Life on the Caymans

Good grief! Kissing a stingray had never been top of my agenda, but it's amazing what you'll do in a holiday mood.

Like most people, I had associated the creatures with stings of the kind that finished off the naturalist tough-guy Steve Irwin back in 2006, so I was completely unprepared for the tameness of the Caymanian variety.

And then there's the kissing ceremony, with a stingray 'handler' holding it up to our faces so we could bestow the ultimate compliment. Thankfully the rays didn't kiss back! The three Cayman Islands don't register on British holidaymakers' radar quite as often as the safest, least crime-affected part of the Caribbean really should.

Most of us still have only the vaguest notion of their location, which is 180 miles south of Cuba and 189 miles north-west of Jamaica, yet they are a British overseas territory where everyone drives on the left and chocolate-box portraits of the Queen and Prince Philip are the first sight to greet arrivals at the airport.

Because there were no direct flights to the Cayman Islands until 2001, no mass tourism market has yet developed. Ritzy Grand Cayman is the flamboyant main island with its designer shopping malls and the famous Seven Mile Beach; Cayman Brac is a wildlife sanctuary; and the tiniest island, the unspoilt Little Cayman where the National Trust has a base, boasts the very best scuba-diving opportunities.

We island-hopped to Little Cayman and stayed at Pirates Point, a small resort owned and run by the Texan-born dive mistress and cook Gladys Howard.

Now 78, Gladys plays den mother to visiting divers and their families and makes a splendid 'Pirate' Queen of the Caribbean as she presides over the bar at night and listens to her guests' tales of that day's fishy encounters. Her pretty chalets are supposedly built on the site of the last hang-out of pirates in the early 1800s before they were defeated by the British at the Battle of Bloody Bay.

The islands have also attracted visitors of the royal variety: the uninhabited nearby Owen Island is where Prince Charles and Camilla are rumoured to have enjoyed afternoon trysts in pre-Diana days. A week at Pirates Point on Little Cayman costs from £1,088 per person, including meals, (piratespointresort.com). Visit caymanislands.co.uk for more information on the islands