Rebecca’s Cave was named after an infant who died in the 1932 hurricane and her grave was inside. We enjoyed watching crabs scurry on the floor. At first, we didn’t notice the bats. There is a hiking trail across the island at this point.

The girls’ reactions to the bats were priceless!

Bat Cave was larger with some cool formations though we didn’t see any bats! We could see the sea from the cave and tried to imagine riding out a hurricane here.

Great Cave was more difficult to access and the roof appeared to have collapsed, though that might have been hundreds of years ago! Its location was conveniently next to the shore and a beach walk to the blow hole.

On the northern side, we visited two caves: Peter’s and Skull. Peter’s Cave was conveniently located close to the parking for the hike on the bluff to the lighthouse. You can also hike up to it from Spot Bay. It had narrow passages that seemed to penetrate deep into the bluff and was last used as a refuge during Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 and has provided refuge from hurricanes with storm surges of 30 ft.

In Skull Cave, it felt like we were exploring huge nasal passages! It was located near the Cayman Brac Museum in Stake Bay, which, unfortunately, was closed each time we passed.

Beachcombing

On the southern side, we also visited the Blowhole, hiking along the rocky shore as far as you can go eastwards before the beach runs out. There is a feature in the limestone pavement that causes water to shoot out as waves come in. I found the sound of air rushing through the hole fascinating, but struggled to capture it. We enjoyed seeing our first Brown Booby birds here, and I was mesmerized by the salt that had formed in some rock pools.

Lori encouraged us to explore Long Beach on the island’s northeast corner. The Boobies had moved from nesting on the cliff to on the beach. While the beach was as rocky as the Blowhole’s beach, it felt more exposed to the prevailing winds, and the array of plastic trash on the beach, most likely swept in from offshore, was eye-opening. At the end of the beach is a small rock, separated from the mainland, known as Little Cayman Brac, which we also saw from above while walking to the lighthouse on the top of the bluff.

Hiking to the Lighthouse

Walking along the bluff to the Lighthouse was a “must do” on our list, and it did not disappoint. It was necessary to explore the bluff to appreciate what the island was named after. We hiked the trail from our parking (by Peter’s Overlook) to the Lighthouse at the easternmost tip via the Little Cayman Brac Outlook and Booby Birds and enjoyed great views. A bonus was being swarmed by white butterflies as we hiked. We tried to keep our distance from the nesting Boobies, though I wandered a bit too close to one that I did not notice while trying to photograph Little Cayman Brac! We returned via the road as the trail had been on top of rough, sharp, vuggy limestone. Again, we were amazed that there was virtually no one else around.

Cuba was about 150 miles from the lighthouse.

Appreciating the Brac’s Bluff

The Brac’s bluff is an amazing geological feature. Hiking on the top of it gave us a small appreciation of it. On arrival on Cayman Brac, I read a local magazine that discussed a movie titled The Bluff, set in Cayman Brac, that had recently been released.

The movie was not the most sophisticated production, and the vast majority of it was filmed in Australia. Ironically, I initially thought that one of the few shots of the island in the movie, an aerial view of the eastern end, was AI-generated. Amazon’s protection prevented taking a screenshot. My research to find a good picture led me to a locally-written article by Simon Boxall, with whom I was at school in England several decades ago. Small world!

Other Terrestial Adventures

Halfway through our visit, I remembered Geocaches. We had already visited a few spots that had some, but our quest to find them took us to new locations such as Columbus Gardens and the 1932 Mass Grave.

In the middle of the island are the Christopher Columbus Gardens, a beautifully tranquil spot with tree-like cacti in addition to its geocache.

On the island’s northern shore is the site of a Mass Grave from the 1932 hurricane. It was interesting to read about the tragedy.

Janet and Kylie greatly enjoyed a farm tour at Soleil d’Or. They were shown how the farm grows produce on the top of the bluff, including exotic fruits like papaya, mango, and pomegranate. They tasted Miracle Fruit, which alters one’s taste buds such that sour tastes sweet. There were tons of egg-laying chickens roaming with the rock iguanas.

We visited the island’s bird sanctuary in search of the elusive, endangered Brac Parrot. The parrot lived up to its reputation, such that we didn’t see any, though we did see a green blur fly past us later in the week, which we identified as the rare species. Nevertheless, we enjoyed exploring some wild landscape using a boardwalk, fascinated by how rough the underlying rock was and how difficult it must be to clear land for building.

Samuel collects car license plates, and while he was dreaming of finding one, we spotted a junk yard. We couldn’t ignore it!

As we drove around, Janet tried to remember which church she had served at during her previous visit. We spotted many cute island churches, though she struggled to remember which one she’d visited.

Diving

Samuel and I completed four two-tank mornings of diving with the team from Brac Scuba Shack. It was a well-organized operation with a couple of dive boats, and the divemasters and boat captains looked after us well. The only other dive operation on Brac works out of the Beach Resort. There were typically ten divers on the boat, and the divemaster would choose sites each day based on the divers and site availability. Most of our dives were off the southeastern end of the island.

On the first day, we dove the Pillar Coral and the Sergeant Major sites, spending about 55 mins at up to about 50 ft each dive. I did not take my GoPro on these dives. The 20mph winds made the seas a bit choppy, so I found some seasickness pills for future days, as I had felt a bit queasy. They were good dives to start the week, with a shark and lobsters in addition to lots of great fish, though my nausea was distracting!

Our second day started with a very cool wall dive at Inside Out. We spent about 40 minutes down to about 80 ft.

The second day’s second dive was at the End of Island site, close to our house. We enjoyed lots of life, including a slipper lobster, and another lobster that nearly bumped into me!

We started the third day’s diving on the MV Captain Keith Tibbetts wreck. It is the only Russian warship in the Western Hemisphere that is within recreational diving limits. The Koni 11 class frigate, designated Russian Destroyer #356, was built in 1984 in the former USSR. She served as a missile frigate based in Cuba during the Cold War. In 1992, the Soviet Republic ceased support of their Cuban naval base, and the abandoned ship was purchased by the Cayman Islands in 1996 before being intentionally sunk off Cayman Brac. It was a cool dive!

The third day’s diving finished with a return to the Sergeant Major site. It felt completely different from our previous dive, and I am sure not feeling seasick helped!

Our fourth day’s diving started at Greenhouse, a site about half way along the north shore. For most of the journey to the site, a Booby followed us. We loved watching it soar over the wave crests.

Underwater, the mixture of reef and sand yielded different aquatic life, from tube worms to conch.

I loved how the tube worms retreated into their tubes as I swam close. Look out for all of the little ones, too!

On our final dive, we were rewarded with puffer fish, lionfish, and a large stingray that we decided to leave alone!

The Brac Scuba Shack served us very well, and we thank the team and their boss, Zeus.

Reflection

Another diver asked us whether we would return to the Brac, or whether there were too many other places on our bucket list. He had spotted my restlessness well in offering the alternative answer to his question. We would certainly love to return to the Brac, but we have too many new places that we also want to visit!

Cayman Brac is certainly not a lively holiday destination. We loved the peace and quiet. Its size lent itself very well to a week’s exploring. Ours was not a very beachy holiday, and the Beach Club would suit beachy people more. The risk of the Beach Club is not leaving it and failing to appreciate the island, its people, its cuisine, and its unique geography. Living with the fear of hurricanes on such a small island must help develop one’s faith! It was great to have a connection to a local, and it was lovely chatting with Lori. It was amazing that my subsequent research caused me to stumble across an article written by someone I was in high school with!