Grand Turk is all about the water. The island is known for superlative SCUBA diving, and though I only snorkel, Rick plans a few dives. (We have a rule, set by me of course, that every dollar he spends on diving, I get to spend on indulging myself. This trip required a codicil to the rule because Grand Turk has next-to-no shopping: I need not spend my allotment on the island). Although dives are in the works, our first acquaintance with the waters is made simply by looking out from the bar to the sea. The colors vary with bottom composition (sand, grass, rock, coral) and depth, but the first impression is awe at the electric blue of crystalline water of 3-15 feet deep over white sand. Looking at such water both energizes and relaxes. The sight of the shallow water is all the more dramatic here, as just 100 yards offshore, the sea bottom drops dramatically from 25 feet to 7,000 feet and has a dark blue-black color. "The Wall" attracts divers like honey does flies. The fact that I can flap my swim fins for a few minutes to get to the precipice unnerves me, and I never do manage to get up the courage to snorkel off this beach.
The view from the Arawak Inn's tiki hut: the water color changes dramatically, from the light blues of the shallow waters, to dark colors as the depth falls abruptly to 7,000 feet at The Wall.
Unlike Provo, Grand Turk is less a beach destination, though there are plenty of lovely spots to be found. The Arawak's beach has a grassy bottom just offshore, changing to sand, then more grass and coral. For a purist beach-o-phile like me, it's a little disappointing not to be able to roll out of bed right into perfection, but perfection is just a short walk or drive away.
On this, our first day, we choose to walk south along the beach, where we find yards and yards of sand with small patches of limestone ledges and ironshore (with sand around it, so that walking doesn't require shredding one's feet). Low sea grapes and succulent-type greenery line the beach here, and the remains of an occasional boat wreck can be found; the TCI, being as close as they
are to Hispaniola, are often the first port of unofficial entry of Haitian boat people fleeing their island, and some of their boats end up tossed by storms and currents onto these shores. The further south we get, the more buffed beach glass we find. In a matter of minutes, we reach the very southern tip of the island and, no longer in the lee of the island, find ourselves buffeted by the day's heavy winds and blowing sands. A few steps take us to the windward beach, with its usual collection of debris and flotsam, an unwelcome import but a fact of life. We scope out a few possible spots for swimming on a less windy day.
Later in the afternoon, Austin Dickenson, a former dive master turned entrepreneur, delivers our rental car, a not-so-new Mitsubishi. Curiously, there are no jeeps to be had on the island, despite the rough condition of the roads. Austin tells us not to worry about locking the car, and tells us to leave it at the airport, with the keys under the mat, when we leave.
We take advantage of the wheels to drive into Cockburn Town to get some provisions, since we hate to eat out for breakfast, and like to do our own sundowners sometimes. The stores are poorly stocked since all the food comes in on a once-a-week ship or is fished out of the sea; they remind me of Eleuthera in 1990, when we spent a vacation living on Kalik, Underwood devilled chicken, cantaloupe, and Bahamian bread (when we weren't eating out, that is). Alas, as Klaus lamented, the TCIslanders have not mastered the art of bread-baking the way the Bahamians have, and we don't have that option. But, like every other island we've visited, there are Pringles potato crisps (which we almost never eat EXCEPT in the islands), our choice of rums, and my favorite island soft drink, Ting. It takes me 3 days and stops at 7 tiny shops before I can find coffee for Rick, though at least we've brought iced tea mix with us to satisfy those urgent needs for morning caffeine.
Having taken care of business, we ease in to our late afternoon/pre-dinner routine: showers, journal-writing, reading, and sundowners (Ting and rum tonight). This, like nothing else, feels like Island Time to me, and officially marks having arrived. After drinking our own cocktails, it's time to have someone else make them for us, so we head to the bar for a few pre-dinner sips, and then on to the dining room for dinner of conch fritters, grilled pork for me and teriyaki chicken for Rick. No grouper today, because the seas and winds were too rough for the fishing fleet, and even now, the wind continues to roar. After dinner, we read a bit and are dead to the world by the embarrassingly early hour of 8.
Sleeping here is delicious. Although AC is available, I don't even give it a thought, except to make sure it's turned off. I've opened the windows and the wind billows the sheer curtains. The temperature is ideal, as it will be all week: about 81 during the day, and 77-78 at night, with low humidity. Just enough to require a sheet to cover up with. The king bed is comfortable, and we sleep soundly and sweetly until the sun rises, not that there's any hurry to get out from under the lazily revolving ceiling fan.
