I recently had the opportunity to visit the Cayman Islands in the northern Caribbean. After a few days on Grand Cayman, the largest and most populated of these beautiful islands, I flew over to Little Cayman on a small propeller plane.

The flight was initially quite nerve-wracking having only ever flown on larger aircraft in the past, but the 40-minute journey turned out to be quite enjoyable, flying over the Caribbean Sea before a rather bumpy landing on a grass landing strip in Little Cayman.

I noticed a couple of goal posts off to one side and was informed that the airstrip doubled as the local football pitch, and that it wasn’t unusual for a match to be halted to let a plane land.

The terminal building – if you could call it that – was a little white weatherboard building and we were met from the aircraft by a member of staff who directed us to a small bench outside to sit on while we waited for our luggage to appear.

In complete contrast to the huge chaotic airports of home this only took a few minutes, and with only about 16 people on the flight the luggage was left on a large trolley for you to collect yourself.

The actual room which you enter to check in for your return flight can only have two people in at a time and there is one person to man the office and another on baggage-loading duty. The room also doubles up as the island’s post office and stationed next to the airport building is Little Cayman’s gleaming new fire engine.

This multi-purpose airport is full of character and part of the charm of visiting a small Caribbean island like Little Cayman.