North Wall access: SMB Dive Op or East Bay Dive Ops

[Lateralus]

Kathy is giving you some very good advice as is Caydiver who lives and works there both trying to make your trip as pleasant as possible with their insight.

Yes, I understand and I am grateful for their help. They are very nice people that offer great advice. I have been private messaging them on the side also and they have been nothing short of great.

 

[caydiver]

You did well in Thailand. We went to Japan last year and relied on the trains. First couple of days may have had a couple of misdirected occurrences. I guess I am spoiled that even in non English speaking countries some English is commonplace. We didn’t even find that with the taxis for visitors in Tokyo. However just added to the experience and we found some unexpected places

 

[KathyV]

Here is a link to driving directions from the airport to Compass Point, where the Ocean Frontiers dive shop is located on the East End. They recommend the use of a Garmin GPS but they also give detailed driving directions and state that the driving distance from the airport is 20 miles - and they estimate 40 minutes from the airport, but that time will vary with traffic (and in my case, due to unplanned side trips and many opportunities to keep circling the roundabouts!)

Directions

 

[Alucard]

I understand that the Cayman Dive Shuttle is located near the North Wall and berths in Morgan's Harbor but I have never dived with them; see this link: Cayman Diveshuttle

If this is the same Cayman Diveshuttle that I used to know, the owners used to be neighbors of mine on island. They shut down the business and left the island a couple of years ago.

So it sounds like you are already booked at Villas Pappagallo - you will definitely make it work, for sure, and may become familiar with some of the back-roads in West Bay in the process

But a lot of West Bay feels "off the beaten track", for future reference.

I actually think that you would be happy if you did all of your diving this stay from dive ops which are local to where you are staying (the term "local" being relative, of course). Having the north wall and the west side available really increases the odds that the dive boats will be able to get out and find a variety of sites that will please.

 

[caydiver]

I believe it is but didn’t want to appear totally negative. The problem with stuff on the internet is that it stays after the venue or place is gone. Thats why I don’t believe in the cutting and pasting unless it is a government website or similar. Hopefully they will continue to be around as long as necessary!!!!! Would be nice if there was an entity in charge if cleaning up all the information highway pollution.

 

[Alucard]

Would be nice if there was an entity in charge if cleaning up all the information highway pollution.

There's plenty of roadkill on the information superhighway, that's for sure!

The website is down (you have to pay for that) and just the Facebook page is up (which requires nothing to maintain) and there haven't been any posts since 2015. Their TripAdvisor reviews page says "CLOSED" on it, too.

 

[howswedeofme]

We stayed in the West Bay our last trip and dove with a number of different ops due to having buddies working for each but were able to make it out to the North Wall with DiveTech (and in January!). I am assuming DNS tries to make it to the North Wall when they can, as well, and they leave earlier (usually 7:30a instead of 830/9a) so grabbing the "good" sites is more likely with the early departure and you could easily get in two afternoon dives from shore at Lighthouse Point and/or Turtle Reef. We also did the Wednesday 3-tanker with OF out on the East End. We didn't make it to the North Wall that day due to the sea conditions but hit some fantastic sites on the south side of the island. They also delivered sharks as promised. We didn't get to Ghost Mountain and while I did enjoy our North Wall dives, I enjoyed our WB/EE dives just as much.

We had a long layover on Grand in May and grabbed a rental car to scoot around to grab brunch and go to the beach. We didn't have a map or use our GPS and were able to guess where we were going after two years off island, which was nice. The roads are typically marked well once you get off the backroads. I'm guessing you'll be fine driving around. It is a bit of a haul out to the EE but it's a nice drive during the times of day you'd be going if you do the 3-tanker so long as you stay off West Bay Road as much as you can.

 

[EastEndDiver]

If going to East End from West Bay stop for lunch at the Czech Inn in Bodden Town on way back.

 

[KathyV]

There's plenty of roadkill on the information superhighway, that's for sure!

The website is down (you have to pay for that) and just the Facebook page is up (which requires nothing to maintain) and there haven't been any posts since 2015. Their TripAdvisor reviews page says "CLOSED" on it, too.

Thanks for the info, I was not familiar with the op but didn't realize that they had shut down.

 

[KathyV]

...We had a long layover on Grand in May and grabbed a rental car to scoot around to grab brunch and go to the beach. We didn't have a map or use our GPS and were able to guess where we were going after two years off island, which was nice. The roads are typically marked well once you get off the backroads. I'm guessing you'll be fine driving around. It is a bit of a haul out to the EE but it's a nice drive during the times of day you'd be going if you do the 3-tanker so long as you stay off West Bay Road as much as you can.

All roads lead to 7MB, especially from the airport! But it can be trickier to find less popular, less accessible locations on Grand Cayman, at least that has been my experience - but then I am navigationally challenged.

I am sure that the OP won't have much trouble accessing sites like West Bay Marina, Turtle Reef, Lighthouse Point from the far north end of West Bay, but the trip to the East End could be challenging, but he will have good directions and hopefully won't run into much traffic.