Pirates Week in Paradise

When the prospect of going to Hong Kong for a few months for work was first suggested to me, my first, panicked response to the Partner was "But...that means I'll miss Pirates Week..."

While he didn't seem to think this was a valid reason to turn down the secondment, I don't think he fully appreciates the amazingness that is Pirates Week in the Cayman Islands (then again, maybe he does but didn't know how to explain it to our international colleagues).

Thanks to a few cheeky sacrifices to the Cracken and some minor visa processing delays, I was lucky enough to catch the first half of Pirates Week 2016 and firmly believe it is one of the most hilarious and amazing "cultural" festivals on the planet. Here's why....


It does what it says on the tin

Everyone keeps asking me, "what's this pirates week you're talking about" and I never know how to answer because Pirates Week basically does what it says. People dress up, act and party like pirates for a week. But those who have not lived it simply can't understand how a place can possibly have an entire week-long festival dedicated to piracy. Well my friends, welcome to the Cayman Islands. And it's not just a week - it's 10 whole days!

The week starts with a party on Thursday night, followed by fireworks and a street party on Friday night. The pirates land in the harbour on Saturday followed by a big parade and night party, then there's a swim of some sort and kids activities on Sunday. Then the next weekend there are more parties, boat races in the harbour, an illuminated night parade and a puppy pirate parade of all things! Now, I have a mortal fear of dogs but even I think a pooch in an eye patch is kind of cute. There are so many events, any serious Caymanian really needs more than one pirate costume.

Everyone loves a bad boy

Redcoats in handcuffs in the parade

So, on the Saturday of the first week, the pirates come ashore. This is when Pirates Week really gets going.

Normally, the pirates land on the Jolly Roger fight the redcoats and kidnap the Governor (and yes, in response to one query I received, the Governor does know it's coming). However this year, because the theme was "romance", they added a romantic twist and instead of kidnapping the Governor, her daughter ran off with the Pirates.Why oh why did my parents not become Governor(s) of a Caribbean island? So many missed dating opportunities....

Now I ask you, when since Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom took off after the Black Pearl has anyone celebrated the "bad guys" winning? Not only do the Pirates in George Town defeat the Redcoats and get the girl, the Redcoats then get taken down the main street in shackles as part of the subsequent parade.

They don't even pretend it has historical significance

Highly recommended if your housemate gets a bit too much

While there is definitely a history of piracy in and around the Cayman Islands, there is nothing remotely historical about this festival, no matter how many "local history days" they try to promote during the week. While pirates did frequent the Islands between the 1650s and 1730s (including the famous Blackbeard) due to the lack of formal government, abundance of turtles for food and coves for hiding ships and treasure, this ended at least two hundred years before Pirates Week was launched.

The Pirates Week Festival was actually started in 1977 as a brazen and shameless way to generate tourism before the high season kicks off. The organisers didn't even hide this purpose. It was literally announced in the Legislative Assembly and then published in the paper. Nevertheless, it's now been going strong for 38 years and gets bigger and better every year.

It makes no sense

It is incredibly weird to celebrate pirates - thieves, living outside the law, known for raping and pillaging -  in a country as Christian and conservative as Cayman. In the Cayman Islands gambling is illegal, retail trading is prohibited on Sundays, pornography is illegal, there's no gay marriage and good luck making plans with any locals at Church time on Sundays. THIS country has an entire week glorifying PIRATES??

The more you put in, the more you get out of it

I am now the proud owner of two pirate costumes, a fabulous pirate hat which I really need to find more occasions to wear, a sabre and a mixture of other pirate related paraphernalia. Joining in with the festivities makes it so much more fun. I may have even got slightly carried away (so unlike me, I know)....

Sorry, Cass.....

Those who don't throw themselves into it end up regretting it. One friend had not worn her costume into town on Saturday and was so bummed she went home to change (though to be fair she never actually made it as she was kidnapped by pirates and taken out on the ship, but that's a whole other story).

