About this site, and who writes it

Selina EbanksSnorkel guide, West Bay, Grand Cayman — West Bay, Grand Cayman

What I am not

I do not run, own, crew or take bookings for any tour listed on this site. I have no arrangement of any kind with the operators behind the seven excursions here, none of them has seen a page before it went up, and none of them can pay to appear or to be moved up the list. I guide for a living on the same stretch of water they work, which is where the knowledge comes from.

I am also not the Water Authority, the Public Transport Unit, a cruise line, a port agency or the Cayman Islands Government. Where an answer belongs to one of them, I quote them and name them rather than paraphrasing them into my own voice.

Why a site about a dollar sign

Three sums, and I have watched visitors get all three wrong.

• The currency. Misreading a CI$ price as US$ costs you 20 per cent. Paying cash in US dollars where shops take them at CI$0.80 costs about 4 per cent against the peg, which is the small one, and it is the one every guidebook writes about. The public bus fare is CI$2. That is US$2.40, not “two dollars”. It is on the CI$ or US$ guide.
• The unit. Three of the seven excursions here are sold per person and four are sold per boat. US$650 next to US$79 looks like eight times the price. It is not: US$650 buys a whole boat for up to ten guests, which is US$65 each if you fill it. The crossover is on shared boat or private charter.
• The rating. One product here has 325 reviews behind its score. The others have 17, 4, 4, 4, 2 and 1, and four of them sit at a perfect 5.0 on that. Every score on this site is printed with its sample size, and the reviews hub shows you all seven counts at once.

None of that is difficult. It is easy to miss, and it costs real money on a day when you are ashore for a few hours and doing arithmetic in your head on a dock.

How this site makes money

Affiliate commission from GetYourGuide, and nothing else. If you book through a link here, GetYourGuide pays me a percentage of what you spend and you pay exactly the price you would have paid going to them directly. No operator pays to be listed and there are no sponsored placements. The details are set out on the affiliate disclosure.

How I decide what goes on a page

Three rules, in this order.

• The source travels with the claim. The peg comes from the Currency Law 1974. The bus fares come from the Public Transport Unit. The tap-water figures come from the Water Authority. The stingray material comes from the encyclopaedia article on Stingray City. Where a page tells you something, it tells you who said so.
• Product facts come off the product page and nowhere else. Every price, rating, review count, duration and group cap on this site was read from the cached listing on 16 August 2026.
• Contradictions get printed, not tidied. Where two sources disagree, both go on the page with their names attached. The population of these islands is the standing example: the same article gives “over 90,000” and a late-2022 estimate of about 81,546. Both figures are given here.

What to check before you go

These are worth checking locally before you go.

• How long tendering takes. George Town is a tender port and that is sourced. How many minutes it costs you at either end varies, so check with your cruise line.
• Whether cruise-line excursions get tender priority. Worth asking about when you book.
• How often a Grand Cayman call is cancelled for weather. A call can be cancelled in a swell, so check with your cruise line.
• Whether a berthing pier is planned, funded or approved. Check local news for current plans.
• Any taxi fare. Taxis here are not metered; they work on a dispatch basis with an approved fare table. Agree the fare before you set off; the bus is the budget alternative.
• Which side of the road traffic drives on. Check before you drive.
• Whether a visitor’s driving permit is needed, and what car hire costs. Check both with your hire company.
• Whether ATMs dispense CI$ or US$. Read the screen before you withdraw.
• How many stingrays are at the sandbar, and whether the number is rising or falling. Numbers vary from day to day.
• Whether feeding the rays is harmful. The source records “growing concerns about alterations in behaviour, feeding patterns and general ecology of these rays, when compared to rays not receiving supplemental nutrition”. That sentence is quoted in full on the Stingray City page.
• Any operator accreditation, certification or award. Check each operator's listing for details.
• Whether the water supply is fluoridated, and whether cistern or well water at a private property is equivalent. The Water Authority’s statement covers its own piped supply. For either question, ask the property directly; the tap water page covers the piped supply.
• Monthly rainfall and air-temperature normals, and therefore any “best month”. I can source the wet season, the dry season, the hurricane window and two sea temperatures. so the timing page works from those windows instead of a month-by-month table.
• Any crime statistic or safety rating, any mosquito-control detail, any mobile roaming cost or coverage claim. The safety page covers what official sources say.
• How Grand Cayman compares with Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Belize or Aruba. Five of the questions people search are comparisons with other islands. This site focuses on Grand Cayman.

That list is worth reading before you plan your day ashore.

Corrections

If something here is wrong I would rather have the correction than be right. Email [email protected] with a source if you have one, or use the contact page. Prices, ratings and review counts move; the pages carry the date they were read. The peg does not move, and has not since 1974.

Where to start: the CI$ or US$ guide for the argument this site is built on, all seven excursions for the list with the units made plain, and the reviews for every score with its sample size beside it.