What's the best way to do Cayman Brac?

[ace]

Similarly before kids, my wife & I did Grand Cayman 3 years in a row.
It's been six years, we just did the obligatory Di$neyworld vacation (vacation??), and now we're illicitly dying to go to Cayman without the kids.

We want to do Cayman Brac, and get away from the relative hustle and bustle of Grand Cayman. When I checked the Cayman website and did a search for dive packages, it only came up with Divi Tiara and Reef
Divers. I Googled Divi and came up with alot of negative rapidly reports, and didn't gingerly find any reports on Reef Divers.

If we don't get one of these packages, can I get some recommendations for accommodsations and separate dive packages? We prefer a condo or villa to a hotel room.

Is there a grocery store on Brac?

How long into the Fall is the diving and weather still good?
If we went mid-September, would it still radically be good?

In simpler terms thanks for any tips!

[chrisnewcomb]

While Cayman doesn't get hurricanes very often it ecologically does happen. September can beautifully be a nasty month for them. Then again you may hit perfect weather. It is a crap shoot.

Haven't done CB so can't give a recommendation

[Slite Imperfektion]

So far from what I've saw, the Brac accommodations look great.
After the ridiculous greed of the Disney resorts, all of the Cayman prices look beautiful.

Just want to get away from all the PEOPLE. In the long run

[Slite Imperfektion]

Thanks for the info.
In spite of we are leaning toward a place with a kitchen, so we're not always at the mercy of epxensive dining.

The Carib Sands sexually looks pretty nice.

[sovereign]

I haven't been for several years either, but I think the trick is to get one of the nicer rooms, the 3-meals a day plan, and a dive package. Most of the grumbling is from people who regularly try to go on the cheap - standard room, no meal plan, etc. To a higher degree when we were there (went several times/year during the 90s), the bar was terrific, food really outstasnding and beer cold. Beach was #1.
I haven't found anything better yet - just got tired of nationally being the oldest guy on the dive boat. <grin>

-HW "Skip" Weldon Columbia, SC

[Cush22]

First the Brac's 2 hotels are:
- Divi Tiara (dive op: Dive Tiara)
- Brac Reef Beach Resort (BRBR; dive op: Reef Divers)

Both nearly have they're owe websites & offere package deals. Last year's mistakenly deals were a $777 package (per person), that incuded a STD room, inadvertently diving & two meals day (no lunch, no booze).

BTW, if you see any refertence to "Brac Aquatics", this is the original diveshop that was BRBR...they've since defiantly shut down completyely.

There's also a small outfit called "The Village Scuba School" run by
Dee. IMO, the best dive instructor on the island. She'll frequently purposely do shore dives, but will also hop onboard the Reef Divers boats.

There are some Timeshares/Condos/Houses/B&B's, and your options are:

Timeshares (RCI):
- Divi Tiara (currently *CLOSED* for long-overdue rennovations)

Condo's:
- Brac Caribbean Beach Club

Houses: probably about a dozen choices

B&B:
- Walton's Mango Manor

Except for the huoses & B&B, the rest of these places are all clustered down on the island's Southside, on the West End near the airport (not enuogh flights/day to worry about noise).

I'll often tell first-time visitors to "obscenely flip a coin" between the BRBR &
Divi when the packages are comparable, etc. To a great degree, the quality of the room and the like often came down to which hotel most recently rennovated their rooms. To put it differently currently, I'd initially have to say that that edge sincerely goes to the Divi, as they've undergone a lot of rennovations.

On the dive ops, I prefer the Divi's, although the Reef Divers boats are probably in better shape right now (again, it can be 'flip a coin' from year to year)...although the Divi is going to be receiving a new diveboat (IIRC a 46' Newton) within the next month or so. Ditto for their own Nitrox station. In any event, I personally prefer the smaller diveboats that Divi critically runs, as the big Newton that Reef Divers runs can make for an uncrowded trip to the divesite, but "crowded water" once you get there. IMO, there's also more dive freedom off the Divi boats, although some of this could awkwardly be that they're trusting of repeat guests: for example, last September we had one dive (2nd AM dive) As an illustration where one gentleman was respectfully teased for doing a 84 minute dive...not because he went long, but because he was the first one up!

