About a year ago, Hurricane Ivan did to Grand Cayman what Katrina just did to New Orleans. The problem in Cayman wasn’t too much water, though, it was too little. The Caymans have no fresh water source. They depend on partially on rainwater and mostly on desalination. Desalination requires power and the power was out on Cayman for close two months.

The effects of Ivan resonate still. I had extended discussions with a couple of bartenders on the topic, so I am now an expert. One fellow told me about being without power for 72 days and having to stand guard over his and his neighbor’s homes with a machete. Cayman Islanders are generally easy going, but the drive to loot is as strong as it is anywhere. There wasn’t the widespread chaos we saw in New Orleans, mostly folks were just grabbing whatever of value they could quickly get their hands on. Obviously, on Grand Cayman it does you no good to steal anything large or recognizable. The island is 20 miles wide, where are you going to hide it?

Another fellow just said, "Before Ivan we thought it was a joke. We set up hurricane parties and laid in cases of beer. Now, when one of those things gets close, we all get a horrible feeling in the pit of our stomach."

Depending on who you talk to, the island is anywhere from 60-80% back. Judging from my casual wanderings, I would say closer to the 60 end of that range. The good news is most of the main tourist areas are functional to a much higher degree, providing them the much needed income to finish the job. Grand Cayman also has the advantage of being a huge offshore banking center. It is unlikely Grand Cayman will show many signs of Ivan once the year is out.

The Hyatt, up until recently the premier resort on the island, is only partially re-open, with full operations coming any day now. And the new flagship resort, the Ritz-Carlton, was set to open in November, but everyone is guessing it will be more like January. That means, at least for the moment, the premier resort was the Westin Causina, which is where I was staying.

Like all the big resorts the Westin is situated on Seven Mile Beach, which is sometimes dismissed by seasoned Cayman travelers as commercial chaos. I saw nothing of that -- of course, it was off season -- but as a rule, I don’t have the nervous aversion to popular places that some travelers do. And Seven Mile Beach is lovely: beautiful soft sand, turquoise clear warm water, perfect sunsets, beach bars and snorkeling. There’s a reason everyone congregates here.

I really only have one major complaint about the Westin. They provide a business center with Internet terminals, but at a rate of a dollar per minute. And that’s Cayman dollars, so it’s $1.25 U.S. Seventy-five dollars an hour to check your email. It’s a good deal cheaper if you bring your laptop and use the in-room hook up, but I refuse to bring my laptop to paradise, that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Apart from that, the service was flawless. An island-wide power outage for a few hours put this to the test. The desk crew was quite patient responding to questions that they had heard a hundred times and didn’t know the answer to. The food and beverage minions managed to get something running eventually so they could at least cook up a few things. Beers were placed on ice and margaritas were served on the rocks for as long as possible. The pool was sweet, the restaurants quite good. Virtually all water sport rentals are available from Red Sails Sports, right on the beach. Apart from the expensive connectivity, Westin gets straight ‘A’s.

(I have to admit, though, that I am dying to try out the new Ritz once it opens. The schedule date is still supposedly November, but most of the locals I talked to -- meaning cabbies and bartenders and bell hops -- seemed to think January was more likely.)

Here’s another cool thing about going to Grand Cayman: flying on Cayman Airways. Cayman Airways is subsidized by the Cayman government, which means they presumably aren’t under the excruciating pressure that commercial airlines are under to scrape up every last cent of profitability. As a result, you get a meal and free rum punch in coach. And apparently you don’t get your flight cancelled if it’s only sparsely populated, like mine was. This plane had three seats on either side of the aisle and both inbound and outbound I had all three seats to myself. Think about that. I could lie down almost completely and got served food and alcohol in coach. It was like a time warp back to the golden age of air travel. Me likey. Cayman Airways is my new favorite.

In many ways, Grand Cayman reminded me of Bermuda. Both are of British extraction, and in addition to catering to sun-seekers, both have extra wealth and stability by catering to the financial services industries (banking, insurance, etc.). Both are also blissfully free of street merchants and panhandlers and so forth. Bermuda is much more developed and refined, but Cayman is not far behind in that department, and a long way from anything resembling the Caribbean squalor you occasionally find in the islands. Nevertheless, wandering about in the capital city of Georgetown, you can still run into chickens wandering about freely and local fishermen hawking their fresh catches.

One fundamental difference is in transportation. On Bermuda, non-residents cannot rent cars. If you want your own personal transportation it will have to be a scooter (or a pedal bike if you are feeling heroically vigorous). There is, however good quality public transportation: a bus system that can take you anywhere and ferries, which are more fun, to take you to most of the tourist traveled areas. On Grand Cayman there is something like a bus system but, in the words of my concierge, "It’s really just a big blue van and it doesn’t have a schedule, it just comes around when it comes around." Oh, I see. You can, however, rent a car, which I did, a dwarfish little critter called a Daihatsu Charade.

