A Grand (Cayman) Adventure: The Budget
As usual, I’m wrapping things up with all the budget details. Grand Cayman is a notoriously expensive destination, although not the most expensive Caribbean island. I’ll share how I saved money on some of the major expenses, like lodging, to free up money in our budget for things we especially like to splurge on, like fancy meals. As I often do, I asked for contributions toward the trip instead of traditional birthday gifts, so some of the expenses - for instance, renting a beachfront cabana for the day - were essentially birthday presents.
Transportation: $589.82 (plus $82.50)
Lodging: $2639.90
Food: $2441.08
Activities: $1380.30
Miscellaneous: $89.50
Total: $7140.60 ($7223.10)
Transportation:
When you travel using points and miles, sometimes you have to get a little creative. Sometimes that creativity leads to an even better trip. And sometimes, it leads to maybe the worst continuous 9 hours of your life. You win some, you lose some.
I had a stash of British Airways Avios I wanted to use for this trip. I was able to book our three tickets from Charlotte to Grand Cayman in business class for 49500 miles and $16.80, flights that normally cost between $500 and $700 per person. I had also booked return flights - Grand Cayman to Dallas in economy using 33000 Avios and spending $203.92 for the three of us, again saving a few hundred dollars per person. But this is where I got stuck.
Eventually I was able to book flights on Delta from Eugene to Charlotte for 42000 miles and $16.80. This was a good choice as we were able to fly to Charlotte the day before our flights to Grand Cayman and spend the night with friends we had not seen in several years. It was the perfect way to break up a long travel day(s) and add something special to our trip.
After some discussion about our summer plans, we decided to go from Dallas to Little Rock, where Harrison and I would spend several weeks with my family, rather than returning to Oregon. It was at this moment I had the (not) brilliant idea to save a few hundred more dollars by making this trip via train rather than plane, which also gave us an overnight in Dallas to catch up with another longtime friend who very generously picked us up from the airport, fed us dinner, gave us a place to stay, and took us to the train station the following day. I included the additional $82.50 in parentheses because the point at which we arrived at the train station is the point at which it no longer felt like we were on vacation.
Amtrak. Seriously. Get. It. Together. Between departure delays and then unreasonable amounts of time just sitting stalled on the tracks, we ended up arriving in Little Rock at 3 am instead of the expected 10 pm. My poor father was so, so kind to pick us up and I can never, ever complain about taking him to the airport at 5 am. And the experience was miserable. Yes, the seats are more comfortable than airplane seats, but it was stuffy and crowded. We couldn’t even get seats together. The bathrooms were gross. I so wanted it to be better and, yes, more like European train travel. It was not worth the money saved. And I know it’s a privilege to have the choice to spend the extra money for a more convenient airplane ticket. My USA travel wish list now includes a more robust and functional train system because apparently this wasn’t an atypical experience.
Anyway. Let’s move away from terrible train trips and back to a delightful week on a tropical island. In addition to travel to and from the island, we also decided to rent a car. It was certainly stressful driving on the opposite side of the road, but it was worth it to have the flexibility that came with having our own vehicle. It was also really affordable. Our total for a weeklong rental was $316.30, this included the rental and the mandatory liability insurance. I booked a Hertz rental through Costco (which often but not always has significantly better prices than anywhere else, like offsets the entire cost of a yearlong executive membership better). I always recommend being familiar with any particular requirements or restrictions around driving. In this case I knew my US drivers license would be accepted and that the really good supplemental rental car insurance I get through my Capital One Venture X card would allow me to waive the full coverage on the rental, but that I would still need to purchase the supplemental liability insurance. Unlike in many other places, my regular car insurance would not provide coverage and most, if not all, credit card car rental insurance would be inadequate. All this to say, if you, like me, typically waive the extra car insurance offered by rental car companies, you might want to double check your options before going to Grand Cayman.
The whole week we put in a single $36 tank of gas, bringing our total for transportation to $589.82 (plus $82.50) for flights and a weeklong car rental. Using points for flights saved us at least $2500, although we’d be unlikely to book business class tickets if we were paying cash. Also, we would have spent waaaay more money on taxis had we not rented a car. Just the trip to and from the airport would have been almost half the cost of the car rental. I’d say our luxury on a budget trip was off to a strong start. Although now Harrison always wants to fly in the “fancy seats with food.”
Lodging:
Oh boy am I excited to share this one!! I am about to share how I saved almost $6000 on our 4-night stay at the stunning Kimpton Seafire. As a long time fan of Kimpton hotels, I was really excited when they opened their first international location in Grand Cayman. I was even more excited when I figured out how to stay there for thousands of dollars less. Stick with me here.
