Part 4: Swimming with Stingrays and Nekkid Beaches
Wednesday looks to be ASDIP again. This afternoon, we will be taking a much-anticipated excursion to Gibbs Cay, but this morning is dedicated to running errands in town and taking care of business.
The first matter of business is re-confirming our flights with Lynx, as they require you to do 72 hours in advance of each flight. We enlisted Annie's assistance, since we were not as savvy with the phones here as she was. Hoping to save the exorbitant overseas long-distance rates charged here (and noting that the only "800" number which is toll-free in the TCI is American Airlines'), we first rang Lynx's Provo office, only to find that the number had been disconnected. Next, Annie called a few travel agents she knew, but none of them handle Lynx. Then Annie called Sky King, a local inter-island carrier which acts as Lynx's ground agent in the TCI, but they didn't handle confirmations. One more attempt to avoid calling Ft. Lauderdale outright: a fax to Lynx, seeking confirmation as well as clarification of our departure time, since one communication told us it was 12:30 p.m., while all others said 3:00 p.m. Having sent the fax in the late morning, we gave Lynx until noon to respond. With no response to our fax, we phoned Ft. Lauderdale, confirmed our reservations, and were told that we had a 3:00 departure time.
Meanwhile, we ran into town. First stop was the dive shop, for some souvenirs and most importantly for poor suffering me Imodium! Rick left his credit card behind at the Arawak (had his debit card, but it wouldn't work), so Oasis just put it on our tab. Next stop, Barclay's Bank. Austin asked us to pay cash for our rental car because his credit card machine wasn't working, so we went to the bank to get a cash advance; here, the debit card worked. (We later learned wink, wink, nod, nod that Austin had flown off to Provo to visit his girlfriend, explaining the need for cash ). Errands completed, we took a long beach walk to the south, collecting beach glass along the way. There are plenty of shells here as well, but I have at least a bowl of them, if not more, in every room of my house, and have exhausted all possible creative uses for them over the years, so I only pick up really special ones anymore.
At exactly the promised 1:15 p.m., Oasis Divers picked us up at our beach for the Gibbs Cay excursion. There were 8 of us on board, including a pair of newlyweds from Arlington, Virginia, and a couple from Rochester, NY, whom we'd continue running into for the rest of the week. Our crew, both divemasters, was Phil and I.D. (I'm not really sure "I.D." is right; when he was introduced, his name sounded something like "Eye-tee" or "Eye-dee"). Gibbs Cay is an island just off the southeast shore of Grand Turk, known for its population of stingrays and its lovely beach.
But before getting to Gibbs Cay, about halfway there but already thoroughly soaked from the waves and spray, the guys stopped the boat and dropped the hook so that we could dive for conch in about 15 feet of water. I and another woman stayed behind, knowing that both of us were too buoyant to free dive that deep. But the rest enthusiastically jumped in with their snorkel gear, looking for the conch which would go into the freshest conch salad imaginable. The yield was about a half dozen regulation sized conchs, and we moved on to the main attraction.
The pretty beach at Gibbs Cay is appealing enough; throw in the stingrays and you've got the makings of a star attraction.
Gibbs Cay is a tiny speck of an island, with a huge white sandy beach jutting out like a tongue from its southwestern quarter into aquamarine water. As we pulled up to the beach, Phil told us that by now, the stingrays were conditioned to equate the sound of boat motors with food, so it was only a matter of moments after we landed that the rays emerged from a nearby patch of beach grass and came right up to the clear shallows. I couldn't get my snorkel gear on fast enough, and in a mere minute, was in the water with the rays with my disposable underwater camera, half terrified and half fascinated. These are southern stingrays, about 2-3 feet across and dark brown to black in color, with pale undersides, and there were about 8 of them here. They came straight up to me, and I
timidly stroked their undersides with an outstretched hand. The creatures were much bolder than I was, swimming near me and wrapping themselves around my legs like cats, feeling velvety soft yet slimy at the same time. The beach got a little more crowded as a few more boats arrived, so having had our fill of the rays, Rick and I headed to the other side of the beach to snorkel. We didn't see much other than grass, and didn't want to venture too close to possibly more interesting rock formations, since the surge would have tossed right onto them.
The half dozen stringrays who habitually make their home in the grass off Gibbs Cay are not at all shy. As soon as they heard us coming, they were looking for a handout. In the meantime, I.D. was cleaning conch with which he would make a fresh conch salad for our beach picnic.
By the time we finished our snorkel, our crew had put up a canopy and Phil got a grill going. I.D., meanwhile, was cleaning the conch. I wanted to get a good look at that because Rick and I hope someday to spend time cruising the Bahamas on our own boat, and want to know how to catch and prepare conch. I.D. patiently explained and demonstrated the process, and while he was doing it, one of the other divemasters snatched one of the transparent pistles ("Conch Viagra") and ate it whole. I.D. swears it tastes like gummi bears, but I was not convinced. I think I learned enough during this lesson to clean a conch, given the right tools, though I.D.'s skill certainly made it look easier than it probably was.
