Provo is Nice, Too

Grace Bay in Providenciales is a beautiful stretch of beach; white, smooth sand with "gin clear" warm water. I choose our place, Coral Gardens, because it is right in front of Bight's Reef, one of the two great snorkeling sites right on the Bay. We walk out our door and start floating. Right away we see fish, including schools of big and colorful Parrot fish. As we snorkel out further and the water gets deeper, the full glory of the reef is revealed, full of all kinds of coral and fish, all so amazing to watch. It's way cool and much more than I had expected.

The staff here is very nice. Jerome gets you beach chairs and makes sure you are comfortable under the thatched umbrellas.

Malcolm got Paul and me coconuts and told us how to sip the juice (water? milk? I'm not sure) straight from the shell. There's a good restaurant, which is very convenient, and we rented a car so we can go wherever we want.

After a false start with our assigned room, we moved to a large condo with a lovely view of the bay.

Yes, we like it here just fine!

About Cockburn Town

Cockburn Town is a short walk from our bungalow. It is old and colorful. Here is the post office, where I bought souvenir stamps.

And the market. (Paul is sitting on the back of the pickup truck which the dive shop used to drive us home after snorkeling yesterday. It's not every day you get to drive around in the back of a pickup truck! Very exciting.)

There are many beautiful flowers, their colors nicely complemented by the blue of the sky and the sea.

This is Front Street. You come out of our bungalow, and turn left to get to two of the nearby restaurants or right to walk into town or the Salt Raker Inn, the source of Paul's morning bagel and peanut butter (God bless them!)

Cockburn Town is known for its wild donkeys, roosters, and stray dogs (which are all very nice doggies.)

There are many lovely homes and many "vision wanted" properties. Businesses and homes come and go with the hurricanes.

Bikes, walking, pickup trucks and jeeps are the main forms of transportation. I love seeing people riding bikes carrying groceries and such.

Today we are leaving and flying to Providenciales. Everyone says "it's another world over there." We'll say goodbye to picturesque Cockburn Town and hello to Provo and its tourist beach scene. Only "three more sleeps" in Turks & Caicos; oh no!

Swimming with the Fishes

In addition to just snorkeling off the beach in front of our bungalow, we've taken dive boats out to three snorkeling sites, each quite different from each other. These photos are from a barrier reef, about 50-75 feet deep, which is next to a "wall" where the depth changes to 350 feet and then keeps changing until there is a sheer drop off to over a mile deep. We just paddled out to look at the beginning of the wall, which was so amazing to see. There were huge schools of fish hanging out near the bottom of the shallower area right before the drop, and it was awesome to swim with them.

Later we went to a "patch reef," a short patch of reef in quite shallow water. It had many little rock ledges which protected baby fish so they can grow before heading out to the dangers of the barrier reef. The fish here were much smaller and quite colorful.

In general, the water has been less calm than I had expected and I bounce around a lot while floating on the surface of this constantly moving water. I've had to fight off sea sickness at the end of each snorkeling adventure, but it's just temporary and well worth the experience of exploring this amazing underground world.

Greetings from Paradise

We're having a great time in Grand Turk. Here's a few photos to give you a little idea of what paradise looks like!