Come January, the Cayman Islands will celebrate its Second Annual Cayman Culinary Month with an elaborate variety of tastings, demonstrations, tours and dinners, all aimed at those of us who enjoy and embrace the myriad pleasures that the culinary arts bring to the table. Celebrity chefs will descend upon these shores, including Eric Ripert of New York’s Le Bernardin, and locally, Blue, at The Ritz-Carlton; Chicago’s Charlie Trotter of his famed eponymous establishment in the Windy City; the “bad boy of cuisine,” Chef Anthony Bourdain; Chef José Andrés, famed for importing his avant-garde Spanish fare to America; and Chef Susur Lee, who went from being a 16-year-old apprentice at Hong Kong’s elegant Peninsula Hotel to being recognised by Zagat as “a culinary genius.” These chefs comprise the culinary ensemble that will conduct what many consider to be the Caribbean’s premier epicurean event, Cayman Cookout — just one of the many series of events within Cayman Culinary Month promoted by the Cayman Islands Tourism Association.

But this introduction is just a taste to whet your appetite for delights yet to be revealed. Don’t wait to start making reservations; these are extremely popular and well-presented events. Here’s a look at the schedule of events in chronological order:

Caribbean Food & Art Dinner at the Grand Cayman Marriott Beach Resort, January 7–9

A feast for the eyes as well as the palate (and the French say you eat first with your eyes!), this tasting dinner and paired art exhibit will feature local flavours and local artists, of which there is a considerable and talented abundance. There are three nights to take advantage of this winning concept.

Cayman Cookout at the Ritz-Carlton, January 13–16

At this epicurean extravaganza with Chef Eric Ripert and many others, guests will enjoy a weekend of celebrity-led gastronomic adventure and indulgence ensconced in the accommodating five-diamond ambience and opulence of The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman. The event attracts serious foodies from across North America and beyond. Set on stunning Seven Mile Beach and outside venues, this culinary celebration serves up the best in cuisine, tropical ambience and cooking demonstrations for eager eaters, dedicated diners, gourmets, food writers and others of the gastronomic persuasion.

Lionfish Hunt & Cookout at Cobalt Coast DiveResort/Divetech, January 20–27

The invasive and destructive lionfish, despised devil of the deep, has become the latest culinary craze in Cayman and is devoured with gusto, along with a certain sense of environmental righteousness. Scuba divers are invited to be a part of an educational briefing about lionfish and take part in a one-tank dive to capture them along with an ensuing cooking demonstration. Then comes the tasting of lionfish appetisers, paired with a selection of white wines. Participants (who must be openwater certified) will enjoy the satisfaction of knowing they have assisted in a valuable environmental project, as well as enjoying a new Caymanian culinary delectable.

Rum Point Rum Drink Competition, Rum Point, January 22

This is as good as it gets. Sail on a Red Sail catamaran across the beautiful North Sound lagoon to pristine Rum Point and enjoy a “spirited” rum drink mixing competition and tasting, followed by dinner (and more rum), then a relaxing sail back home. Sweet.

Third Annual CITA Charity Wine Dinner, January 26

There’s an air of mystery here. This exclusive charity wine event will be held at “one of Cayman’s newest up-and-coming restaurants” — yet to be disclosed at press time. This sleuth tried to identify the locale, but to no avail. Featured wines will be paired with each course and described by guest representatives from the featured vineyards.

The Taste of Cayman, Food & Wine Festival at Camana Bay, January 29

Saving the best, arguably, for last, the grand finale of the month-long food fest will be the 23rd Annual Taste of Cayman Food & Wine Festival at Camana Bay. This popular event has really come into its own with the opening of the Town Centre at Camana Bay. It attracts some 4,000 people each year.

Camana Bay’s main Paseo, its perpendicular Market Street and various garden court areas will be lined with food and wine tasting stalls offering complimentary samples (there’s just one admission price at the gate). Attendees will have the opportunity to vote for “Cayman’s Favourite Restaurant” while tasting samples. Various wine tasting booths will be strung along the Paseo, and there will be live entertainment on the waterfront crescent overlooking the picturesque North Sound waterways, where the wee ones enjoy splashing in the water jet fountain. There will even be a “Mojitos and Margaritas Lounge” where tasters can get away from the maddening crowd and “chill” with a cold libation. It’s definitely one of Cayman’s culinary signature events — you won’t want to miss it. Visit www.tasteofcayman.com.ky for more details.

