Paradise Villas, Little Cayman
Getting there is half the fun. You take a prop plane from Grand Cayman and land on a small runway with an airport building about the size of my bedroom at home. You get your luggage from the plane and walk across the road and you are at Paradise Villas. It doesn't get more casual than this.
I consider Paradise as the alternative to the much bigger and more polished Little Cayman Beach Resort where a lot of divers go to. Paradise consists of a dozen bungalows, right on the water with very lovely grounds. No TV to be found here. We did get a bit of Internet coverage.
The island is great. It has one of everything. One ATM. One grocery store. One fire truck which was given to the island by the government to keep them happy. One gas station that has gas about half the time. One road that goes around the island and is fun to take by bike but it is a bit of a trek.
The resort does not have a restaurant but the Hungry Iguana is next door and it is pretty good. A good breakfast and burgers during the day. We walked to the LCBR on a couple of occassions for a nicer dinner. And did I mention, the island has one big party each week. The week we were there, the young teen daughter of the owner played her flute for entertainment. The island also has some good bird watching with one of the best places to see boobies outside of the Galapagos Islands.
The rooms are nice with a little sitting area and a bedroom. They also had a nice sun porch. Nothing luxurious, but comfortable. The resort has a nice pool where lizards come to sun themselves during the sun of the day.
The diver operation is headed by Mark and Sabine who are great people, photographers, and divers. The shop is small, but professional.
We did almost all of our diving on the north (far) side of the island which was a bit of a bumpy ride in the windy season. We had been there a couple of years earlier in the summer and that was much nicer conditions than in March. I would say that this is best diving in the Caribbean in May to September.
The diving is all about the Bloody Bay wall and it is world class. The top of the wall is about 20 feet and goes straight down to 2500 feet. You can pick your depth and kind of see what you want. Lots of classic reef fish and a turtle or two every 10 minutes. This is a great place for children and beginner divers.
Night dives are great here and include visits from resident tame groupers who know that divers point flashlights at pretty little fish. See a cute little guy? Litght it up and you feel a shock wave over your should as a big grouper eliminates the little guy and replaces it with a puff of sand. Entertaining but not so much for the fish.
Just a bit further up the coast is Jackson's Point where there is another handful of very nice dive sites. A lot different topography with flat sand bottom and very pretty swim throughs. We saw turtles, eagle rays, and a couple of nurse sharks.
The is some good diving on the south side off the coast of the Villas. These sites are where you go when you can't get to BBW for world class diving. These south dives are very similar to what we saw on Grand Cayman. Good healthy corals and a lot of small reef fish. We saw some lobsters and a pretty interesting octopus.
If you like laid back, no pretension, this is a good place to go. There is plenty of diving for a week--20 or so dives and many of the sites can be dived at different depths. The water is very warm and visibility is 100 feet plus. I have been here three times which is always the measure of what you think about a place.
