All’s clear: Grand Cayman

When I feel the boat slow, I look back along the coast to figure out which site we’re at. Back in 1985, mooring balls were just beginning to be planted along the reef, so at most spots I still had to drop an anchor in the sandy areas behind the coral. To find particular sections of the wall, I memorized line-ups such as steering west until the second telephone pole lined up with the seventh palm tree and then north or south until the third street light lined up with the northwest corner of the brown condo. But when I look along the shoreline now, I’m totally lost. Not only are most of the trees and poles gone due to Ivan, but it’s obvious that another kind of storm has swept over the island during the last 20 years. Where there had been a few condos and a couple of hotels on Seven Mile Beach, now there is a nearly solid line of buildings, including the new Four Seasons — still under construction but already showing off its tradition-breaking variance that allows it to rise above the palm trees.

As the mate ties us off to the mooring buoy, the divemaster starts his briefing by drawing a picture of the site. It’s Big Tunnels. I strap on my tank and anxiously wait for the word to head down.

On the bottom, there’s a plaque asking divers to protect and respect the fragile reef. As I swim past, heading for the first tunnel, I’m hoping Ivan could read. I stay right on the fins of the divemaster. Big Tunnels was my favorite not only because it was a wondrous, intricately sculpted reef, but because it was the most fun to guide. And the Divetech guy starts it right, with a plunge into the mouth of the first large cavern. I do it old-school, taking a sharp angle straight down into the dim opening, then barrel roll and swim upside down following the contour of the cave as it forms a J, examining the solitary corals clinging to the ceiling until I sense that I’m near the end. I roll back over and look down to find myself at 130 feet staring into the abyss — the tunnel ends at the very edge of the wall. I bubble out a laugh, remembering how many guests I had to go chasing after at this very spot when the magnetic, bottomless blue pulled them deeper and deeper.

I’m euphoric, and it’s only partially due to the nitrogen narcosis. The dive is the same wonderful game of zero-gravity follow-the-leader in and out, up and down the tunnels that ant-farm through the massive pinnacles. More importantly, though, the corals, which on the most pristine of reefs form just a thin patina of vibrant life atop the remains of their ancestors, look healthy and undamaged.

On the ride back to the dock, the captain tells me how for six weekends in a row after the storm, every available dive boat set out loaded with volunteers who scoured the reefs, picking up every fence post, roof shingle and satellite dish they found before it could grind against the coral.  

The same kind of effort was made on an even larger scale along Seven Mile Beach, the island’s shining jewel when it comes to topside attractions. I move down to the Hyatt, and over dinner at its top-rated Hemingways restaurant, Mark Bastis, general manager of the resort as well as president of the hotel association, tells me how, within days of the storm, the government put out the call to raise an army. Anyone who wasn’t already at work rebuilding their homes or businesses was marshaled at one end of West Bay. The force, made up mainly of Jamaican women, marched up the road, gathering tons of siding, shingles, branches, car parts, boat parts — everything that Ivan tore up and tossed around. They did a remarkable job, and the island’s main artery and its world-famous beach were cleaned up in short order.

Bob Friel / Caribbean Travel & Life

I ask Bastis about the hotels. He says that though nearly every hotel was damaged, he expects that 75 percent of the room stock will be back online by the end of this year and 100 percent by early 2006. His own resort has only partially recovered. I’m staying in a plush beach suite, one of 53 units reopened directly on Seven Mile Beach. Bastis says that they expected this complex facing the water to bear the brunt of the damage, but since the winds ran parallel to the beach, no big waves hit the main stretch. They didn’t expect a sneak attack from the rear, though. Just when many along West Bay thought the worst of the hurricane was over, the storm surge raised the level of North Sound some nine feet. The water overflowed the canals, lifting boats out of the marina and piling them in backyards. Seawater flooded everything east of the beach, including the entire first level of the Hyatt’s 236-unit building that stands more than 100 yards from the ocean.   

As I tour the rest of the island, there are amazing stories at every stop. During a dinner of crab cakes with chardonnay lobster sauce at the Cracked Conch, the waiter tells me how waves snapped off their dock’s concrete pilings like breadsticks. Alan Rosenblum, another diver from way back who was smart enough to go into the real estate business, describes the week after the storm as “Mad Max time,” when gasoline was in such short supply that people resorted to siphoning it out of cars that had been thrown up into trees. A policewoman told me how in Bodden Town, on the south side of the island — which bore the brunt of Ivan — a squad of cops was holed up in their station house at the very height of the storm, wondering if it was the end of the world, when they heard an insistent banging at the door. Thinking no living person could be out in such horrific winds, they at first ignored it. But when it didn’t stop, they pried open the door. They’d been right: It was no living person. When the ocean rose up over the beach, it flooded a sea-view cemetery, exhuming a recently buried casket and carrying it over the dune, across the street and down to the police station where it ended its final voyage on their doorstep.

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