And THAT my friends, is why Pirates Week is so amazing. Bring on 2017!

Tales of a Caymanian Tour Guide

I have been SUCH a bad blogger lately...it turns out I haven't posted on here for over two months. However, it's not my fault - I blame my parents entirely.

For most of September, I got to play tour guide for my parents (they are terrible tippers), immerse them in Cayman life and be a tourist in my own backyard for a few weekends. And I have to say, there is an incredible amount to do on an island this small, given I previously thought nothing much happened here. There are numerous activities we didn't even manage to fit in while they were here and had to go on the "next year" list (or in my case, next weekend list). Obviously, there are the stunning beaches, white sand, crystal blue water, yada, yada, yada...

Horrible spot to spend a day or three.

Booooring. So what ELSE is there to do once you've had enough of sunning yourself on Seven Mile Beach or paddle boarding around the island? Why is a trip all the way over here worthwhile (other than to visit me and my sparkling personality, of course)?

Not a wave in sight. And yet.....

Well, here are my top 5 reasons to come to Grand Cayman.

1. Snorkelling & Diving

Starting with the obvious. Given that Grand Cayman sits entirely on coral reef,  snorkelling and scuba diving opportunities abound. There are many hot spots around the island where you're guaranteed to see awesome fish, stingrays, reef sharks, star fish or turtles. The very first item I purchased on island was a snorkel which was a pretty good omen of life here. My favourite spot is Smith's Barcadere which is stunning little beach about 10 minutes' drive from my house. You can wander down in the afternoon, snorkel off to left, lie down on the beach for a bit, snorkel off to the right, lie down on the beach for a bit....repeat.

The gorgeous Smith Barcadere

I do not scuba dive because it is wholly unnatural for a human to be down that far and is very scary so you'll have to ask someone else about the diving, but by all accounts it's some of the best in the world.

2. Stingray City

Most Australians are horrified when they hear about Stingray city, which is a natural sandbar off the North Western tip of the island, where you swim with, feed and kiss stingrays. The entire country is clearly still scarred from the Steve Irwin story and in need of some exposure therapy. So come to Grand Cayman to overcome your fears, people! It's actually completely safe, they're super cute and it is honestly a once in a lifetime experience. They say if you kiss a stingray you get 7 years' good luck, so needless to say I was pashing as many as I could get my hands on.....

You might get 7 years' good luck but it doesn't make it any less gross and fishy!

3. Bioluminescence

Another once in a lifetime experience in Grand Cayman is visiting the bioluminescence bay where on a moonless night you can swim in water filled with teeny tiny plankton that light up in response to movement. When you put on your snorkel, put your head under the water and move your arms, the invisible plankton light up gold and you can conduct your own symphony underwater (humming aloud through your snorkel for the world to hear), pretend to be a wizard at Hogwarts (Hermione, obviously) or make golden water angels (below - mine were better). The photos make it look blue but in real life, it sparkles gold. Ah-may-zing. I may yet get my Hogwarts letter.....

4. Turtle Centre

I had always heard that Australia is the only country in the world where its people eat the animals on their coat of arms but it turns out we are not alone - hello Cayman Islands! The Cayman Islands has a little turtle on top of their national crest and one of the Island delicacies is in fact turtle meat.

So, the Cayman Islands turtle centre is a rather weird and uncomfortable combination of research, education and conservation centre plus theme park and tourist attraction plus turtle farm to harvest and sell turtle meat (so locals have a regular supply and don't try and catch the wild turtles to deplete the natural population). If you ignore the third part that's off behind a wall somewhere, you can snorkel with turtles, hold them, feed huge mama breeding turtles and ride a fun waterslide for hours.

Oh hey, Squirt. 