First things first. I have the IHG One Rewards Premier credit card (this is a referral link, but after I share our stay, you might want this card, too). I had 27,000 points leftover from the signup bonus (most of which I spent on an amazing stay at the Kimpton DeWitt in Amsterdam). Periodically, when you have the card, you receive offers to purchase IHG points with an 100 percent bonus. Knowing I was hoping to book this resort, I kept an eye out for this offer and when it was available, I ensured there was availability on my desired dates and confirmed the amount of points needed. Within minutes I had purchased 93,000 points for $930, received 186,000 points, and had the 210,000 points I needed to book 4 nights at the Seafire. But wait. There’s more. The points cost was 70,000 per night. But. Because I have the credit card, the 4th night on award bookings is free. And there is still more! The ocean view room we booked would have been over $4500 for 4 nights. Again because of the IHG credit card, I have platinum status, one benefit of which is a room upgrade when available. We were upgraded to a gorgeous ocean front room that would have cost over $6500 for 4 nights before taxes and fees. Have I convinced you to get this card yet? We still had to pay the $80 per day resort fee, but this included more amenities than most, including kids 5 and under eating free at the on-site restaurants. This was one of my favorite points bookings ever. The grand total for our 4 nights at the Kimpton Seafire was $1250.
For our final 3 nights we changed things up with a beautiful and welcoming stay in a charming cottage at Botanica Cayman. We paid cash for this and the $1389.90 was worth every penny. Although we loved the Kimpton, it was a relief to relax into the more casual atmosphere of Botanica for the second half of the trip. The only thing I would add is that you probably can’t avoid having a rental car if you stay here, but again I recommend one anyway.
That brings our total for 7 nights of accommodation to $2639.90. With taxes and fees, the room we stayed in at the Kimpton would have cost over $8000. Through maximizing points, our cost for 7 nights was a third of that. If you’re keeping track, we’ve already “saved” thousands of dollars. Although things are about to take a turn to the “way over budget.”
Food:
I knew that food would be expensive and thought I had budgeted accordingly. Spoiler alert: I did not. In fact, we were almost $1000 over our $1500 food budget. If you want to be more prepared than I was, I have some thoughts.
First, I was not prepared for just how expensive things would be at the Kimpton. There were times when we didn’t want to leave the resort and there are not other options within walking distance, so paying the resort prices was our only option when we felt lazy. This added up quickly, although the options were fantastic. In fact, our best and most expensive meal of the trip was at Ave. It was over $400, even though Harrison ate for “free.” For us, it was worth it for a memorable birthday dinner, but it was certainly a splurge.
Second, there were not many what I would consider budget options. Our least expensive meal was over $50. This was for to go burgers from Seven Mile Burger (get the truffle fries). Pepper’s was also a good value (one of our few dinners under $100), especially if you have a place to store leftovers. However, these were still not inexpensive meals. There were some highly recommended local, usually cash only, places such as Grape Tree Cafe and Heritage Kitchen, but the open hours never coincided with our schedule.
Grand Cayman is renowned for their restaurant scene, but if you are looking to save a few bucks, consider renting a place with a kitchen (like Botanica!) to prepare some of your own meals. Also, the service fee is already included, so don’t leave an extra tip unless you want to acknowledge exceptional service. You can also pay in USD, but will get change in Cayman dollars. We just used credit cards because we found they were widely accepted (and earn us points toward the next trip). Finally, make sure to download the Passenger Picks sheet to get a 10% discount at some favorite Grand Cayman restaurants.
Hopefully this won’t deter you because the food on Grand Cayman is excellent. We did not have a single mediocre meal. Just maybe budget a little extra if eating out is something you like to do on vacation or plan to do some grocery shopping and cooking. Or maybe pay more attention to the pool bar tab… This was the trip when Harrison fully discovered “fancy drinks” and our food budget for trips may never recover. There was that one time that Harrison, bereft that there were no fancy drinks at lunch on a day when we were making an inadequate effort to address the cost of food issue, sweet talked the waitress into buying him a strawberry milkshake (that she refused to let us pay for and, yes, this was an instance when we left an extra tip). Anyway, you will have delicious meals on Grand Cayman and you will pay more for them than you are probably used to, at least if you live in Oregon.
Activities:
Activities are always an area where I acknowledge there is a lot of variation in what people want to do and spend. You could easily spend a week on Grand Cayman relaxing on the beach and spend very little on activities. However, we prefer to splurge on two or three big ticket activities and mix those with free or low cost activities. On this trip, the most expensive activities were the sailing trip to Stingray City with Red Sail Sports, which was $295.30 plus tip with pick up and drop off from our resort and the Sunset Sail to Starfish Point and the Bio Bay, which was $217 plus tip. Both of these I would recommend and do again. The big birthday splurge of the trip was renting a beach front cabana for a day, which was very spendy at $493.30, but was something I’ve always wanted to do and was a birthday present to myself using various birthday money gifts. Other activities we paid for were the Turtle Center, Pedro St. James, the Botanic Gardens, and Crystal Caves. We mixed in lots of beach time and some great snorkeling.
Miscellaneous:
This included a few souvenirs and an e-sim. This was the first time I used an e-sim for international travel, but not the last. For $9.50 I had a week of data that worked seamlessly. If you’re interested, I used Airalo (use my referral code - CORA5990 - for $3 off) and can highly recommend them.
We had an amazing week in Grand Cayman. Although at over $7000, this wasn’t a budget vacation, I certainly consider this luxury on a budget. With a couple of tweaks, we could have probably done the trip for $5500 without sacrificing too much of what made this trip incredible. This is why I love using points and miles to make travel even more amazing.