While I.D. took off to make the salad, we returned to our canopy for rum punch and conversation with our fellow travelers, as we waited for burgers and hot dogs on the grill. Oasis certainly has the best excursion to Gibbs Cay, as none of the other operators offer grilled food or conch salad (and some of the other excursions' guests hung about our canopy longingly, hoping for some of our leavings). The cheeseburgers were soon ready, and they were just the thing, though not nearly as sweet and tender as the conch salad. In my experience, nothing is better than food cooked fresh on the beach.
We didn't get back to the Arawak til 5:30, and by the time we got our heads together, were too late to watch the sunset. Dinner was hardly required either, so we just stopped by the Arawak bar for rum raisin ice cream with caramel sauce later.
Thursday was another dive day for Rick, so I drive him into town to drop him at the dive shop, only to learn that the surge is too much for the dive boats in town, so they would be staging their dives from the southern part of the island. I leave Rick with Oasis and run to Sarah's store to get some more sundowner supplies, waiting in line to check out behind a guy who bought 12 cases of Ramen noodles, among other things. This inspired flashbacks of my law school days, when the noodles were a budget-dictated staple of many a diet, including mine. I spent the rest of the morning poolside, devouring one of the 6 books I read this week, watching Klaus fishing (and not catching) from the beach.
The Turks and Caicos Islands are loaded with lovely, lonely beaches.
After Rick's return and a club sandwich lunch at the Arawak bar, Rick and I drove off in search of a nekkid beach. We found one by following a sand track north of town, turning off and following another track til it ended near the water. Though not nearly as pretty as Governor's Beach, with lots of grass just off the beach, we still found a grass-free area for swimming, and there were miles of beach for walking. Most importantly, we were virtually alone, with only two people crossing our path while we were there. A nice way to spend the afternoon, and a perfect prelude to tonight's sunset, which had a major green flash, witnessed by more than just me (it's NOT a hallucination if others see it, right?).
Our dinner experience was one of the few downers of the trip thus far. We returned to Water's Edge, had great grilled grouper
and conch creole and even reasonably prompt and friendly service. But it all fell apart when Rick gave the waitress $80 cash for a $52 tab, with the expectation that he would get change for the extra $20 ($8 being too small a tip, in our estimation). But $8 is all that came back, with the waitress disavowing any knowledge of that extra $20, and the bartender/cashier siding with the waitress. I am CERTAIN it was not a mistake on our part, because Rick and I always check what the other leaves in cash, not wanting to under-tip. We left with a bad taste in our mouths, but would not let $20 get between us and the otherwise favorable impression we've had of this island and its people.
Friday was our last full day, and we spent the morning at Governor's Beach. It rained for nearly 3 minutes when we were at the beach. This is noteworthy because we hardly saw any rain all week, and what we did see lasted all of about 45 or 50 seconds just long enough for one to think about seeking cover, but not actually taking it. Even after this significant rainfall, the skies faired off and returned to the perfect blue we'd had all week.
Midday, we went into town and had lunch at the Osprey Beach Hotel's restaurant, thereby having dined at every restaurant on the island (with the exception of a couple which looked even too scary for my tolerant requirements). After lunch, we found yet another nekkid beach, without a soul on or near it other than the donkeys in the scrub whose braying we could hear from time to time. Returning to civilization in the late afternoon, we picked up some more rum, settled up our tab at the dive shop, and made "reservations" at the Turk's Head for dinner (I told the waitress I wanted to come at 7; she told me it was barbecue night; when I asked if she wanted my name, she said "No problem, I know your face."). Before dinner, we made our Green Flash cocktail (rum and ginger ale with lime) and watched the best green flash of the week from the tiki hut.
After dark, we headed out to the Turk's Head for what we thought was our last dinner on the island, hoping for another bowl of their awesome conch chowder. But the barbecue menu didn't accommodate that wish. Nevertheless, we were more than pleased with barbecued grouper and ribs, and I claimed the last Kalik in the joint. The evening left us with warm, happy feelings. By the end of the week, we'd thoroughly relaxed and explored the island. It seemed that we were in nodding acquaintance with a good number of the visitors by now, as well as a fair number of residents. Each stroll through Cockburn Town yielded encounters with familiar faces, if not quick conversations. We were feeling very much at home here, and the familiarity was neither deep nor long-lived enough to breed the claustrophobia or Rock Fever that a longer stay on such an island might cause.
(For better or worse, or story doesn't end here. Our trip home warrants its own chapter, which is being written even as I write. Stay tuned)