Pleasant as the morning is, we rouse ourselves out of bed by about 8 a.m. on Sunday, with a plan to do some more exploration after our breakfast of Frosted Flakes and our daily ritual of anointing ourselves from head-to-toe with sunscreen. Since we went south yesterday, today we walk north along the beach, which goes on for the entire length of the island. We walk under the customs pier, pass the ruins of the former "Pan Am Pier," and soon find ourselves on the best beach on Grand Turk, Governor's Beach, named so because it is right in front of the governor's residence. It's wide, with creamy pinkish-white sand, and the waters off it free of grass, rocks or coral, blessed with blue topaz waters and gentle surf. The beach is bordered by pines which provide shade, and a handful of picnic tables, but we never encountered a soul here. A sign, one of many identical ones which mark the entire leeward shore, proclaims this to be part of "Columbus Landfall National Park." TCIslanders, and not a few historians and scientists, believe Grand Turk to be the site of Columbus' first landfall in the Americas, and not the Bahamas.
Governor's Beach, located just in front of the residence of the governor of the Turks & Caicos Islands, is as lovely as any beach in the Caribbean, and most days it is completely empty.
By midafternoon, we decide to do some exploration by car. We find our way into Cockburn Town, a small settlement perched on pretty beachfront (interrupted here and there by jetties). The first two blocks of narrow Front Street have buildings on both sides of the street. The street is bordered with low stucco walls which protect old buildings and houses, many of which are in falling-down-disrepair. Large trees provide shade. A bit further north, one side of the street is open to the sea. Since it's Sunday, nothing is open today, so we drive around, going off-road on dusty limestone tracks, searching for nekkid beaches, finding some likely prospects, but none as appealing as Governor's Beach. Cows, donkeys and horses wander about freely, necessitating walls, cattle crossings, and fences. True to the island's salt-raking past, there are salt ponds (or salinas) everywhere, some of which are occupied by graceful pink flamingos.
Grand Turk's now unmanned and electrified lighthouse.
At the northern tip of the island is the now-electrified lighthouse, build to prevent wrecks on the treacherous reefs which encircle Grand Turk. The keeper's house and kerosene storage building now site idle, and the obsolete Fresnel lens now reposes at the museum in town.
For lunch, we go back to town to the Water's Edge, perched right over the beach and water, with decks edging a blue and yellow cinder block building. Rick had a fish sandwich, and I had curried conch. This is a popular lunch spot with the diving set, and dive boats and buoys bob offshore. After lunch, we hang out at the Arawak's pool, and Rick does some snorkeling off the beach.
Dinner takes us back into town at the Secret Garden, the Salt Raker Inn's restaurant. Though we've arrived before the official dinner hour, our waitress happily ushers us in, gets us drinks (Kalik, margarita) and makes us feel at home. As looks go, there isn't much to this place, with its corrugated metal ceiling, lattice dividers here and there, and funky lamps made of beach glass and shells. The menu was quite limited as well, but the conch stir-fry dish was satisfying. By 7:30, we were ready to roll, but our waitress tempted us with key lime pie (the real thing, not one of these fake green ones) and encouraged us to stay for live music. After 4 songs from the guitar-playing island troubadour Mitch (whose "Margaritaville" featured boiling conch yuck! instead of shrimp), we were done for.
Monday was even less demanding than Sunday. We made it to the beach by 9, this time with camera in hand, only to discover that the batteries had gone dead and would need replacing. We swam in one of the sandy spots on the windward shore. After exploring, we went out searching for some necessities. Camera batteries were found at the third place we tried, and we finally found Pepto-Bismol (forget Imodium no one's even heard of it) at the third place we tried for that (no concern about the water or food on Grand Turk I brought my stomach ills with me). Scored iced tea mix, munchies, lunchies and Painkiller fixin's. Returned to laze by the pool and lunch on devilled chicken sandwiches and laze by the pool some more. I spied a whale in the Turks Passage just offshore; the Passage is a whale migration superhighway during February and March.
The Arawak Inn's location is ideal for watching the sunset, in the endless quest for the green flash. And so, with Painkillers in hand, we grabbed stools at the tiki bar and settled in for the show. Rick continues to be skeptical of the green flash's existence, though I have seen it twice (in Grenada and Mayreau), and he's seen it he thinks at Union Island in the Grenadines. Today does not resolve his skepticism, though I may have seen a hint of it.
Dinner tonight is at the Turk's Head Inn in town, the grand dame of Grand Turk hotels and easily the prettiest building on the island. The building is white clapboard and gingerbread with dark green shutters. A white stucco wall encircirles a courtyard shaded with ancient trees and containing a number of umbrella-shaded tables. Diners can sit here, or in the clubby bar. It has the feel of New Orleans or Key West. The Turk's Head serves my favorite kind of conch chowder (the red-to-pinkish kind, with lots of vegetables including potatos), as well as enormous portions of grouper, most of which we take home with us tonight. The service is solicitous (if leisurely) and friendly, and banter flies from table to table, as most people who visit here are equally friendly and open. Life is good.
