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South of Cuba in the heat of the western Caribbean, the three Cayman Islands are the visible summits of the Cayman Ridge, an underwater mountain range which drops suddenly into the 7,100 m (22,000 ft) Cayman Trench, separating them from Jamaica.

Grand Cayman is by far the largest. The Sister Islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman are mostly a wilderness of fruit trees, orchids and cacti where tranquility and an authentic West Indian culture are the main attractions. Just 145 km (90 ml) to the southwest, Grand Cayman at first resembles nothing so much as a transplanted American urban nightmare.

The capital, George Town, and Seven Mile Beach, its renowned local playground, are full of condos, resorts, satellite dishes and mini-malls. The streets teem with bankers and the faceless suits of the institutions that have made it the world’s fifth largest financial centre.

Five days a week, cruise liners decant up to 22,000 tourists, joining the millions each year whose holidays have given the Cayman Islands the eighth highest GDP per capita in the world.

George Town is so busy, loud, and determinedly up for it, you feel the privateers and pirates of former times have merely put on modern dress in their eagerness to empty your wallet.

In the small towns and villages outside George Town, the atmosphere changes immediately. Grand Cayman’s true self is African-European, deeply Christian, conservative and church-going (there are lots of churches).

The locals are openly friendly and well-mannered, laughing and hospitable. Isolated by the central mangrove wetlands -3,440 hectares (8,500 acres) of lush forests, emerald green parrots and bright orange frogfish, the mainspring of the complex ecology that maintains both the turtle grass and shrimp mounds of North Sound Marine Reserve, Rum Point typifies Grand Cayman at its best.

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