Source: http://caymanairwaysmagazine.com

Island Routes is to bring its best-of-the-best philosophy to the Cayman Islands, expanding its roster to seven destinations.

Tours will showcase the unique culture and attractions in Antigua, The Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, the Turks & Caicos Islands and now Grand Cayman.

“The Cayman Islands embody the vision of sun, sea and sand in the Caribbean,” David Shields, general manager of Island Routes Caribbean Adventure Tours.

“Its welcoming people and an array of natural attractions make it a destination that fits perfectly within the Island Routes Tours family.

Island Routes – recognised as the World’s Leading Caribbean Attraction Company by the World Travel Awards – offers one stop shopping for Caribbean holiday thrills with wide appeal.

Adventurers can book every tour with confidence due to the company’s unprecedented customer service standards including a low price guarantee, money back assurance, easy cancellations and unmatched insurance coverage, just to name a few.

“The Cayman Islands Department of Tourism is pleased to embrace Island Routes Caribbean Adventure Tours as an organisation that fully recognises the beauty and quality of our destination, and one that is able to provide quality assistance to visitors seeking unique Caymanian experiences for luxury travel,” said acting director of Tourism, Shomari Scott.

“We look forward to a long and fruitful business relationship with Island Routes Tours and we hope visitors to our islands will choose to take advantage of this prestigious company when booking their Cayman Islands’ tours and activities.”

All Island Routes tours are fully commissionable for agents.

For more information about Island Routes Caribbean Adventure Tours in the Cayman Islands, or to make a reservation, head over to the website.

Source: http://www.breakingtravelnews.com

It was an era synonymous with glamour – the Fifties and Sixties, when Ian Fleming and Noël Coward built their houses GoldenEye and Firefly in this Caribbean idyll, and Marilyn Monroe, JFK and Jackie Kennedy jetted in. At hotels oozing old-world character, Adriaane Pielou finds intoxicating echoes of the past.

Arriving in Jamaica not to the expected blue skies and sunshine but a violent, late-afternoon rainstorm, I find the heavens black and rain pelting. “They havin’ a bumpty ride!” cackles the elderly taxi driver as we leave Kingston’s international airport and head for the small Tinson Pen domestic aerodrome nearby, where I am booked on a small plane for the 15-minute flight to Ocho Rios, on the north coast.

I follow the driver’s gaze upwards through the rain-lashed windscreen. Good grief. Overhead, a small plane coming in to land is so buffeted by the wind it has flipped over on its side, with one wing tip pointing at the ground. As we wait in the traffic, the decrepit taxi belching dark exhaust fumes, I watch tensely as the plane finally rights itself before bumping on to the runway. “Everyt’ing go well, thank the Lord,” says the driver, cheerfully.

By the time I have struggled against the wind and rain into the little terminal, I am relieved to find that all domestic flights have been grounded (the pilots are looking quite crestfallen) and another taxi has been called, so I’ll be making the trip – a three-hour journey across the mountains – by road. Now all I’ve got to worry about is having to drive through Kingston. The murder count in Jamaica was 1,700 last year, and highest in Kingston. That, admittedly, was worse than usual because of the prolonged police shoot-out with kingpin drug dealer “Dudus” Coke, but terrible for a country of three million. “They shoot each other left, right and centre in the bad part of Kingston,” says my suave new taxi driver, putting on some soothing Toots and the Maytals. “But the bad part just a small part and we only going through the good part!” The residential streets we drive through look entirely tranquil – almost manicured, in fact, with their lush gardens and low walls – and despite the “Beware of the Dog” signs, there are none of the Johannesburg-style barbed-wire defences I was expecting.

Smart houses give way to dilapidated villages, then sugar-cane fields, then hilly jungle. Darkness falls and when we eventually pull up outside Villa Plantana, in the gardens of the old Royal Plantation hotel, I can hardly keep my eyes open. I just about register a graceful, large main room opening on to a terrace where candles flicker in hurricane lamps set around a pool. The trees fringing the terrace are swaying as the wind rustles their leaves and I can hear waves crashing on rocks as I drift off.

