Dan and I recently returned from a six day trip in the British West Indies - more specifically, Turks & Caicos. Until a few years ago, I hadn't even heard of that group of islands and now here I am blogging about it. We stayed on the most populous island, Providenciales (Provo for short - population around 25,000), at a place called the Tuscany, on Grace Bay beach (said to be the most beautiful beach in the world). Really, the main reason to even go to Provo is to experience Grace Bay beach. The island (as well as the others in the group) isn't beautiful in itself - it's pretty flat, made of limestone that is chalky white and has a tendency to look like piles of broken concrete along the roads and in people's yards and the native vegetation is shrubby and short. Many of the roads are of very bumpy stone and the majority of the locals live in humble but tidy neighborhoods in the northwest part of Provo. There are neither lawns nor paved driveways at most houses. Any tall trees you see and they are mostly palm, are imported. The resorts that line the northeast shore of the island are all fabulous and gorgeous (which means you can't go wrong choosing any of them so don't stress about it) with lush plantings and landscaping, palm trees, lots of colorful bougainvillea, swimming pools, all the important and lovely amenities and they all commonly share the pristine twelve mile beach. When you are walking the beach, you know you have passed on to the next resort by the color of the chairs and umbrellas. The Regent Grand hotel built a beautiful village called Grand Village about five years ago and it is a lovely shopping and restaurant area that serves all of the resorts - it's like a second downtown but way prettier. The original downtown is close to the airport and looks much like a long commercial road. Because the island was basically salt farming up until the late 80's, all the "beauty" on the island interior is imported but the beaches and crystal clear fifty shades of turquoise warm ocean water are why you go to Turks & Caicos. Oh, and the super friendly people! Most are of African descent, English is the official language and the islands are a British Overseas Territory where the dollar is the currency. Speaking of currency, this is a very expensive place to vacation! Because little to no food is grown on the islands since the soil is very poor and animals aren't raised commercially either, everything is imported, therefore expensive. There is some local fishing but limited. Conch is caught locally and is an island staple (think very large snails in pretty shells). Again, you go there for that incredible water and it is worth it! When we were flying in and I was looking down at the islands in the distance, I was blown away by the huge, wide bands of all those shades of intense turquoise surrounding every island.
Below: Our digs. The Tuscany is a condo resort. Some of them are owner occupied and some, like ours are for rent. We chose the place for all its amenities and most importantly, a full kitchen so that I could make my cup of hot chocolate every morning with my own fixings I brought along!
Our schedule each day went something like this: sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast we make ourselves while we read emails, social media etc. out on our ocean view balcony. Mid morning - head outside to our beach and claim our two chairs and umbrella and settle down with our books and magazines. Shortly after setting up our area, I would walk either direction on the beach for a good hour and a half at a quick clip in sink-to-my-ankles sand or march steps in the water. The beach has no interruptions to it so I would walk until I was pretty exhausted. The sand is powdery soft white and the water was in the high 70s - not bath warm but almost warm. The air temperatures while we were there were low 70s at night and low 80s during the day - perfect. Back to our routine; we would play in the water and lay out in the sun until lunchtime. For lunch, we went to a different restaurant every day down in the new village. After lunch, we had a different activity planned such as driving every road on the island, visiting the world's only conch farm, shopping, "cruising the residentials" both humble and ostentatious, etc. Dan did some golfing too. After our afternoon adventures we would return to our beach and bake in the sun and read and drink diet coke with lemon slices until the sun disappeared. Then we would change into nice clothes and go to restaurants for dinners. We did not have one bad or even mediocre meal all week - the restaurants are excellent and they have all kinds - french, italian, indian, thai, seafood - we ate really well! Sadly, no bakeries though - no bakery hopping in this place.
Here are some scenes from the world's only Conch farm. By the way, I don't care for conch; it's pretty chewy.
On our last full day, we chartered a boat along with 8 other people to go snorkeling. These islands have the third largest coral reef in the world but you have to boat to it to reach it for good snorkeling and scuba diving. We snorkeled in three areas. Before we got to area one, a pod of six dolphins came swimming up close to our boat so the captain cut the engine and we watched them as they showed off for us. It was so exciting to observe these creatures up close and in the wild! After about 10 minutes they took off and didn't surface again. Two areas where we snorkeled were ten to twenty feet deep. There were plenty of colorful fish to see but I will say that the coral itself is not as colorful as that which we saw in the Virgin Islands. The third area we boated to was so eerie - I know now I will never deep sea scuba dive! We snorkeled in water that was about 50 feet deep and then along a wall it plunged to 7200 feet! Swimming along that wall leading to that seemingly endless outer darkness and watching huge schools of large fish and sea turtles suddenly appear out of black nothingness in to light was amazing but I had the willies the whole time. Sun rays were trying to penetrate the black abyss over my shoulder as I swam and observed this whole other living world down there. One really neat thing, incredulous really, is that while we drove miles away from island shores and well away from the reef, we were in water only 5-6 feet deep way out in what felt like the middle of nowhere that was crystal clear with nothing on the bottom but soft white sand - no grass, coral, sea creatures, nothing. It is like a vast, vast perfect swimming pool. If we had been by ourselves and not on a shared boat we would have stopped and just swam and swam in nature's swimming pool. Here are photos of that "pool".
One thing I want to add - besides the Americans and Canadians visitors, there were many Europeans and South Americans. Among the foreigners, because I was listening to their foreign conversations as I walked by many every day, I noted that I had never seen so many women older than me in bikinis - women in their 60 and 70s wearing bikinis on perfectly slim, fit bodies. Not starved, gym bodies, but rather healthy, natural looking slender, lovely bikini clad bodies. I wanted to take pictures of them all I was so impressed. Here is a picture below that I took from a company blog of a 60 something year old female artist who was asked to model some swim suits for a new company. I can't remember her name but this is an example of what I saw all around me (but mostly in bikinis). I told Dan several times that I needed to up my game - he just laughed at me and asked if I would really wear a bikini.
Handsome Dan at dinner our first night wearing the ocean colored linen shirt his daughter Kara bought him for Christmas. I took that picture just for you, Kara.
Well, I've told you way more about this place that I intended to but it's a good journal entry for myself. Next stop - Tulum Mexico!
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