My wife and I have been taking annual trips to Grand Cayman since 1999. The cost of lodging is usually not the biggest expense-- it's the cost of dining. That's why we rent a condo. To help defray costs we almost always travel with friends, cutting the condo rental fee in half. That coupled with the savings from being able to buy at the grocery and cook in the condo makes the tip quite reasonable. We rent a friend's condo on Rum Point, which is about 45 minutes drive from 7-maile beach. we like being away from the huge crowds. Some of the most fun shore dives on Cayman have a shop right there where you can rent tanks.
From the condo at Rum Point, we usually book a couple of two-tank wall dives with Red Sail sports, which is just next door across the street. This gets us out to the North Wall, which has some fantastic dives.
For shore diving we usually make a trip to Sunset house. Tank (and gear rentals) are right there and there is a bar and restaurant on site. There is a changing area so you can cleaned up, have lunch or dinner, and then head back.
We have also done shore dives at Devil's Grotto (Eden Rock). No restaurant and the changing facilty is a cramped, steamy bathroom. But it is a fun, swim-through shoer dive. You can have lunch practically across the street at any number of places in Georgetown.
One of the bets Shore dives on the island is at Dive Tech across from the Turtle Farm on West End. A great mini-wall (70-foot max. depth) with a Sandy bottom. Lunch at Cracked Conch is good. It takes about an hour to get there from Rum Point.
When the weather doesn't cooperate for these shore dives we have booked with whoever is going out of Red Bay on the south side. usually, this is the best bet when the waves and wind are out of the north.
We have booked dives with Ocean Frontiers on the east end, but have had some bad weather expeiences. Seems as though anything under a category 2 hurricane, and they'll go ahead and make the trip, telling you it's choppy, buut OK. Maybe it was just bad luck, be we had this happen on 3 different occasions and so stopped using them.
