Grand Cayman fits in a week. Choosing the boat takes longer.
Which sandbar run actually stops at Starfish Point. What a private charter costs once six of you split it. Whether the bio bay is worth giving up a second evening. Every tour on the island, priced and timed.
Stingray City, Starfish Point, the bio bay and the caves under the bluff.
The four days out a first week on Grand Cayman is usually built around. What each costs and how long it takes.
01The sandbar morningStingray City Experience Plus Two Snorkeling Stops on Grand CaymanTwo hours standing chest-deep with the rays in the middle of North Sound, then two snorkel stops on the way back in.
02The three-stop dayStarfish Point, Stingray City & Coral Garden (3-STOP Adventure)Starfish Point, the sandbar and Coral Gardens on one run. The most island you can cover before lunch.
03After darkNight Bioluminescence Snorkel TourSnorkelling in water that flashes blue-green every time you kick. It only works on a moonless night.
04Out of the sunCayman Crystal Caves Tour in Grand CaymanStalactite chambers under the bluff at Old Man Bay, a good ten degrees cooler than the beach above them.
Grand Cayman sells one thing above all else: a sandbar you can stand up on.
The southern rays come to the same waist-deep shelf in North Sound every morning, four miles from any shore, because fishing boats used to clean their catch there. Three ways to take the trip, and what each costs a head.
The Grand Cayman trips more people book than anything else.
The whole Grand Cayman list →These carry more travellers than the rest of the island put together. What each one costs, and what it actually covers once you are on board.
1
Stingray City Experience Plus Two Snorkeling Stops on Grand Cayman
Spend about three hours with Captain Marvin’s Watersports, visiting Stingray City plus Coral Gardens and the Barrier Reef. Your crew provides gear, fruit juice, and water, with hotel pickup from selected Seven Mile Beach properties. Guides such as Captain Astor, Jesse, Joyce, and Ian help with safety, marine life, and stingray handling.
From · $80
Read our review →
2
Starfish Point, Stingray City & Coral Garden (3-STOP Adventure)
from $80
3
Night Bioluminescence Snorkel Tour
from $145
4
Stingray City and Starfish Experience with Coral Reef Snorkeling
from $65
5
Stingray City Experience Plus One Snorkeling Stop
from $75
6
Private, luxury, custom charters to Stingray City, Snorkeling & More
7
Private Half Day Stingray City, Snorkeling and Starfish Beach Tour
8
Small Group E-Bike Grand Cayman Ecological Half-Day Tour
from $129
On Grand Cayman a private charter split six ways costs less than six seats.
Half the North Sound fleet runs private. You set the departure time, you miss the cruise-ship crowd on the sandbar entirely, and most captains will run you up to Rum Point or Kaibo for lunch if you ask on the way out.
What a day out on Grand Cayman actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what one seat costs. The island has a reputation for being expensive; the water does not charge for itself.
Entry tickets, the distillery pass and the shared run in from the airport.
The standards: two- and three-stop sandbar runs, the bio-bay night swims, the caves inland.
Private charters, the island jet-ski circuit, and the long lunch that costs about as much as a boat.
Three things Grand Cayman has that nowhere else in the Caribbean does.
Warm water and white sand are everywhere down here. Wild rays that keep an appointment, a bay that burns blue when you kick, and a cave system under a limestone bluff are not.
The Stingray City Sandbar
Southern stingrays gather on a waist-deep shelf of sand in the middle of North Sound, four miles from the nearest shore. The habit started with fishing boats gutting their catch on the way home, and three generations of rays have kept the appointment since. You stand rather than swim, the water sits somewhere around your ribs, and the sand underfoot is as white as anything on Seven Mile Beach.
- 1Stingray City Experience Plus Two Snorkeling Stops on Grand Cayman★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,477 reviews
- 2Starfish Point, Stingray City & Coral Garden (3-STOP Adventure)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,168 reviews
- 3Stingray City and Starfish Experience with Coral Reef Snorkeling★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 924 reviews
The Bioluminescent Bay
The bay behind Rum Point holds a bloom of dinoflagellates dense enough to flash when the water moves. Boats run out after full dark and you get in without a light, so every kick throws a blue-green wake off your arms and legs. It only works on a moonless night, which is why the operators sell the trip by the lunar calendar rather than by the week.
- 1Night Bioluminescence Snorkel Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 987 reviews
- 2Bioluminescent Bay Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 288 reviews
- 3Private: Bioluminescence Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 44 reviews
Starfish Point
A shallow bight near Rum Point where cushion starfish sit in a foot of clear water, orange against white sand. They are alive and they stay in it: lifting one out for a photograph kills it, and the guides say so before anyone asks. Come on a low tide and you can count thirty of them without moving your feet.
- 1Starfish Point, Stingray City & Coral Garden (3-STOP Adventure)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,168 reviews
- 2Stingray City and Starfish Experience with Coral Reef Snorkeling★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 924 reviews
- 3Private Half Day Stingray City, Snorkeling and Starfish Beach Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 465 reviews
Four Grand Cayman bookings that run on somebody else’s calendar.
Most of this island can be arranged over breakfast. These four cannot. They answer to the moon, the tide, a guide’s timed slot and a boat that takes one party per departure.
- 01Night Bioluminescence Snorkel TourThe glow only shows on a genuinely dark night. Boats stop running the trip for several nights either side of a full moon.
- 02Cayman Crystal Caves Tour in Grand CaymanEntry is by timed slot with a guide, and the last group of the day goes in mid-afternoon.
- 03Starfish Point, Stingray City & Coral Garden (3-STOP Adventure)The starfish sit in about a foot of water. A low tide is the difference between standing over them and swimming above them.
- 04Private, luxury, custom charters to Stingray City, Snorkeling & MoreA private boat is one party per departure, so the morning slots go first and high-season weeks go early.
What Grand Cayman gives you when you have had enough salt.
Three days of sandbar sun and everybody wants shade. The caves under the bluff at Old Man Bay hold at a steady cool all year, the distillery pours at the end of the tour, and the east-end lanes are flat enough that an e-bike is a genuinely lazy way to see them.
- 1Small Group E-Bike Grand Cayman Ecological Half-Day Tourfrom $129
- 2Cayman Crystal Caves Tour in Grand Caymanfrom $142
- 3Cayman Crystal Caves & Pedro St James Castle or Botanical Gardenfrom $257
By what you will actually be doing
Five days on Grand Cayman, in the order most people take them.
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