5. Restaurants

A big surprise for me when I arrived in Grand Cayman was the sophistication of the restaurant scene here on island. There are countless high quality, internationally recognised restaurants here with particularly good seafood (mahi, wahoo and snapper are caught fresh daily and conch is a local delicacy), great wine and superb cocktails. Having visitors in town is the perfect excuse to try them all*!

The Lighthouse restaurant at East End

Morgan's Restaurant

* you absolutely cannot try them all - there are too many - this will be a several-year project. More visitors would be appreciated to speed up the process. Thank you.

Now, this list does not include visiting the Blue Iguanas at Queen Elizabeth II National Park, going to any of the museums on island, visiting the Crystal Caves or countless other activities that I haven't had a chance to do yet. But hopefully it's enough to whet your appetite for a Caribbean vacay. See you soon :)

Cruise Ships, Cruise Ships Everywhere.....

The Caribbean cruise ship industry is huge, one of the largest in the world in fact, delivering over $2 billion in revenue to the Caribbean islands annually. Unfortunately, this means us Caymanian residents have to welcome tolerate their passengers on our shores.

I didn't fully appreciate the size of the Caribbean cruising industry until I arrived on island and had to run down drive around hordes of cruise ship tourists to get to the office (which is on the waterfront just beyond the port, #caribbeanproblems) almost every day. The numbers are staggering. The average number of annual cruise ship visitors to Grand Cayman for the last 10 years is 1.4 million per year. In 2015, there were 1,716,812 cruise ship visitors. To put this into context - there are only 60,000 people living on the whole island!

A quiet cruise ship day
(my office is the cream building with the blue roof)

The Cayman Port Authority website helpfully allows you to see what ships are coming into Port and when (so you can plan to avoid the town if necessary and/or possible). At the moment it's summer on the island which is actually low season (rainy and humid) so we only get 1, 2 or 3 ships a day in port. Painful, but bearable. That's usually no more than 10,000 passengers. But in winter, the high season, there can be as many as 8 ships docked at once, pouring up to 20,000 tourists into town for the day for the duty free shopping, discount diamonds and day trips to the nearby sights. I cannot even imagine what that chaos is going to look like, but you may find me 'working from home' frequently in February and March. 

To make these numbers even more unmanageable, I should note that (1) because of the extensive coral reef surrounding the island, we have no cruise ship dock, so the ships park further out and the passengers are brought in by tender boat and (2) the ships can't stay overnight because gambling is illegal in the Cayman Islands, so they need to head back to international waters every evening so their delightful passengers can gamble the night away in the onboard casino. This means 20,000 tourists flood in and then recede, all within a horrifying 12 hour window. I'm imagining it looks a bit like that scene in Lord of the Rings Return of the King, where Aragorn calls the dead army to protect Gondor and they swarm in their ghostly green-ness all over Minas Tirith. 

Given the importance of the cruise ships to the Caymanian economy and the livelihoods of many locals, the Caymanian government is currently looking at how they can construct a long term solution full cruise ship dock, without decimating the underlying coral reef. Naturally, the discussions are heated. 

This was one proposal for an enormous concrete jetty but would have
dredged all of the underlying reef and caused massive damage.

Any solution is probably some time away yet, so for now, the cruise shippers continue to flood in on tenders every morning, swarming blindly across the footpaths and road as they do, and the rest of us count down to sunset when we get some peace and quiet again. 

Hurricane Preparedness 101

As I am writing this blog post, the wind is howling outside, rain is lashing the windows and there is a pretty spectacular lightning display happening across the horizon. This is not, however, a hurricane and a Tropical Storm warning has recently been lifted after Tropical Storm Earl veered West in the Caribbean sea and towards Belize and Mexico instead of the Cayman Islands (heads up, amigos!).

However, after two days of warnings and already two months into hurricane season, I thought it was about time I enlighten you all as to the wonders of living on a hurricane-prone island.

