Cayman Islands

Columbus sighted the islands in 1503 and called them Las Tortugas for the sea turtles; the name Caymanas, for the local reptiles, stuck. For two centuries they were uninhabited, visited by turtle hunters, buccaneers, and the survivors of shipwrecks on the reefs. Permanent settlement came from Jamaica in the eighteenth century, bringing enslaved Africans, and the islands were administered as a dependency of Jamaica.

Local legend holds that George III granted the Caymans freedom from taxation after islanders rescued the crews of a wrecked convoy, the "Wreck of the Ten Sail", in 1794 — the story is a myth, though the absence of direct taxes is very real. When Jamaica became independent in 1962 the Cayman Islands chose to remain a British territory.

From the 1960s the islands built themselves into a tax-neutral offshore financial centre, and they are now the registered home of tens of thousands of investment funds and companies, alongside a large tourism industry of cruise calls and stopover visitors. Hurricane Ivan flooded much of Grand Cayman in 2004; recovery was fast, and the territory remains one of the wealthiest in the region.

Caymanian identity is English-speaking, Christian, and rooted in the sea: Caymanian men long crewed merchant and turtling ships around the world, and seafaring, thrift, and church still shape the culture. Traditional crafts include rope and hats woven from silver thatch palm, and catboat racing and "Cayman style" cooking are points of pride, celebrated at the Pirates Week and Batabano festivals.

The resident population is now about half foreign nationals — Jamaican, Filipino, Honduran, British, American, Canadian — on work permits tied to their employer, and the friction between the "Caymankind" hospitality brand and real tensions over immigration, housing, and cost of living is a constant theme. Society is socially conservative and law-and-order minded, though same-sex civil partnerships were introduced in 2020 after a court battle.

About 85,000 people live across the three islands, the great majority on Grand Cayman, where George Town is the capital and financial hub. There is no income, capital-gains, or corporation tax; government revenue comes from import duties, company and work-permit fees, and tourism.

The cost of living is very high, housing and rent especially so, and daily life is car-dependent, air-conditioned, and closely tied to the finance and tourism calendars. Cayman Brac, with its limestone bluff, and tiny Little Cayman, with a few hundred residents and world-famous diving, are far quieter and more rural than Grand Cayman.

Caymanian cooking centres on the sea: conch (stewed, or as fritters), fresh mahi-mahi, wahoo, and snapper, "fish rundown" simmered in coconut milk, and turtle stew, still eaten and now supplied by a farm on Grand Cayman, a practice that draws criticism abroad. Sides run to rice and peas, cassava and breadfruit, and "heavy cake" made with cassava or breadfruit, coconut, and spice.

Jamaican jerk and patties are everywhere given the size of the Jamaican community, and the invasive lionfish now appears on menus as a conservation measure. Local rum and the island's Caybrew beer are the usual drinks, and Stingray City — wading with wild southern stingrays on a sandbar in the North Sound — is as much a food story as a wildlife one, the rays long fed by fishermen cleaning their catch there.

Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman is the headline — a long, calm, west-facing strip of coral sand lined with resorts. Offshore, the diving is exceptional: the sheer drop-offs and coral of the walls, the deliberately sunk USS Kittiwake wreck, and, off Little Cayman, the celebrated Bloody Bay Wall, which falls away from six metres to the abyss.

Stingray City and its shallow sandbar draw boat trips into the North Sound; Rum Point and Starfish Point on the quieter north coast have calm swimming; and the Cayman Crystal Caves inland show stalactites and pools. The Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park protects native dry forest and runs the recovery programme for the endemic blue iguana, brought back from the edge of extinction.

Novelty stops include "Hell", a field of jagged black limestone with its own post office, and the Cayman Turtle Centre. Cayman Brac offers bluff-top trails and caves, and Little Cayman has the Booby Pond nature reserve and long, almost empty beaches.