George Town, Cayman Islands: Seven Mile Beach, the wall and the sandbar

George Town is small and walkable and reads oddly at first, because two unrelated economies occupy the same few blocks. Along the harbour front are the things a cruise call generates — duty-free jewellery and watches, souvenir shops, rum cake, dive shops — and immediately behind them are the offices of an offshore financial sector that is one of the largest in the world, which is why you will see people in suits in thirty-degree heat and why prices for everything are set by a resident professional population rather than by tourism. The practical fact worth planning around is the port itself: there is no deep-water berth, so ships anchor in the roads and passengers transfer by tender. On a calm day that is a ten-minute ride; on a rough one it delays everything, and calls are sometimes cancelled outright, so a shore excursion booked independently carries real risk. Worth the short trip north is Camana Bay, a purpose-built modern town centre with a canal, a lookout tower and better eating than the harbour front, which is where residents actually spend their evenings.

The island's headline beach runs north from the edge of George Town along the west coast, and it is genuinely as good as its reputation, if slightly shorter than its name suggests — closer to six miles than seven. It faces west into the lee, so the water is calm almost all the time, the sand is fine and pale, and the shelf is shallow a long way out. Most of the island's hotels and condominium blocks stand along it, but the entire beach is public land above the high-water mark, so you can walk its full length and use any stretch of it; access paths from the road are marked and there are public entrances at intervals. The southern end near town is busiest; the middle is where the hotel loungers and watersports are; the northern end thins out and is the quietest. Being west-facing, it takes the sunset, which is the moment the whole beach turns out for. Snorkelling directly off the sand is only moderate — the good reef is further out or further north — so treat Seven Mile as a swimming and walking beach rather than a snorkelling one.

In the shallow North Sound, a submerged sandbar hosts a large population of southern stingrays that have been habituated to people over decades — the tradition began with fishing boats cleaning their catch in the same spot, and the rays learned to gather. Today it is the island's signature excursion, and it is genuinely remarkable: the water at the sandbar is chest-deep and clear, and the rays, which are large, come right up against you. There are two versions and the difference matters. The sandbar itself is a standing site, suitable for anyone including non-swimmers and children; Stingray City proper is deeper and is a snorkel or dive site. Handling guidance is strict and worth following for the animals' sake as much as yours — support them from below rather than gripping, keep sunscreen off your hands, and let the guides do the feeding. Go early. The site is calm and near-empty at the first boat and can hold a great many people by mid-morning, and the experience is completely different depending which of those you choose.

Diving is the reason serious travellers come here. Because the island has no rivers and no significant runoff, visibility is exceptional year-round, and the shallow shelf ends abruptly a short distance offshore in a vertical drop-off — the Cayman Wall — that falls away into deep ocean. Diving it is the classic Cayman experience: you swim out over sand and coral, the bottom simply ends, and you hang over blue with sponges and gorgonians on the face beside you. Sites ring the island, with the west side calmest and most accessible and the north wall generally rated the best. Add a large decommissioned naval vessel deliberately sunk offshore as an artificial reef, which now sits upright in accessible depths with cut passageways through the hull, making it one of the more approachable big-wreck dives anywhere — the shallowest parts are reachable on a snorkel. Beginners are well served: the calm lee shore, warm water and abundant operators make this a standard place to learn. Sister islands Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, a short hop away, hold quieter and in the latter case even more celebrated wall diving.

The island's conservation story is unusually visible. A large marine facility on the west coast breeds green turtles and has released substantial numbers into the wild over the decades; it is the main non-beach attraction on the island and the place to see the animals up close, with touch tanks for hatchlings and large open lagoons. Inland, the Grand Cayman blue iguana — a big, genuinely blue lizard found nowhere else — came within a handful of animals of disappearing and has been brought back through a captive breeding and release programme; the botanic park in the island's east is where to see them, along with orchid gardens and dry forest trail. And then there is Hell, which is exactly the sort of thing a small island does well: a patch of jagged black limestone formations, weathered into spikes, with a gift shop and a post office beside it from which people send postcards for the postmark. It takes fifteen minutes and is worth it precisely because it does not take itself seriously.

Owen Roberts International (GCM) sits minutes from George Town with heavy service from the United States and connections onward. Driving is on the LEFT, a visitor's permit is issued at the rental counter, and the island is small enough that a car is optional — buses run the west coast frequently and taxis work to fixed published rates rather than meters. On seasons, be clear that this island is squarely inside the hurricane belt: the season runs June to November, peaking August to October, and while direct strikes are infrequent they are consequential on a low limestone island, so travel insurance that covers weather disruption is a sensible purchase for those months. December to April is dry, breezy and busiest. On money, one thing surprises nearly everyone: the Cayman Islands dollar is pegged above the US dollar, so a price in KYD converts upward, not down. US dollars are accepted everywhere, but change often comes in local currency, and reading a menu without noticing which currency it is quoted in is the classic first-day mistake.