Hurricanes for the Uninitiated 

The short and sweet version of a hurricane is this: Wizard of Oz plus water minus munchkins. A more technical explanation might include mention that warm humid air rises up from warm ocean water, starts as a collection of thunder storms, moisture and heat energy fuel the storms and they start spiralling, when the speed of the cyclonic wind reaches 23mph, the storm is classified as a tropical depression, it then gets upgraded to a tropical storm when winds exceed 39mph and then voila! becomes a hurricane when wind speeds exceed 74mph and can hit up to 225mph. I obviously prefer my explanation.

The hurricane season in the Caribbean runs from 1 June to 30 November every year and in this time, about 10 to 12 tropical storms develop in the region, about half of which become hurricanes. Statistically, Cayman is brushed or hit by a tropical storm or hurricane every 1.68 years and sustains a direct hit from a hurricane every 5.3 years. I am only mildly (i.e. quite) concerned that we are now 5 years overdue for a hurricane. No biggie....

Hurricane Ivan

The last serious hurricane to affect the island was Hurricane Ivan in 2004. It hit Grand Cayman at category 5 (technically known as the Voldemort/Lord Sauron category) on 12 September 2004. The eye of the storm was just 8 miles from Grand Cayman and wind speeds during the storm were between 160 and 217mph. The storm surge, which caused much of the damage, was between 8 and 10 feet and covered most of the island because Grand Cayman is largely flat.

One quarter of the island remained submerged by water 2 days later, 90% of buildings on the island were damaged to some extent, 25% of homes were uninhabitable and 2 people died. It took months to reconnect power, water or sewerage to some parts of the island and 5 months later only half of the hotel rooms on the island were habitable. The damage to the island was estimated to be US$2.86 billion, which is 1.8 times the GDP. It was the 10th most intense hurricane ever recorded.


These three pictures show the before-Ivan, post-Ivan and present-day images of the Grand Cayman Hyatt Britannia Resort, which was one of the nicest hotels on the island and was used for shooting the movie “The Firm.” The damage from Ivan was so severe that it was never rebuilt and remains a shell. 

How to Survive a Hurricane

In view of the Cayman experience of hurricanes, the Cayman Islands motto is BE PREPARED! This is their official brochure which really induces calm, I think.

The whole first week of June is dedicated to talking about hurricane preparedness, which my friends and I realised we had completely ignored when storm warnings started coming in this week. And so it was that I and three of my fellow relatively-new-expats (for whom this is the first hurricane season on island) resolved on Monday night to go hurricane survival kit shopping together. It was obviously a very serious and somber affair.

Luckily, we all live in the same building so could divvy up the supplies a bit so for example, one person has the chocolate (not me thankfully or it wouldn't be there when the hurricane hits) one person has lollies, one takes paper plates while the other takes plastic cutlery etc. On Monday night we headed off to Cost u Less (like Costco) with our checklists (from which I wasn't allowed to deviate, notwithstanding that I think I made a compelling argument that a pool noodle would be helpful in an emergency)

About $150 later we had a selection of the following:

• tinned food (soup, salmon/tuna, vegetables)
• snacks (crackers, muesli bars, fruit cups)
• fun food (Reese's pieces, Hershey's chocolate, sour worms) - not strictly on the list but we felt it was important for morale
• torches
• batteries
• duct tape
• tarpaulin
• thick gloves
• plastic bags
• baby wipes
• hand sanitizer
• 24 bottles of water per person
• toilet rolls
• plastic cutlery and plates
• first aid kit
• mosquito coils
• insect repellant. 

Just to be absolutely clear, all of this stuff sits in a sealed box somewhere in your apartment so you have it when a hurricane hits. That's $150 of stuff you don't even get to use! They also recommend getting battery powered fans, oil lamps, sleeping bags - all of which become outrageously expensive unless you're Bear Grylls, which I am clearly not. If the shopping hadn't been so much fun, I would really have resented the expense. And I'm pretty sure by the time something actually happens, the water will have leaked, the batteries will be dead, the baby wipes will have dried up and the snacks will have gone mouldy, but apparently that's the risk you have to take in paradise!