If there is one thing more luxurious than falling asleep to the sound of a stormy sea, it is waking up to a tropical morning. By 7am I have swum in the pool and am sitting on the terrace looking at a now limpid turquoise sea, listening to birdsong and crunching toast spread with the most delicious marmalade – Busha Browne’s, says the butler, made by a local company run by the enjoyably named Winston Stoner. The aroma of fresh coffee mingles with the scent of frangipani, and the warmth of the sun soon dries my swimsuit. Jamaica hasn’t taken long to begin to work its magic.

The villa is separated from the hotel by a bridge over a gully shaded by trees that must be almost 100ft tall. After breakfast, I wander through beautifully cultivated gardens filled with hibiscus and hummingbirds into a cool world of mahogany floors and wicker chairs. The hotel opened in 1957, with Churchill one of its early guests, and – having picked up The Noël Coward Diaries to read on the plane – I am thrilled to discover that the old black Steinway in the drawing room is the very one Coward used to play when he brought house guests over for cocktails.

Like his great friend Ian Fleming, who dreamt up James Bond in Jamaica, the playwright first visited the island from a bleak, blitzed-out London in the 1940s. Enchanted by its languorous beauty and sunny climate, Coward copied Fleming in building a house there, entertained everyone from Truman Capote and Frank Sinatra to Cecil Beaton and the Queen Mother, and did much to put Jamaica on the map as the ultimate glamorous holiday destination of the Fifties and Sixties. His house, Firefly – at Port Maria – is only a few miles away, so I take a trip there that afternoon.

Firefly, on a hilltop with what must be one of the best views in the Caribbean, is owned by the Jamaican National Heritage Trust, but run by Island Outpost – the hotel group owned by Chris Blackwell, who launched Island Records and made Bob Marley a star. It appears just as Coward left it. There are his 78s on a turntable, his short-sleeved Hawaiian shirts and silk PJs in the wardrobe, his medicine bottles in the bathroom cabinet (I shut the door quickly) and a smell of mildew. I feel 
I have stepped back decades. “The table is set as it was when the Queen Mother came to lunch on February 28, 1965,” intones the caretaker, who worked for Coward. The author, who died in Jamaica in 1973, is buried in the garden and his presence is almost palpable.

I am sorry to leave Villa Plantana, but arriving at Rio Chico – another of the big houses available for rent, where I am to spend the next two nights – I laugh out loud in delight. The sprawling sometime family home of Butch Stewart – the super-rich Jamaican who founded the Sandals hotel chain, ubiquitous throughout the Caribbean – it is an open-sided, six-bedroom house arranged on two storeys and set amid rolling lawns on a headland near where the Dunn’s River waterfall spills into the sea. Beyond the pool, in a shallow stream, a table has been set up in the water for lunch. Total heaven. Later, behind the house, I find steps leading down to a little cove where a swing chair shaded by low-hanging trees makes a spot perfect for reading and lazing, feet in the warm sea. At 5pm, my reverie is interrupted by the butler. “Apologies for the intrusion, but would you like dinner served in the Italian garden, or on the beach, or on the cliff terrace?” asks the hyper-courteous Rocky. Well, there’s a question. What a brilliant place this house must be for parties.

But there’s no time to ponder that; I have places to go, people to see. From Ocho Rios, past Mick Jagger’s house, it is a two-hour drive along the north coast to Montego Bay. The driver-guide points out the intelligence of the goats that graze on every roadside, staring at the traffic as if waiting for a bus (“So smart – you don’t never see one squashed out dead flat at the side of the road, do you now?”), and enumerates popular local sayings for me. “Most def”, “too blessed to be stressed” and “if it ain’t so, it nearly so!” are my favourites. Used to the much smaller Barbados, St Lucia and St Thomas, I am surprised at how long it takes to get anywhere in Jamaica (145 miles long by 50 wide). Eventually, though, we pass through the stone-pineapple-topped gates marking the entrance to Round Hill, built in 1953 on a former coconut plantation (with Noël Coward among the original investors), and the old, grand Jamaica once again becomes evident.