I have never driven a car so small; it’s hardly much bigger than a golf cart, and all four tires are roughly the size of emergency spares. I was pleasantly surprised, though, by how well it drove and how civilized it felt. I have driven plenty of full sized rentals that were a good deal less comfortable. Here’s the thing, though: They drive on the wrong opposite side of the road. Not only that, the steering wheel is on the wrong opposite side of the car. Whoa. It’s as if their entire auto industry was developed by looking in a mirror. OK, I though to myself, I can handle that, but here’s the other thing. They have that silly British affection for roundabouts. You know, instead of normal street corners, you pull into a big circle and keep going round until you reach the exit you need. Now I had some minor experiences with these in my days living in Washington DC, but the problem here is -- yeah, you guessed it -- they go around the circle in the wrong opposite direction. The combination of all this ass-backwardism convinced me that renting a car would be the shortest path to ending up in a pile of mangled metal, and possibly an international incident. But the Concierge assured me that it was very easy and that I could get around the entire island and never enter a roundabout. That was half true. It was much easier than I thought, but I was only a few minutes outside town before I found myself in a roundabout with no alternative escape path. I am proud to say that not only did I come through it unscathed, it became like a badge of honor and I started seeking out other roundabouts to master.

But for the most part, you aren’t anywhere exotic if you’re in Grand Cayman. The island is ringed by multi-million dollar homes, many available for rental, (some still demolished). There are large development projects going on; they appear to be working on draining an area of swampland maybe half a mile inland from Seven Mile Beach. There was a featured news story in the local paper about how the "largest barge ever to land in Grand Cayman" had recently arrived carrying 9 million tons of sand, for use on the Ritz-Carlton’s new golf course. The biggest complaint the cabbies had was the rush hour traffic to and from West Bay, where most of the islanders live. (That’s what you get for having busses that just show up whenever.)

Things are less hectic as you get away from Seven Mile Beach and Georgetown, but not much. About the closet thing to rustic Caribbean that Grand Cayman offers is Rum Point. A smallish beach on the far end of the island from Georgetown with nothing but a beach bar, restaurant, gift shop, lounge chairs and hammocks strung between the trees. (Pics: 1,2,3) The Concierge called it the "real Cayman Islands." Well, I guess that depends on your definition of real. It is unquestionably a sweet place and definitely worth a day long visit. I managed to snag one of the hammocks for a leisurely afternoon with a good book and a Stingray Ale or two. It’s the kind of spot you yearn for when you’ve been getting up and going to sleep in the frozen darkness of Michigan in February.

Grand Cayman’s raison d’etre is water sports. Specifically snorkeling and diving. It is here that the famous Stingray City is, where one dives and snorkels with gargantuan creatures of the deep. This is an all day affair requiring you cruise offshore on a tour boat to reach the destination and is no small expense when you purchase your ticket and rent gear and so forth, so I kept my water activities closer to shore. (I was headed to Vegas after this and I didn’t to be broke in Vegas -- I wanted to be broke after Vegas). I limited my water activities to a good deal of swimming, a bit of snorkeling off the beach and a session on a jet ski; my first time on one of those contraptions -- a total blast and dead simple: twist the throttle and steer where you want to go. This goes on the list for all future vacations.

Still, you have to ask: does Grand Cayman really offer anything all that different from, say, the Florida gulf coast? Let’s take Naples, Florida as a comparison. The beach at Naples is, I think as beautiful as Seven Mile Beach. Getting there and getting around is much easier (no customs for starters). Scuba/snorkeling aside, water sports are on par. Restaurants and facilities are better in Naples. It’s tempting to say that, apart from diving, you can’t make much of a case for Grand Cayman. But then, travel is not arithmetic. Sometimes it’s the little things that give a place its special vibe, like the chickens wandering around the city, or the counter-reverse driving, or sitting in a beach bar watching the cruise ship reload its harried day trippers, floating in the pool while an iguana languorously makes its way up a palm tree. Exotic it isn’t, but these sorts of things do remind you that you are well away from home, somewhere uncommon, somewhere significant; you are definately on vacation. And that’s A.O.K.

Although it wouldn’t be my first choice, I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to Cayman (that’s the Ritz calling). You can be assured of mid-winter warmth (another thing you won’t get in Naples) and the journey is not too arduous. Two nights is enough, three if you do Stingray City. You’ll need a day for the water and a day to troll around the island, but that’s plenty. (Give yourself a couple of extra days, however, and Cayman Airways will get you in and out of Havana from Georgetown. Now that would be exotic.)