In any event, I'm now prepared for anything that comes my way (whether it's a hurricane or I decide to become a hermit) between now and the end of November! If anyone is planning to visit me around that time, there is a good chance that the only thing I will be offering you are muesli bars, crackers, tinned fish and sour worms on paper plates with plastic cutlery, washed down with stale bottled water, offset with mood lighting provided by a torch, fragranced courtesy of mosquito coils. Don't all RSVP at once! 

Bahamian Getaway

One of the great things about living on a Caribbean island (other than the weather, the ocean, the people and the taxes) is its proximity to other great places. Coming from Australia, the country where you can drive for 8 hours and still be in the same state, this is something of a novelty, as I’m sure my London-based friends will agree. So it’s hard to stare down the barrel of a long weekend without jumping online to check out where you can pop to for a few nights after a one or two hour flight.   

And so it was that I ended up moseying over to the Bahamas for the long weekend just gone (4 July is Constitution Day in the Caymans - and no to every American we met along the way, the rest of the world does not celebrate your independence day). My friend Aleisha and I literally looked up the places we could reach on a direct flight in 3 hours or less and since we couldn’t get the accommodation we wanted in Honduras (save that for another long weekend!), we picked Nassau instead.

The Bahamas is a collection of 700 islands spread out over 100,000 square miles of ocean just north of the Cayman Islands (a delightfully short 1 hour and 10 minutes by plane). They are basically exactly what you have seen on postcards. Crystal clear turquoise water, white sand and beautiful tropical palm trees. So why, you may be thinking, would I leave my own island with crystal clear turquoise water, white sand and beautiful tropical palm trees? Because water slides.

The Atlantis resort on Paradise Island (next to Nassau) is a 105 hectare water park with 5 hotels, 10 swimming pools and many many cocktail bars. Like its Dubai counterpart, the Atlantis Aquaventure park features two slides that go through a tank filled with sharks plus countless other water slides. 

Thanks to a flight and hotel deal from British Airways, Aleisha and I stayed at the Cove Hotel, one of the more deluxe of the hotels, which was ah-may-zing (and just to be clear - way out of our price range normally!). Most importantly, it was within convenient walking distance of the water slides, meaning we could kick off the first day with minimal delay and get in front of all of those pesky children. 

Our favourite ride, based purely on number of goes, was the river rapids. It incorporated 2 different water slides you could take if you took a little detour, plus a wave section and a number of rapids and best of all, didn’t require you to move from your rubber ring if you didn’t want to. Outside of the river rapids, we also both loved one of the tunnel slides that took off from the top of the Mayan temple, was pitch black, involved two horizontal drops and then landed you in an underground cave next to the fish tank. I was obviously really brave and kept waterslide squealing to a minimum (if Aleisha suggests otherwise, she’s lying).

When we weren’t water sliding, we parked ourselves at the Cain, the adults only pool for guests of the Cove, on luxurious sunbeds with pina coladas in hand. 

While this sounds glamorous (and it was to an extent), I couldn’t help but feel like I had accidentally walked into a shoot from the OC / the Hills / Entourage / some other show featuring rich and entitled Americans and didn’t quite fit in. For a start, the Cain’s sunbed reservation policy leaves a lot to be desired and seems to be based on an unspoken scale ranging from “tiny waisted, skimpy bikini wearing blonde with artificial enhancements” to “middle-aged overweight white man with cigar, younger wife and weirdly ostentatious jewellery”. I’m not quite sure where Aleisha and I fitted on that scale and I think the staff struggled to place us in order of priority too. There was one pool boy in particular who advised us (3 hours after we’d selected sunbeds, on which we’d left our belongings when we briefly went away to show that they were ours) that they were reserved for other people and we’d have to move. He confirmed he had seen us set up a few hours before, knew we were sitting in reserved spots, but didn’t deign to tell us until all other seats were taken several hours later. The same guy had assured us the day before that he would let us know when a bed became available and we never saw him again. We obviously communicated our confusion to management (who seemed equally confused) who eventually set us up with 2 different sun beds. Unfortunately these ones seemed to be in a blind spot for the wait staff (notwithstanding that they were central and poolside) who didn’t offer us a drink until maybe 5 hours after we’d arrived. I can only assume we weren’t flashing enough cash around or weren’t correctly barking orders at them across rows of sun beds. 

