Turks and Caicos

The days pass in blur of long passages punctuated by brief interludes at white sandy beaches.  It takes 2.5 days to cover the 380 miles from Puerto Rico to the Turks and Caicos. The hours are spent schooling, reading and watching the undulating waves. We count the ships seen during the journey on a single hand. Our safe crossing is perhaps foretold by our departing encounter with a large pod of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. At least 5 of them frolic in our wake and between the pontoons for a mile or so before they grow bored and veer off. The rest of the pod swims ahead waiting patiently, but doesn’t engage. Their cavorting is so playful that one cannot help but smile and laugh at them. Along with Puerto Rico, we have left behind the Caribbean Sea and entered the Atlantic Ocean. The 2-3 foot tides are the greatest evidence of the shift so far, but we know there is more weather up this way as well.

Along the crossing, Tom hooks a small tuna weighing about 8 pounds. Fresh grilled tuna is our reward when we make our landfall at Sand Cay, an uninhabited nature preserve with a blindingly white, wide sandy beach. We spend the day swimming, exploring and beach combing, activities denied to us during our confinement. Once decompressed, we embark on another full day passage to South Caicos (an unremarkable cay where we clear in) and yet another full day passage to Pine Cay on the northern part of the Caicos chain. Using the dingy to explore these shallow reef filled waters, we head for Dellis Cay. A hundred years ago, sponges were harvested here for export to Europe. A shuttered resort project stands like silent sentinels overlooking the turquoise waters. They’ve managed to complete the concrete work on 7 large buildings before the funding fell apart perhaps in 2008. We find an abundance of beautiful shells tossed up by the confluence of odd currents and tides.

The Caicos are almost entirely surrounded by reef with periodic cuts, or narrow channels. These cuts allow boats to cross the reef and access land and shelter on the inside. Just outside of this reef is quite literally a wall where the depth drops from 50 feet to 1000. At 50 feet the water is much like Tahoe and one can see the bottom. Closer to shore the water color changes from a deep blue to a pale turquoise green.  It’s so green, in fact, that at a distance it reflects onto the towering billowy clouds above, casting a green shadow onto their base.  The beaches here have the softest whitest sand: the kind that is best for building castles. 

At Provo (short for Providenciales) we have an opportunity to snorkel again. The snorkeling on our last days in Puerto Rico at Cayo Palaminos was only OK: plentiful fish, but little variety and badly damaged coral. Anything close to the main island is mobbed on weekends with boats playing too loud music. A bright spot is a tiny proverbial desert island with a single stand of brush growing in it. It is the little desert island of every cartoon…if you were stranded on a dessert island what would you bring….

Back to Provo. The reef is exceptional, despite the strong current and the sand it stirs up. In a space of 45 minutes we are treated to an astounding array of rare sea life: a spotted eagle ray, hawksbill turtle, peacock founder, gigantic sea cucumber, a small school of Atlantic spadefish (large striped angelfish looking) queen angel fish and queen triggerfish just to name a few. The variety of fish is the best we’ve seen. The coral seems pretty healthy here too.