Clipped lawns dot hillsides strung with red-roofed villas half-hidden behind billowing bougainvillea. In the reception, with its chequered floor and old-fashioned board where guests hang their keys, an elderly concierge takes my case; he could be the brother of the pianist in Casablanca. Kingsley, as he is called, steers the golf cart up the hill and recites the names of guests he has met in his 38 years here. “Many but not all I found most impressive,” he says sonorously, putting the key in the door of my cottage. At any other time I would be pressing him for details, but instead I am just relishing the shabby-chic all-white interior and marvelling at the view. No wonder Ralph Lauren has a villa here. “Mr Lauren isn’t here now, but in winter, he come most every weekend,” says Kingsley, tottering off.

Half an hour later, in a little wooden pavilion housing a library, yards from the beach, I open a slightly mildewy biography of Ian Fleming and, after days of blue skies and sunshine, feel glad rain has started to patter again, giving me an excuse to read. “Afternoon tea now on the terrace,” says the Austrian manager, Josef Forstmayr, and soon I am settling into a wicker armchair by a potted palm with a pile of books and plate of cakes, relishing the tropical downpour. In the bar, with its overhead fans and gleaming mahogany chairs, the walls are hung with black-and-white photographs. Tanned faces grin out from half a century ago – Grace Kelly, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Kennedy and JFK… I can’t help grinning back.

Dinner is so-so; breakfast, as ever on this island, perfect. En route back to Ocho Rios, I make a detour to see Jamaica Inn – opened in 1950, with blue-and-white painted cottages strung along a white-sand beach, the place where Marilyn Monroe honeymooned with Arthur Miller – and then it’s on to the grand finale. Arriving at GoldenEye, in Oracabessa, at dusk, is like stepping on to a glamorous film set when all the actors have gone home. A wooden bridge links the new development of 17 beach and lagoon-edge villas, opened in 2010, with the cliff fringing the headland that obscures the original GoldenEye – Ian Fleming’s house, which Chris Blackwell bought in 1976. (Fleming had recommended a teenage Blackwell as location scout when Dr No was filmed here.)

I check into one of the beach villas, a high-ceilinged wooden house right on the beach. There is a pale-blue Smeg fridge in the kitchen, a high bed draped in a mosquito net, and a bathroom – with clawfoot bath – opening on to a second, outdoor, bathroom with a shower under an almond tree (unnervingly overlooked by the adjacent villa). My dinner of grilled fish and salsa is light and full of flavour, prepared by local chef Conroy Arnold, who learnt to cook as a barefoot boy at his grandmother’s side, then went to New York and ended up at Nobu.

Next morning he explains the GoldenEye ethos: “Mr Blackwell wants us to use organic local ingredients wherever possible, support the local fishermen and farmers, involve local people as much as possible, not like the 1,000-bed hotels that import everything from Miami.” Breakfast is served in the sunshine at the breezy Bizot Bar beach restaurant – muesli with chopped guava, then the dense, delicious, toasted Jamaican hard-dough bread with Winston Stoner’s insanely divine double-boiled guava jelly. Tapes from the 1970s French Riviera radio station Radio Nova play in the background. So cool.

Later, at the watersports centre, I choose a jet-ski and buzz out into the bay at a reckless 25mph. “If you go at 110mph, they leap about 30ft, which is quite fun,” says Nick Simmonds, the South African general manager. “Chris Blackwell jet-skis as a workout.” In the somnolence of mid-afternoon, I have a massage in the shady, half-open-air spa, then afterwards move into GoldenEye itself. It’s a shame someone has seen fit to erect a totem pole and a giant portrait of Bob Marley in the elegant old drawing room, but the desks Fleming typed at still stand there and in the main bedroom.

While the large, jolly housekeeper who as a girl worked for “Commander Fleming himself, oh yes!” busies herself inside, I retreat to the private beach with a Ting (the Jamaican soft drink that has become a rival to Busha Browne’s in my affections) to read Casino Royale, the first of Fleming’s 13 Bonds, which he wrote at the desk in the bedroom. At dusk, I wander back to find hurricane lamps lit and the table in the sunken garden set for dinner. Later, in Fleming’s bedroom, I fall asleep to a now familiar soundtrack of tree frogs, crickets and slapping waves.

