Cayman Islands - Best Vacation Ever!

7 Mile Beach in front of our room looking toward Georgetown




Well, my wife and I just returned from our trip to the Cayman Islands, Grand Cayman in particular, celebrating our 20th anniversary. We both agreed that it was our best vacation ever! Grand Cayman and 7 Mile Beach are a Caribbean dream!

With Trip Advisor ranking the Cayman Islands as the very best Caribbean destination I had to go on a fact finding mission to see if it was all that it was made out to be.....it was.

While I am typically writing about hotels and all inclusive resorts in floridas in the Caribbean, we decided to get off the beaten path with a condo at a small property of only 16 units in a secluded stretch on the northern end of 7 Mile Beach, right on the beach. When I say right on the beach, I mean you step from the patio of our ground floor room, right onto the sand about 100 feet from the water! You just can't get closer to the water than that, it was incredible! There's just something special about being able to step out your door right onto one of the best, most beautiful beaches in the world.

Our room was in a property about 20 years old but completely updated recently with a beautiful kitchen and bath with travertine throughout. With most of the units owner-occupied there was hardly a soul around the entire 12 days we were there. In Fact, amazingly we had the entire beach to ourselves most every day! We couldn't believe it! Often we would look up and down the beach and not see another person in sight.

View from our patio



Now 7 Mile Beach is regularly rated one of the top beaches in the world, the stretch in front of our room was crystal clear and shallow (chest deep) for about 50 feet out. Beyond that it was only about 7-8 feet deep for another 100 yards or so. The sand was white and powdery soft. The snorkeling was great right in front of our room, we saw several sting rays and swam with a sea turtle every time we went out, of course there were plenty of beautiful tropical fish to see too! By far Grand Cayman was the best snorkeling I have ever done in the Caribbean or Hawaii. A short walk up the beach was Cemetery Beach which had some great coral with tons of fish to see as well.

Our property was unique in that is was away from the more congested part of 7 Mile Beach and on each side of our property was undeveloped areas which gave you the feeling you were in a remote area and had the beach all to yourself. Very secluded, very quiet. My wife and I aren't the type who want a lot of people around and enjoy our privacy so it was a dream come true for us.

Now as you know the heat and intense sun in the Caribbean can be brutal especially if you are traveling there without a good dark tan to start with, you will fry. So a place with ample shade was important, we wanted palm trees and vegetation shade so we wouldn't have to fight for an umbrella every day. This condo was perfect in that there were several large trees for us to sit under to stay out of the direct sun, we still got a little burned.

One great thing about having your room just steps away is you can get whatever you want, whenever you want, if you want a snack, fix a sandwich or a cold drink, it's right there. This is huge when you are at the beach, it's convenient and you save a lot of money.

We did eat out for dinner to try out some of the local restaurants, and here Grand Cayman again sets itself apart from many other Caribbean destinations. This tiny island has over 200 restaurants to choose from! Any type of cuisine or location you could want is available. One of the neighbors in our condo complex was the owner of Agua which is a restaurant nearby. We tried out a different restaurant each time we went out. Margaritaville, Breezes, Deckers, Macabuka, The Warf, Sunset House to name a few were very good. In my opinion, the Warf was the best meal we had and also the most expensive, our dinner was $145 US. For the money my wife and I both agreed that Breezes was our favorite. The Jerk chicken cobb salad was great, we even got it to take out and brought it back to our place to eat it on the beach, delicious!

View of 7 Mile Beach in front of our property



One nice feature we observed about the Cayman locals is that they are very friendly toward tourists. Unlike some other Caribbean islands we have visited where the service in the restaurants is horrible and they act put out to have to serve you knowing they are getting their tip regardless, the service everywhere we went was refreshingly very good.

If you are coming from the U.S. expect the prices to eat out to be about double what you'd pay on the mainland. There is no sales tax in the Cayman Islands but the food prices are much higher and 15% gratuity is included. We bought coffee, rolls, fruit and sandwich supplies so we could eat breakfast and lunch at our room and save money, we figured we saved a few hundred dollars by doing this, plus we got to eat on the beach which is where we wanted to spend most of our time anyway.

With the standard of living in the Cayman Islands being among the highest in the Caribbean, everything was clean, modern, efficient and well maintained. The island has an overall clean and safe feel to it. We were never once approached by anyone trying to push a product or service on us, not one beach vendor.

I had heard from a friend who visited the Cayman Islands in the 1970's that the mosquitoes were terrible there so I was a little concerned about being attacked. Well, we sat on the beach after dark the first few nights and didn't have any mosquito bites. However, for some strange reason the last few nights we were there, the mosquitoes swarmed us soon as the sun set, so we decided sunset was a good time to get ready to go out for dinner which worked out fine. Being that our location was surrounded by woods, I suspect that to be the reason for the mosquitoes because in the town and more developed areas we ate dinner alfresco every night and there weren't any mosquitoes.

We visited Rum Point but weren't impressed. Having a room right on a semi-private beach was way more appealing than hanging out in a crowded beach. I could see if you lived on the island and had no beach at home that Rum Point might be a fun destination. We considered renting a Sea-Doo, but I have ridden them in the past and after about 15 minutes they seem rather boring and over priced.

View of 7 mile beach looking north of our property

We were on Grand Cayman in August which is their "rainy season" all I can say is I wish our rainy season was like theirs. During the 12 days we were there, 10 days were beautiful, sunny and hot, we had brief showers on only 2 days and were followed by sunshine which soon dried everything up like it hadn't even rained. Now when I say it was hot, I mean HOT! It was around 90 degrees every day with about 80% humidity which put the heat index (what it feels like) at around 104 degrees! When you are at the beach it is just perfect, but if you are walking around town or something it's brutal.

As I said my wife and I both agreed that this was the best vacation we had ever had, I honestly think it was about as perfect of a Caribbean vacation as you can possibly get! The island, the people, the accommodations, the location, the beach, the weather, the food, the snorkeling, the water, the sand, it was all great! And of course very romantic, we are already planning our next trip back to the Cayman Islands!

If you are interested I have ranked the top 5 hotels on Cayman Islands 7 Mile Beach and reveal the highest rated hotel in the Cayman Islands!