Little Cayman: minimum number of days to stay

[Doctorfish]

Eternum, if your non diving wife likes places like Eduardo's and Aqua, she probably won't be happy with the Brac or Little Cayman. No fine dining, no shopping and relatively basic accommodation.
Southern Cross Club on LC might be a compromise in that the accommodation and food is higher end.

It would be a shame to break up a one week holiday between 2 islands. The plane does not fly low enough to avoid the no flying after diving rule.

If you have only done 20 dives on GC, there is still lot's more there to explore.

In June, it should be nice and calm on the north wall and east end.

 

[Damselfish]

As far as "needs", those are probably more "wishes" than "needs". My wife likes 7MB long walks, places like Copper Falls, Aqua, Edoardo's for dining, and she does not dive. Only myself and my son are diving. I understand that LC is lacking long sandy beaches for walk and dining options are rather limited. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I like long beach walks too and much prefer walking on Little Cayman to someplace like 7 Mile Beach. Little Cayman does not have a wide-ish well-groomed beach like famous 7MB on GC. Most of the resorts are along a beach, but it's narrow and mostly ungroomed, full of birds and critters and interesting things. Here and there you will go around a dock, or sometimes the ruins of a dock from a hurricane. You can actually walk a very long way on the beach there. (Or on the mostly deserted little roads, it's a great place for walking and exploring.)

It's true there is not much for restaurant options on LC. Only one independent restaurant, most people eat at their small AI resort. I've only stayed at LCBR and I would say the food is not gourmet but consistently pretty good, especially given the relatively remote location. Pirates Point resort is owned by a Cordon Bleu chef and somewhat noted for the food, but again a completely different sort of experience - though on a different part of the island and I don't think you can beach walk too well from there. So LC not the place to get a varied high-end restaurant experience. I like that too, but sometimes not having to decide where to eat each night has it's points too.

 

[AggieDiver]

Seems like good advice so far, but I will just throw in my 2 cents to try to answer your question from my perspective. My experience with GC is limited to going through the airport to and from LC and CB. I agree with the others that splitting the vacation of less than a week is not an ideal way to do it, but I can see the idea of giving your wife and yourself a short glimpse of what it is like so you can plan to come back for a longer trip if you like it. If you are set on keeping your wife happy, while getting a chance to see what the diving on LC is like, I would try to shoot for a minimum of 2-3 days of 2-3 tank diving on LC. IMHO, the best way to get that is to put it on the end of your trip after you have been in GC. So if you were travelling Sat-Sat, it would be something like fly into GC on Sat. Dive/vacation GC Sun, Mon and Tues (morning only dives on Tues). Fly to LC on Wed morning, dive the afternoon dives Wed, 2-4 dives Thurs, and 2 morning dives on Friday. Then fly out of LC on Sat morning and on to home from GC same day. If they have a night dive going Thursday night, you could conceivably get 7 dives on LC if you were able to dive 1 on Wed, 4 on Thurs, and 2 on Friday. The flights to and from LC will fly at around 7000-8000 feet in an unpressurized cabin, so you definitely want a good surface interval between any diving and the flights going to and from LC. It is not an ideal way to do it and might leave you feeling a bit rushed...but it will give you a snapshot of what things are like on LC.

 

[Eternum]

Thank you everyone for inputs and suggestions. Very much appreciate your help!