At 6.30am on my last day, I am lying in an outdoor roll-top bath under an almond tree in the big, shady garden bathroom, finishing the Bond, with a coffee cup balanced on the edge of the bath. The temperature is delicious, in the bath and out. I feel utterly in love with the world. This – right here in this bath – is my nomination for the most idyllic spot in the Caribbean.

“Ma’am, do you have family in Jamaica?” asks the portly, middle-aged Jamaican squeezed into his booth at passport control at Kingston airport. (I arrive after a hair-raising detour to see yet another atmospheric old hotel, Strawberry Hill, 3,100ft above Kingston in the Blue Mountains and reached via one hairpin bend after another). Taken aback, I tell him I don’t. “You care to consider adopting me?” he asks, as he hands my passport back, flashing a gold-toothed smile. “I no trouble and 
I good about the house.” It’s the first time I have ever gone through airport security laughing.

On the flight home, I reflect on how depressing it has been to see so much poverty, despite the evidence of wealth and investment: the new cruise-ship port at Falmouth will service 6,000-passenger mega-ships, while zip-wire circuits and bobsled rides are among Jamaica’s new attractions. But it has been intoxicating to discover that the ferociously lush and lovely island Coward and Fleming wrote about so seductively still exists. The “peace and silence and cut-offness” and the “gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday” that Fleming loved is there and waiting. It is a thrill to luxuriate in the hotels they knew, oozing old-world atmosphere and character. But it is also reassuring to know that, for all their languid glamour and laid-back charm, the hotels (as the GoldenEye manager let slip) bristle with closely monitored security cameras.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk 

Graham began his artistic journey under the tutelage of  several eminent painters and sculptors at Maidstone College of Art, and learned etching with David Hockney. He then went on to Chelsea School of Art in London, where the British cultural renaissance of the 1960s was in full swing, and was to impact significantly on his early work.

In 1970 he left the United Kingdom for Jamaica, where he was under contract to teach art for a year. The initial period was extended several times, until he eventually decided to settle on the Caribbean island, which he had grown to feel passionately about, and to paint full-time.

It was during the 1980s that he began to develop what was to become his signature style, distinguished by its painstaking use of layers of evolving color and texture.

As he finessed his style, he began to travel more, within and outside Jamaica, continually searching for different kinds of inspiration. Old things, be they country churches, rusting doors or crumbling bridges, hold a particular allure for the artist. As his work came to be recognized, he began to exhibit widely and successfully, in the Americas and Europe.

In recent years Graham has been experimenting with richer color and greater detail. Since marrying Linda in June 2010, his life has reflected this tendency.

Check out Graham’s home featured in Coastal Living Magazine.

Source: www.davispaintings.com

It’s Thanksgiving again…. A time to indulge ourselves in mounds of stuffing,turkey, gravy, pie, and of course, cocktails! Although Thanksgiving is an American holiday, we in Cayman love to celebrate anything, and a festive cranberry margarita is just the perfect way to celebrate this holiday in the tropics. Try this recipe over the holidays!

Ingredients: (1 serving)
1 ½ shots of tequila
1 shot of cranberry juice cocktail
¼ cup of whole berry cranberry sauce
½ shot of triple sec
10 ice cubes
sweetened dried cranberries, for garnish
lime, for garnish

Method:

1. Combine all ingredients except garnish in blender.
2. Blend on high until smooth and frosty.
3. Serve in margarita glass.
4. Garnish with dried cranberries and a lime wheel.

Food Network celebrity chef Daisy Martinez shares holiday recipes from her ancestral Puerto Rico.

A traditional Thanksgiving turkey with all the fixings is a comforting taste of home. But if home happens to be Puerto Rico and you happen to be former Food Network celebrity chef Daisy Martinez, then there’ll be a touch of spice turning up the heat on holidays. As a child growing up in Staten Island, New York, Martinez feasted on tamale-like pasteles and arroz con gandules, or rice and peas. Christmastime visits to her grandparents’ home country were replete withparrandas — house-to-house caroling in the Spanish troubadour style — and dancing. Today, Martinez honors tradition at her own table, which she shares with her husband, Jerry, and their four children. But new takes on dishes of yore make the celebrations uniquely her own.

