Sunshine, sand and stingrays on a classic Caribbean adventure

Their skin - grey and rough like best quality sandpaper on top, white and smooth like soggy lino on the bottom - rubbed against my flesh as feeding time commenced. Luckily for me, it wasn't pale British man on the menu. These Southern stingrays are harmless to humans; though the two dozen that swarmed around us off the coast of Grand Cayman clearly weren't backwards in coming forwards when it came to lunch. Holding a piece of raw calamari given to me by our guide Freddie, I plunged the morsel underwater. The stingray's toothless mouth has a sucking power of a Dyson and the snack was snapped up by the a strong female. 'Now you have to kiss one,' Freddie told me. 'It brings you seven years' good luck.' I puckered up, as Freddie lifted out one of the creatures for me. Stingray City, as this is called, is one of many nature hotspots on the Cayman Islands - a part of the Caribbean that is still British (a UK Overseas Territory) since the islands, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, kept their ties with Blighty when their neighbour, Jamaica, claimed independence in the Sixties. Wildly popular with Americans (the Islands are barely a two-hour flight from Florida), the Caymans are famous for generous tax breaks. But I was after a sun tan, so spent the first day sauntering around Seven Mile Beach, a superb stretch of floury white sands. And it quickly became clear that the Caymans are about as British as Baltimore. The main road by the beach is full of 'Hard Rock Cafes' and 'Burger Kings', towering hotels and bilious SUVs. I stayed at the top end of the west of the island at Cotton Tree, a fabulous set of four cottages lying only inches from the ocean. As I sprawled on the veranda, the local gardener brought me a basket of freshly picked bananas on my arrival before I headed down to the al-fresco massage bed, where a longtime Cayman resident from Britain called Denise gave me a rub down. After my stingray close-up, I went to the Blue Iguana Reserve in the lush interior of the east side. It's run by a Briton called Fred Burton who has almost singlehandedly saved these incredible species - which only exist on the Caymans - from extinction. Fred showed me his captive creatures, all of which are slowly being released back into the wild. They change colour from black to grey to blue, can grow to 5ft and live as long as a human. Giant Iguanas, kissable stingrays - this is the wildest holiday I've had in a long time.