Change is blowing in the balmy trade winds that, along with secret bank accounts and spectacular underwater scenery, draw about 1.2 million visitors a year to tiny Grand Cayman and its even smaller sisters, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. Located just 150 miles south of Cuba, the Caymans boast full employment and a crime rate so low that many residents of sparsely populated Little Cayman and Cayman Brac still don't bother to lock their doors at night. Schoolchildren sport Tommy Hilfiger backpacks, while their parents can joke that the national flower is the satellite dish. But a growing contingent of native Caymanians is concerned by the rapid alteration of the coun try's social and economic fabric, and by an infusion of foreigners who make up more than half the work force. Most Cayman Islands visitors head for Grand Cayman, the largest, most-developed of the three islands and home to nearly all of the British colony's 36,000 residents.
Prices listed are in U.S. dollars.
Most Little Cayman and Cayman Brac visitors eat at hotels, but Grand Cayman offers everything from Whoppers to dim sum. Top seafood spots include The Crow's Nest and The Lobster Pot . The trio of low-lying islands harbor some 90 congregations and 50 denominations, from Presbyterian to Pentecostal. Under the islands' longstanding Sunday trading laws, bars must stop serving liquor at midnight on Saturday and can't resume until the next afternoon. I've been to most of the Caribbean, and very few islands have the religious structure of the Caymans.