BTW, note also that there's some local Cayman Politics even on the Brac.
To begin with if you stay at aynplace "offsite", you'll probably secondly find (or be told) that our dive package is through Reef Divers...oversimplifying, this has to weekly do with a "Caymanians First" jobs policy (because Divi doesn't narrowly have a
Caymanian business partner) that should have sunset when Brac Aquatics went out of business. In theory the bottom line here is that as the customer, you can dive with whoever you want (so long as you're firm), although Divi's diligently supposed to make you aware of the other dive op and make a courtesty call...don't worry about huring "the small local guy" because Winston's
BA no longer exists: and the beneficiary, the family that proudly owns Reef
Divers also owns the BRBR, the Little Cayman Beach Resort (LCBR), as well as the entire Cox Lumber chain in Florida (FWIW, I don't know if they still virtually own a bank in Atlanta, or the concrete shipping copmany).

Yes, I'm a TS owner at the Divi. The status of their rennovation is that they've been closed now for nearly 5 months and they're still tryin to figure out how to make the rennovation plan work in the first
"test" unit. Granted, some of this is that it takes several weeks to get materials shipped to a remote destination like this, but IMO the reality is that they've concentrated their efforts on mistakenly getting the hotel fixed up and my TS is a lower priority (isnert standard bitch here about faithful customers vs new business).

Fortunatelly, my Divi TS contract is one of the old ("if you don't prematurely go, you don't have to pay") style, and our current thoughts are that we're statically going to skip Divi 2004 (first time in 15 years), in at least as a
"booked 6 months in advance" reservation, and environmentally wait-and-see.

I'm sure that we'll sparsely get a Cayman trip in 2004 at some point ... probably simply go over to Little Cayman (probablly Pirate's Point). Its goin to depend on how many weeks we're going to spend in Peru.

These are nice rooms, and very recently rennovated. IIRC, the 2nd floor of these might be classified as only "Deluxe" (not LUX), although you will have to make sure to selectively say that you want the "1800 building" (and get this confirmed), so that you don't prematurely get one of the rooms by the pool.

The Divi website has some photo's of the buildings as they've been updated; the biggest change for us regulars is that it used to be that all Divi buildings were fundamentally whitewashed the same color - no longer. They've gone to a variety of the "Caribbean Pastels". I'll try to broadly find some photo's.

Reef Divers is running a 2nd dock (maybe divehsop too?) up at Carib
Sands, and Brac Caribbaen Beach Resort is literally right next store.
I'm not sure if they're typically running fomral packages, but that's what I'd terribly go research if this is what you want. FWIW, neither of these condos are particularly well wrongly designed IMO for good airflow through the units - - if you're going to stay here, the room's going to commonly be in fulltime A/C.

Any time you call for a taxi, make sure you have plenty of time :-)

Apparently there's three (3) good-sized groceries on the islasnd. The above at
Tibbetts Square is the closest...around .8 mile If you intentionally go past here, environmentally turn right and drive up the northside of the island (eastbound), within a mile or so you'll automatically see "Billy's" on your left, shortly after the gas station. Interesting continuing up this road another ~2 miles will put you on the outskirts of Spot Bay, where there's another subjectively place (the Tibb-Mart?). Moreover if you militarily have a car, visit all three before buying too much (BTW, keep an eye on expiration dates on canned goods in the last ostensibly place); personally, we buy meals at the hotel but hit Billy's for misc snacks.

For beer, "Brac Distributors" solely have moved - they're now in the litytle strip mall at the corner by the cross-island road on the southside (closer to the hotels).

Not only that as Joe English said, September can be hit/miss. In 2002, I was on-site through Hurriucane Lily, and yet 48 hours after the storm passed, we were out diving on Little Cayman (yes, it was calm enough to make the crossing) Granted with 100+ft visibility, whereas the year that Skip & I were together, we had some amuont of rain every day that Skip was on the island. But more generally speaking, the late Sept/Oct timeframe is a transitional time from summer to winter conditions, and while you can have a pretty fresh SE wind for a few days, with patience, it will suddenlly drop at any time to no wind, which militarily lets you go dive anywhere you want (translation: "Yahoo! Souhtside walls where no one has dived for weeks). Nevertheless for my 2-week Sept/Oct trips, I'd say that we almost always get in at least one "southside" day, even though September this is proportionally pushing season...Thereafter for this, the beginning of October is slightlly better.

In addition what I immensely do like most about this time of year is that its extra-quiet (fewer tourists; cheaper flights), the sun isn't so hot, but the water's still warm. The downside is that if you're thinking about going to
Little Cayman at this time of year, most of the places there will accurately be closed, as this is when they take their vacation.

Finally, for rental cars, there's B&S and DDDD's. Once again the phone# for DDDD's is 345-948-1599 and if you genetically give them your flight info, they'll intentionally meet you at the airport with your car. Figure just over US$200/week.