The days by the pool were, however, a delightful insight into the lives of the rich and entitled and an entertaining (if infuriating) few hours of people watching. The clientele of the Cain were, in short, horrific. But us commoners stuck it out nonetheless because the bartenders made a mean pina colada. We're selfless like that. 

Unlike many tourists, we made sure that we stepped outside of the Americanised bubble of the Atlantis resort to check out Nassau itself. We were lucky enough for our trip to coincide with the Junkanoo summer festival, which involves weekly festivities throughout July in downtown Nassau. There is some debate about how the Junkanoo festival started (some believing it was established by John Canoe, a legendary West African Prince, who outwitted the English and became a local hero, some say it comes from the French ‘gens inconnus,’ which translates as 'unknown' or 'masked people', while others say it developed from the days of slavery when the slaves celebrated their 3 days off at Christmas by singing and dancing in colourful masks, travelling from house to house, often on stilts.) but it’s now supposed to be one of the best street parties in the world. The main event happens around Christmas but there is now also an offshoot over summer.

When we headed into town on Saturday night it was the official opening of the Ministry for Tourism’s Summer Junkanoo Festival, which kicked off with a limbo performance by Obeah man (did you know the limbo was originally a slave dance, performed by slaves to buy their freedom? Puts a bit of a damper on the traditional kids party game!) and a Junkanoo jet ski show. It was then time for the main event -  a parade of competing dance troupes (they take it seriously enough that there is an A and B division) who danced and played music down the street in colourful costumes made from coloured crepe paper and cardboard, each following an extravagant float (one of them had three enormous moving peacocks, seriously). The crowd favourite was the Bahmi-Boys who were AMAZING and certainly my favourite. Mainly because I’ve never seen so many attractive, masculine men dancing and playing instruments! I fear I will no longer be contented with a man unless he can play tunes with a cowbell and/or play drums on a repurposed goatskin-covered oil drum, while walking down the street in in bright colours.

Behind the parade there were 30 or 40 stalls with local food and crafts. The fried chicken was predictably amazing, as was the local beer, Kalik (according to Aleisha anyway). After the parade we hit up the fish fry, which is an area in town, beyond the end of the parade, lined with traditional fish fry restaurants. This was clearly the place to hang out on a Saturday night and was pumping with people both inside and spilling out onto the street. I had snapper with ‘rice n peas’ (traditional rice and beans) and salad. The snapper in their secret herbs and spices was possibly the most delicious fish I’ve ever had in my life.

Dinner on night 2 was at the Bahamian branch of Nobu which was predictably delicious. The sushi chefs were amazing and I am now obsessed with their spicy tuna sushi, which may lead to my financial undoing if I ever live closer to a Nobu.

The one thing we didn’t get to do while in Nassau was swim with the pigs. There is an area off Exuma, another of the islands in the Bahamas, where you can swim with wild pigs in the water. Unfortunately the only day trip from Nassau was booked out for our weekend so we will just have to go back to the Bahamas some time!

Fun Facts about Offshore Tax

If you have made it this far (i.e. beyond the title), thank you for persevering and being optimistic enough and/or loving me enough to read a page about tax laws. I had originally intended to post this last weekend but after the debacle that was Brexit I figured the world needed a week off. I promise that in return for your faith in me, I will make this offshore tax snapshot informative and witty and if you make it all the way to the end of the page, there'll be a picture of a cute teacup pig doing ballet as a reward.

