Caribbean – Diary – III – Stingray City, Starfish Beach and Rum Point

Page 14 – Encounter with not-so-wild animals…

08.03. 2026

We anchored at the northern end of Grand Cayman, right in front of Starfish Beach, and watched from our boat the bustling activity of visitors coming and going all day long on boat shuttles. We're not used to such a large crowd anymore.

Sunday is a cruise ship-free day according to the cruise ship schedule, and we want to use it to visit Stingray City undisturbed. We even get up extra early for it – by our standards. At 8:00 a.m., we're already sitting in the dinghy, having eaten breakfast, and heading out to sea towards Stingray City. We pass Starfish Beach, which is deserted.

We have to travel about 2,5 kilometers out to sea in the dinghy to reach Stingray City. It takes us quite a while because we have to go slowly, partly because the crystal-clear water makes it difficult to judge the depth and we don't want to run aground, and partly because the sea is a bit choppy – at least from the dinghy's perspective.

When we arrive, we're no longer the first ones on the sandbank at Stingray City. We had imagined it would be more exclusive, but we quickly realize that more and more boats are arriving. The atmosphere is still friendly and relaxed – everyone helps each other out, and then there's room for everyone.

It's not just teeming with people; numerous stingrays can also be spotted in the waist-deep, clear water, especially since every arriving boat is greeted with curiosity (and hunger). At first glance, there are an incredible number of them, and they are incredibly large. We've encountered smaller stingrays while snorkeling before, but these have a wingspan of up to 1,50 meters.

We get incredibly close to the animals; accustomed to humans, they elegantly swim around the numerous visitors, allowing us to look directly into the eyes of some animals in the shallow water, and Bernd can use his underwater camera.

Grand Cayman – Visit to Stingray City

Afterwards, we wanted to go back to enjoy Starfish Beach and the beach all to ourselves, but here too the beach had now filled with people.

The boats from Stingray City also stop here, so we have a reunion. We learn an interesting fact: the starfish don't actually live on the beach. They live in the seagrass meadows—their feeding grounds—around the bay and are collected by the guides in the morning and stylishly placed on the beach (it sounds a bit like an Easter egg hunt). Since they aren't very mobile, it takes them some time to disappear from the sand back into the deeper seagrass. So they're definitely not here voluntarily. Meanwhile, visitors are absolutely thrilled when they "find" a starfish in the shallow water…

But I discover another beach inhabitant that fascinates me time and again: a hermit crab.

The tiny crustaceans in their snail shells are incredibly fast.

After our stop at the filling Starfish Beach, we continued by dinghy to a bay where bioluminescent plankton are said to be visible. This phenomenon can only be observed on dark nights, but since orientation in the dark is not so easy and the water is very shallow in some places, we wanted to see what the conditions were like in daylight.

We are surprised to find that this bay is surrounded by beach villas – a prime residential location, I would say – but is it dark enough at night for observations…?

We continued in our dinghy until we spotted the reef off the north coast at Rum Point. The waves breaking in a straight line indicated the reef's shallowness. Our dinghy wasn't a good starting point for snorkeling there, so we decided to explore this part of the island tomorrow by e-scooter from the mainland.

At the end of the tour, we'll head to Kabo Marina and check out the situation at the dinghy dock. We'll be able to easily launch our scooters ashore there.

Then it's back to the Joline – an eventful day is drawing to a close, we have gathered many new impressions, although not quite as deserted as hoped…