In her book, Daisy’s Holiday Cooking: Delicious Latin Recipes for Effortless Entertaining, Martinez brings the cultural flair of her ancestral Puerto Rico to Thanksgiving, New Year’s, Christmas, Easter and other celebrations, delivering hassle-free and accessible recipes.

“The holidays are stressful enough without cooking for a houseful of people, especially for someone who doesn’t have experience,” says Martinez. “The point of these dishes is to have something elegant that looks like you put in a lot of effort, when in reality, you won’t be in the kitchen sweating with flour in your hair,” she laughs.

Part of that simplicity is mixing the old with the new — like with the pavochon she recalls making as a young wife with an infant son. A Puerto Rican-style Thanksgiving turkey, pavachon was born when the island became a part of the United States. Chefs season the bird like a traditional lechon (roasted suckling pig), with garlic, oregano, black pepper, salt and achiote-flavored oil; it’s a must-have at Christmas, but it’s a big-deal preparation for a big family.

“It was just two of us, so I got a Butterball, seasoned it and served it with not too many sides,” she recalls. “It was just enough.”

Other new takes on treasured food traditions include her choquito, the beloved yuletide coconut nog laced with chocolate, and, instead of a lechon, country-style pork spareribs braised with hermanchamantel, a fruit-based mole traditional in Mexico.

In keeping with Martinez’s “keep it simple” mantra, the book is filled with menus, to-do lists, timetables and make-aheads — which can be cooked as much as two months in advance — that make the chef’s experience more delightful and less demanding. She recommends, for example, small gatherings over the course of a holiday weekend for cooks who don’t want to prepare multicourse meals. One appealing suggestion is a South American-themed tree-trimming party, complete with Peruvian/Chilean pisco sours and nibbles like pan de jamón, a Venezuelan ham sandwich with olives and raisins.

For Martinez, taking inspiration from the Caribbean and Central and South America is the natural way to approach festive occasions. But, she says, sharing the holiday table — and not the food itself — is what really makes the season bright.

Visit daisymartinez.com for a collection of Daisy Martinez’s recipes.

Source: caribbeantravelmag.com

The Cayman Islands was first sighted by European explorers on May 10 1503, owing to a chance wind that blew Christopher Columbus’ ship off course. On his fourth and final voyage to the New World, Columbus was en route to the island of Hispaniola (home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic) when his ship was thrust westward toward “two very small and low islands, full of tortoises (turtles), as was all the sea all about, insomuch that they looked like little rocks, for which reason these islands were called Las Tortugas”. Columbus named the islands after the turtles he saw in the waters around them.

The two islands sighted were Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. A 1523 map showing all three Islands gave them the name Lagartos, meaning alligators or large lizards, but by 1530 the name Caimanas was being used. It is derived from the Carib Indian word for the marine crocodile, which is now known to have lived in the Islands. This name, or a variant, has been retained ever since. Thus the word eventually developed into Cayman and adding the word Islands, we became the ‘Cayman Islands’.

An early English visitor was Sir Francis Drake, who on his 1585-86 voyage to these waters reported seeing” great serpents called Caimanas, like large lizards, which are edible.” It was the Islands’ ample supply of turtle, however, that made them a popular calling place for ships sailing the Caribbean and in need of meat for their crews. This began a trend that eventually drastically depleted our local waters of the turtle, compelling Caymanian turtle fishermen to go further afield to Cuba and the Miskito Cays in search of their catch.

WHO WERE THE FIRST INHABITANTS?

It is a well established fact that most of the early settlers in the Cayman Islands came from the British settlement in Jamaica. The first known settlers arrived in Little Cayman around 1658, and it is generally believed that they were deserters from Oliver Cromwell’s army in Jamaica.

