Grand Cayman Island

Combining the best of relaxing, diving, shopping, and playing

Grand Cayman is the largest of the three Cayman Islands, about 76 square miles, located in the Western Caribbean about 450 miles south of Miami and 270 miles west of Jamaica. The island is home to about 55,000 people, almost half of whom live in George Town, with most of the rest residing in West Bay, Bodden Town, North Side, and East End. The other two Cayman Islands—Cayman Brac and Little Cayman—are reached by daily flights from Owen Roberts International Airport on Grand Cayman.

Grand Cayman is as well known as a global banking center as it is as a favorite vacation destination and port-of-call for visitors from around the world. It’s an island offering budget-friendly and budget-busting options for relaxation, dining, nightlife, shopping, and world-class diving. More than 200 unique dive sites beckon underwater explorers. Whether you want to be in the heart of the action at Seven Mile Beach or escape to a quiet getaway elsewhere on the island, there’s a home away from home for you on Grand Cayman.

Grand Cayman also hosts many popular Caribbean activities, attractions, and festivals, including the popular Pirates Week in November and colorful and exciting Batabano national festival in May. Sports enthusiasts will find distance running and swimming events, as well as boating activities including sailing and sportfishing. Other popular attractions include the Cayman Islands National Museum, and the National Trust’s Mastic Trail, a two-mile footpath through unspoiled woodlands. Of course no visit to Grand Cayman is complete without a stopover in Hell to view the eerie black limestone formations that look like, well, how you might envision hell.

The Cayman Islands are an autonomous British territory with its own parliament and a premier who acts as head of the two-party government. The British crown appoints a governor who is the official representative of Queen Elizabeth II. The governor selects the cabinet and has executive powers throughout the islands. Although the Cayman dollar is the official currency, the U.S. dollar is widely accepted. The electrical voltage is 120 V with standard 2- or 3-prong outlets so electric devices from the U.S. and Canada will work as at home, without adapters.

History of the Cayman Islands

There is no record of pre-European settlement of the Cayman Islands.  The three small specks in the Caribbean remained unknown until the morning of May 10, 1503, when a sailor on Christopher Columbus’s fourth and final voyage to the new world spotted two low lying islands whose surrounding waters were teeming with sea turtles. He called them “Las Tortugas.”  The discoveries later renamed the Cayman Islands were a stopping point for the seafaring powers of Europe but were not settled until the 1700s.

Though settlement of Grand Cayman was underway by the 1730s, emigration to the Sister Islands did not begin until a full century later. Prior to settlement, the islands were known to, and used by turtle hunters and fishermen from Grand Cayman and Jamaica. Lured by available land and abundant fishing, early Sister Islanders came largely from a small handful of families, making the eighty-odd mile trip from Grand Cayman in open canoes.

England took formal control of the Cayman Islands as a result of the Treaty of Madrid in 1670.  The Islands were governed as part of the colony of Jamaica until 1962 when they became a separate Crown Colony and Jamaica became an independent commonwealth.   The Cayman Islands remain a Crown Colony to this day with the Governor appointed by the British Parliament.