Little Cayman

Everything runs off the resorts. Boats leave from their own docks on a settled rhythm: a two-tank morning, a single tank in the afternoon, and a night dive when there are takers. Nothing else competes for the time, since there is no town to speak of and meals come with the room, so the same handful of divers ends up on the same boat all week. Surface intervals are spent back ashore about as often as they are spent floating over a mooring.

The wall is the island, but it is not one dive. Inside the reef crest lies a shallow sand and coral plateau; the boats moor over that, and you swim out across the flat to where it stops, then turn along the face. The lip is not at a single depth either, close enough to the surface to see the edge at some sites and well down at others, so where the drop starts shapes the profile. The face itself is grooved with chimneys, undercuts and sponge-covered buttresses.

The north-side sites are the celebrated ones and also the exposed ones: when winter northerlies blow, boats move around to the south of the island and dive the wall there instead. Off the island's west end lies one of the region's few surviving Nassau grouper spawning aggregations, which gathers around the winter full moons; it is closely protected and diving on it is restricted in season. Shore entries from the resort docks are shallow work, sand and patch reef, and serve as filler between boat trips.

This suits divers who want to dive one wall repeatedly and get better at it. Gas planning and a disciplined ascent matter, because there is no bottom under you to stop a slow sink, and buddy teams who can run their own profile get the most out of the week. The nearest recompression chamber is on Grand Cayman, a flight away, which is an argument for conservative profiles. It is a poor fit for anyone travelling with non-divers, or wanting restaurants and a change of scene between dives.