Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seven Mile Beach (SMB) is a long crescent of coral-sand beach on the western shore of Grand Cayman island. The beach is world renowned for its beauty, recently receiving the honor of "The Caribbean's Best Beach" from Caribbean Travel and Life Magazine. SMB is the most popular and in turn, the most developed area of Grand Cayman and is home to the majority of the island's luxury resorts and hotels. Despite the name, the beach is only about 5.5 miles long and falls victim to annual erosion, which has reduced its size in some areas. Like the rest of Grand Cayman, the development around SMB was severely damaged in Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 but many condominiums & hotels are now running at full or almost full capacity.

Seven Mile Beach is public property, and it is possible to walk the full length past many hotels and villas. There are restaurants open to the public at most of the resorts, and several public beach bars. Some small reefs are located just off shore which offer good snorkelling, most notably by the Marriott hotel (an artificial reef), the Governor's residence, and just north of the public beach. There are few restrictions on use of the beach. Open grilling is allowed, and pets are free to roam the beach off leash. Loud music and public nudity are, however, strictly prohibited.

Directly to the south of Seven Mile Beach is George Town, the capital city of the Cayman Islands, while to the north is the town of West Bay, which features a turtle farm and the limestone formations of Hell.