It is also believed that some may have been pirates who gave up their errant ways to live a more peaceful life on the islands. The first two settlers were Mr. Bodden or Bowden and Mr. Watler or Walter. Over the course of the next couple of years some other settlers came to join Mr. Bodden and Mr. Watler, and many of these settled on Cayman Brac. Some of the early settlers were fishermen who caught turtle to sell to Jamaican merchants. Isaac Bodden, the first recorded permanent inhabitant of the Cayman Islands, was born on Grand Cayman around 1700. He was the grandson of the original settler named Bodden who was likely one of Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers at the taking of Jamaica in 1655. A variety of people settled on the islands: pirates, refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, shipwrecked sailors and slaves. The majority of Caymanians are of African and British descent, with considerable interracial mixing.

WHAT IS THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THE CAYMAN ISLANDS?

English is the official language, but it is important to note that it is British English, rather than American English thus we say ‘colour’ rather than ‘color’ and ‘centre’ rather than ‘center’. Despite this, Caymanians have over the years developed their own vernacular dialect which is a form of broken standard English. Each district has its own idiosyncratic differences.

WHAT ARE SOME COMMON EXPRESSIONS OR SAYING USED BY CAYMANIANS?

Traditionally Caymanians have been known to pronounce words beginning with “V” as “W’s” e.g. Very become W-ery. Vegetables become W-egetables. The dialect of Caymanians is very distinct and each District has its own intonations. For example, when asking someone who their parents are, an East Ender would say: Boy who ya fah? (Boy, who are you for?). While a George Towner would query: who u belong ta? (Who do you belong to?). Cayman Brac and Little Cayman also have distinct ways of pronunciation and it is quite noticeable when they speak.

Source:  www.caymanislands.ky

Cardinall Avenue is the place to be today as George Town takes its turn in the Heritage Day spotlight.

Pirates Week, presented by SaxonMG, is fully in swing once the heritage celebrations come around and Cayman’s current capital is keen to show off its wares with a packed day of family-friendly activities.

You might want to skip breakfast just this once to ensure plenty of room for the wonderful traditional dishes which will be on offer at the food stalls. They open from 10am onwards so no need to craggle up any bacon, scramble eggs or, indeed, chuck a pineapple in the oven upside down. Nope, this is all about the magnificent fare that is available on Cayman and the sounds, smells and of course tastes are going to be so good you’re going to want to hang around the food area all day.

But that would be silly because there are a host of extremely exciting activities to get stuck into, too. From 10am to midday why not let out your artistic side with the design your own shopping bag contest or the design your own T-shirt contest? Remember this year’s theme is Cayman’s Marine Life, so that could give you some inspiration.

Remarks from George Town committee chairman Dale Ramoon follow at the official opening at 11am, then there’s the unique and quintessentially Cayman activity of conch shell blowing at 11.15. More wonderful food follows at 11.30 with the snapper cook-off; this is where the culinary stars of tomorrow will surely be found – it’s for under 16s only.

Midday will sound sweet with traditional music and there’s storytelling at 12.30pm. All good ways to connect with the Caymanian heritage, which is what made the Islands as they are today.

Great days 

The deputy governor and MLAs arrive at 1pm just in time to enjoy a demonstration of thatch plaiting in the company of expert Dona Bryan at 1.15pm.

From 2pm, the North Side Kitchen Band play in their own inimitable style, to soundtrack a great day in progress. At 2.45 check out the cuties at the baby show before children’s activities get under way at 3pm.

The arrival of Miss George Town at 3pm is sure to brighten up proceedings and there’s also the George Town parade of costumes and the dance group to enliven the afternoon even more, if that was possible of course. Then, at 4pm get involved in the sweet sound of the steel pan – one of the Caribbean’s signature sounds and one that has taken Cayman by storm during the past 20 years.

The winners of the baby show, design your own shopping bag and design your own T-shirt competitions take place at 4.30, just in time for the arrival of Blackbeard and the Seattle Seafair pirates.

There’s just time to get grooving on down with a DJ from 5.30pm and it all comes to a celebratory head with a great fireworks display from 7.30pm.

The capital of the Cayman Islands is a great place to hook up with mates and learn about what brought us to this point – as well as, of course, snarfing down those delicious treats. Heritage can be delicious.

Source: compasscayman.com