I thought I would write this page as "what's the tax situation over there?" was one of the most common questions people asked me when I said I was moving to the Cayman Islands, after "so you're going to help rich people hide their money from the government, hey?" (As an aside - no I don't - I more often help track it down and return it to investors, so I'm really the Robin Hood / Sherlock Holmes / Wonder Woman of the offshore financial market - you're welcome, world).

There is some disagreement among historians about how the Cayman Islands came to be a tax neutral jurisdiction. Some say that it is because 10 British ships were shipwrecked on the island in 1794 and as a thank you to the Caymanian people for saving those aboard, who included a Prince, King George III decreed that the people of the Cayman Islands would forever be free from tax and conscription. Others say it is because before the airport was built in 1952, there were so few companies and incomes were so insignificant that it was not worth imposing any form of direct taxation.

I prefer the first story obviously but I suspect it was more likely the latter. Either way, I'm keeping an eye out for shipwrecked princes in case there are grateful decrees to be bequeathed from the motherland (perhaps along the lines of....thou shalt have no further HECS debt).

As a result, there is currently no income, inheritance, sales, corporation, capital gains or property taxes in the Cayman Islands.

Tax Haven v Tax Neutral Jurisdiction

Much like "Donald Trump" and "vehicular manslaughter", the term "tax haven" has some justifiable negative connotations. You hear "tax haven" and you think of a low visibility jurisdiction, with minimal financial disclosure obligations and an uncooperative approach to global tax obligations.

However, contrary to popular assumptions, the Cayman Islands are actually one of the more transparent nations in the world when it comes to financial information sharing (please note how protective I have become of my new home a mere 5 weeks in). Since 2000, the Cayman Islands have been a member of the Global Forum on Taxation (now, that sounds like a thrilling annual conference!) and signed up to the OECD's project to eliminate harmful tax practices. Cayman has had a tax information exchange agreement in place with the USA since 2001, has also long been reporting interest income earned by EU citizens in Cayman Islands bank accounts to the 28 EU states who are members of the European Union Savings Directive and has tax information exchange agreements in place with some 35 countries.

In contrast, one of the biggest tax havens in the world is actually the USA (gasp!). While the US imposes disclosure obligations on everyone else, it hasn't signed up for any of the international reporting standards and its own reporting legislation - FATCA - which requires countries to report to the IRS accounts owned by American citizens, is unsurprisingly unilateral. States like Nevada, Delaware and South Dakota enable you to set up a shell corporation with the flick of a pen and the US as a whole has the laxest regulations for setting up shell companies of anywhere other than Kenya (who admittedly, probably have priorities more urgent than stringent financial management and reporting). Meanwhile here in Cayman, the financial regulations, anti-money laundering legislation and various other regulations made opening a bank account here the hardest thing I've ever had to accomplish in my life so far.

All this is basically a long-winded way of saying - lay off, guys - unlike shady Delaware**, our banking and tax practices are as transparent as the crystal clear Caribbean water we get to swim in each day!

Duty

While there is no direct taxation in the Cayman Islands, one particular inconvenience given our proximity to the USA (the missed online shopping possibilities!) is the import duty. It can be a killer.

Import duty of 10 to 25% can be imposed on goods imported into the country. Most mail order items are hit with a 22% duty, including gifts from family and friends! I have a horrible suspicion that this means my birthday next year is going to be very expensive for me. Clothing and electronics also have a 22% duty and cars are between 29.5% and 42% depending on the model and value. Devastatingly, there is also a CI$3.60 duty charge for every bottle of wine brought into the country. The one saving grace is that books are exempt! Amazon, here I come.

The short point is, my online shopping dreams (and yours, if you were hoping to use me as a PO Box for US online shopping) are dead. To the many of you who have numerous gifts to send me, don't bother, because I'll have to pay the duty at this end. From stories I've heard, customs often has difficulty calculating 22% of the value of goods and in those circumstances, picks a number based on the "vibe" of the package, which may well exceed the value of the goods themselves!

