Suddenly, everything was different. I entered the secret world beneath the waves and was surrounded by bright fantastic coral. Schools of luminous purple fish paraded past, lonely silver fish with black eyes hung above the bottom. Blue and orange fish colored like gaudy parrots (and called parrot fish) munched noisily on the coral reef.
You don't dive alone. Fellow divers were fellow refugees from winter and stress. Sarah and Wade were fleeing the bond markets of New York. Jane, also from New York, said she loves Toronto and comes up "whenever you have a big bankruptcy so have another one real soon and I'll see you there."
I didn't make any promises.
Geoff was a Kiwi by way of the London financial markets; his wife and son were back at the hotel. He would make 26 dives in his week on Grand Cayman. Doug, my buddy on the first dive, is head of security at New York's World Trade Centre.
The author explores a reef among the breathtakingly complex coral of the
Cayman Islands. |
Dive businesses are run by the warm weather equivalents of ski bums.
The guys at Red Sail Sports are smart, friendly and were reassuringly watchful
when I said it had been more than a year since I was underwater.
That evening I looked in on the active night life of the Caymans
again underwater. A whole different fish population comes out for the night
shift. Shrimps scurry along the bottom; in the little caves of the coral
a retreating lobster waves his tentacles in protest and backs out of my beam
of light.
The most memorable sight was a large moray eel. This poor ugly animal
is a vision of the soul of all your enemies come together in one place
a narrow head with large strong dangerous jaws, enlarging into a thick, sleek
tube of a body with ribbon fins top and bottom. He can slither through the
watery underworld with speed and menace, but that night this one was protruding
about a metre from his home in a rusty wreck, waiting for something nice
to get too close. We kept our distance.
The next day I found something else I wouldn't do at home: I went to
the hotel spa for a full body massage followed by a facial. Fay targeted
the knots in my back that took me a whole winter to develop and less than
an hour under her magic fingers to lose. Fay is one of those gifted people
who "has the touch." She's not listed as a major reason to go to the Caymans,
but she should be.
There were more dives, all different. On one, we went deep, 30 metres
down "the wall." I stared down and down and down mesmerized by the 1,830-metre
trench in front of me. On another dive, in about four metres of water, there
are tame stingrays to play with and feed.
A lot of fish follow the stingray feeding, getting what scraps they
can. As soon as I had a piece of squid vacuumed off my palm by a stingray,
18 inches of yellowtail snapper lunged at my hand and swallowed my index
finger up to the second knuckle. He immediately spat it out, leaving it still
attached with just a small circle of cuts and some scratches as a souvenir.
It's eat or be eaten down there, and I made a note to look for snapper on
the menu that night.
You can eat well in the Caymans. Prices are high, as you'd expect in
a place with more banks than restaurants, but the quality is good. Rum Point
Restaurant, a ferry ride across North Sound from Seven Mile Beach, looks
like a place that Ernest Hemingway might have visited. "Hemingway's" is the
Hyatt's up-market beach restaurant that you might have seen in the movie
The Firm. There was no snapper the night I was there, I settled for a most
excellent stuffed grouper.
Four days in the Caymans didn't make me an expert on the place, I just
enjoyed the warm cocoon. The cure for winter was complete. I came home happier
and more relaxed than when I left, and I knew once again that the world is
not a cold and grey place.
If you go
Cayman Airways, Delta and American Airlines have frequent flights from
several U.S. gateways to Grand Cayman. There will be charters direct from
Toronto from November to April.
Rooms at the Hyatt Regency on Seven Mile Beach begin at about US$200.
Be sure to ask about value-added specials that can include a free night.
For reservations and spa appointments call Hyatt at (800) 233-1234 or the
hotel directly at (345) 949-1234.
It's not usually necessary to reserve diving more than a day in advance,
but if you want to, or for info about certification courses, call Red Sail
Sports at (800) 255-6425.