As promised back in Lots of News Coming, it’s time to tell the tale of Little Purgatory. That’s right, there is now a second Purgatory. First up: how it happened.
Let me dust off my professorial writing voice….
For those unfamiliar with them, the Cayman Islands are a self-governing British Overseas Territory in the western Caribbean, about 227 miles south of Cuba and 430 miles south of Miami. There are three islands. Grand Cayman is by far the biggest and home to the capital, George Town, and most of the territory’s roughly 90,000 residents. About 60 miles east are the two Sister Islands, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. Little is the smallest of the three at about 11 square miles, with a population of just 182 as of the 2021 census. When Columbus sighted the islands in 1503 he named them Las Tortugas because of all the turtles; the name that stuck comes from the Taíno word for caiman. (More over at Wikipedia.)
I’ve been visiting the Caymans for many years. Originally I went to Grand Cayman and stayed on the East End, at Compass Point with Ocean Frontiers. But back in 2018 I wanted to go on a dive trip, and none of my friends wanted to (or could) go with me. At that time Compass Point wasn’t doing all-inclusive, so I would have had to cook and feed myself, and that wasn’t something I wanted to do. I really just wanted a break from running this place.
So I did some research and found Little Cayman. I dithered extensively between the three resorts there: Little Cayman Beach Resort, Southern Cross Club and Pirates Point (which has since shuttered), and in the end went with LCBR (see Stega’s First Vacation). The trip was just what I needed, and it reignited my love of diving.
So I returned the next year (see Another Vacation for Stega) and the year after–only that trip was cut short by the pandemic and the islands closing (see Stega’s Aborted Vacation). With the pandemic lifting in 2022, I was able to go back that January and again in the late summer. Over those two trips I met some of the local residents, and the island cemented its spot as my Happy Place.
One of the friends I met invited me along on a trip to Indonesia she was organizing. We dove Cenderawasih Bay, traveling from spot to spot on a liveaboard. And on that voyage there was a guy named Greg who had a house on Little….
Fast forward to my February 2025 trip, when I found out Greg was going to sell his house. It had gotten to be too much: he only came down from January through the start of April each year, the house was closed up the rest of the time, and Greg is the sort who likes to do all the maintenance himself and he found all that maintenance didn’t leave him as much time to do the things he wanted to do when on the island.
Here are the original listing photos, from the end of January:
I had been keeping my eye on the market since before the pandemic, and the house ticked all my boxes: small, on the shore, in decent condition (a bit of work was needed) and within budget. So I got a tour. A few days later I asked for a second viewing, and then we sat on the porch, chatted and reached a verbal agreement.
Then I came back to Cali and was promptly sick with some non-COVID bug. Once I recovered, I put together the official offer.
This last gallery has some pics from my stays at LCBR over the years, plus the ones I took during my first tour of the house.