And that, dear friends, is my pithy summary of Cayman Islands tax issues. Probably wildly incorrect, offensive to Americans and the most boring tropical island blog post you've ever read, so here is your promised teacup pig. You're welcome.

** The writer has never actually been to Delaware and is sure it's a delightful, if slightly lacking in stringent financial regulation, place to live, work and visit.

Flowers Sea Swim

I participated in my first Island community activity last weekend in the form of the annual Flowers Sea Swim!

Now, this is not an event that involves swimming through an ocean strewn with petals, as one friend thought, but an annual charity fundraiser organised by the Flowers family. Frank Flowers started the swim 24 years ago as a way to increase participation in open water swimming, raise funds for charity and create an event for everyone to participate in, from kids to Olympic swimmers. This year the swim was supporting the Cayman Cancer Foundation and it was particularly poignant as Eve Flowers, the matriarch of the family, had passed away earlier this year from cancer.

And so it was that Mel and I donned our yellow caps on Saturday afternoon to swim 1 mile along the shore line with 1100 of our closest Cayman friends. We had to fight for our caps, however, as we almost missed the registration cutoff thanks to a car breakdown. We weren't overly concerned as nothing on this Island has ever started on time in our experience so far, and we assumed the swim would be no different. Alas, it seems that the Flowers Sea Swim is the one activity on Island that is run with a strictness that would make an army drill sergeant's eyes water. But thanks to some sweet talking, begging, sob stories or more likely simply exhausting the volunteer who had better things to do, we were given our caps and numbers.

At this point, we gratefully splashed into the water to escape the oppressive heat on the sand and I came face to face with one of my new supervising partners. If anyone is looking to break the ice with a work superior, run into them in a bikini at the end of week 2 in the office - that'll do it, trust me. (In all honesty though, he is lovely and was there doing the swim with his 9 year old son, who Mel threatened to drown if it looked like he was going to overtake us).

After the race, some people said they saw a turtle or stingrays underneath when they were swimming. I must have missed these while I was trying not to drown. I had done 1 practice run of the distance (OK, fine not the full distance as I had got bored walking down the beach) and knew I could finish if I paced myself. But it turns out 1 mile is a REALLY long way! I have done 1km ocean swims before and thought "easy peasy, mile/kilometre, same same." No. They're really not. 1 Mile is closer to TWO kilometres than one. AND we had to swim AGAINST the current (my practice run was in the opposite direction with the current because I don't hate myself). The result of this confluence of factors is that I resisted looking up to see where I was for what felt like forever, because I didn't want to look up until I was close to the finish and when I did finally glance up after what felt like an hour of swimming, the finish line was obviously nowhere in sight. When it did eventually appear, I somehow didn't manage to get any closer to it for a weirdly long time. I am sure they kept moving it along the beach.

However, spoiler alert, I didn't drown and did make it through the darn finish line in 43 minutes and placed 521 of 1100 #crushedit. I scored a water bottle, T-shirt, towel and random other goodies for my trouble. After laying down on the floor of my air conditioned apartment for a while to confirm I wasn't going to die (it sure felt like it - I probably shouldn't have done hot yoga and paddle boarding that morning), it was pina colada and prizes time!

The other reason the Flowers Sea Swim is so awesome is that they have the best prizes of any competition like this, ever (I have no authority for this statement but it simply must be true). There are about 150 prizes on offer for swimmers, meaning there is a 1 in 7 chance of winning, and the prizes include amazing things like flights to New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Havana, money, phones, dinner vouchers, holiday vouchers, petrol vouchers and other random gifts. Devastatingly, neither I nor any of my friends there that day won any prizes. There were also more than 7 of us so statistically, I am a little suspicious.....

Nevertheless, it was a fantastic day and an excellent item to check off my island to-do list in only week two!