Little Cayman

The smallest of the Cayman Islands, cigar-shaped Little Cayman has only about 170 permanent inhabitants, so nearly everybody you'll see will be a visitor, most likely from the U.S. Little Cayman is 16km (10 miles) long and about 1.6km (a mile) wide at its broadest point. Electricity didn't make it here until 1990, and phone service didn't arrive until 1991. Little Cayman lies about 109km (68 miles) northeast of Grand Cayman and some 8km (5 miles) from Cayman Brac. The entire island is coral and sand. Blossom Village, the island's "capital," is on the southwest coast.

The Cayman Islands archipelago is made up of mountaintops of the long-submerged Sierra Maestra Range, which runs north into Cuba. Coral once formed in layers over the underwater peaks, eventually creating the islands. Beneath Little Cayman's Bloody Bay is one of the mountain's walls -- a stunning sight for snorkelers and scuba divers.

Little Cayman seems to have come into its own now that fishing and diving have taken center stage; the island is a near-perfect place for these pursuits. Jacques Cousteau hailed the area around the little island as one of the three finest diving spots in the world. The flats on Little Cayman are said to have the best bonefishing in the world, and a brackish inland pool can be fished for tarpon. Even if you don't dive or fish, you can row 180m (591 ft.) off Little Cayman to isolated and uninhabited Owen Island, where you can swim at the sandy beach and picnic by a blue lagoon.

Pirate treasure may still be buried on the island, but it's in the dense interior of what is now the largest bird sanctuary in the Caribbean. Little Cayman also has the largest population of rock iguanas in the entire Caribbean (you will surely spot them) and is home to one of the oldest species of reptiles in the New World -- the tree-climbing Anulis maynardi (which is not known by any other name). This rare lizard is difficult to spot because the females are green and the males are brown, and, as such, they blend into local vegetation. Keep your eyes open for them!

Road Rules: Iguanas Have Right of Way
One local rule to remember is that the prehistoric-looking gray iguana is the king of the road and always has the right of way, should he want to make a leisurely crossing.