Dive Report: Turcs and Caicos by Bruce Baker

February 5-12, 2011

In recent years, the Patowmack Divers seem to have fallen into a pattern of alternating between "expensive" long trips to the Pacific and "inexpensive" short trips closer to home. Our recent trip to the Turks and Caicos was an inexpensive trip following last year's trip to Palau and the Philippines.

The Turks and Caicos have one of the nicest beaches of any scuba destination. It is often the case that islands with the best scuba diving don't have the best beaches, and vice versa, but Turks and Caicos has good scuba diving and fantastic beaches. We stayed at the Sibonne Beach, which is right in the middle of the best beach on Grace Bay on the island of Providenciales (aka Provo).

We selected the Sibonne Beach hotel because it was the only one of three offered by Bay Adventures that was directly on the beach. Provo attracts lots of well-heeled tourists, as evidenced by the upscale shops in Grace Bay and the many fine restaurants. Although the Sibonne Beach is an older and less fancy hotel, it has one of the best restaurants on the island.

By all appearances, the last twenty years had seen a huge boom in construction on the island. We were surrounded by swank hotels, usually of a faux Mediterranean style with stucco walls, red roofs, bell towers, reflecting pools lined with dark blue tile, and the like. It had the feel of a witnessing a Potemkin village as if all this luxury was just temporary and illusory. I wonder how all this modern construction will age.

Indeed, the island looked overbuilt. There were several major construction projects, halted just before completion. There were lots of properties for sale. In an economic downturn, vacation homes are often the first assets to be liquidated. On Provo, most of these properties are probably second (or third or fourth) homes.

We arrived the day before Superbowl Sunday, and our first dives were that Sunday morning on the West End of Provo. My first impression was not entirely favorable. The reefs were in poor condition, with lots of bleaching and little evidence of new coral growth. There were few, if any soft corals, and fish life was not robust. I'd compare the conditions to South Florida.

Fortunately, on subsequent dives to West Caicos, conditions were much better I'd rate them as "good Caribbean diving". The reefs were much healthier and fish live more abundant. Fish life was generally what Bruce MacLaren calls "typical tropicals." There were plenty of trumpet fish, file fish, trigger fish, grunts, plus the odd lobster, turtle and shark. I was impressed by two things. First, there was a large number of lionfish every place we went. With no natural predators, they are taking over the reefs. Unfortunately, regulations do not allow spear fishing of lionfish. However, somehow they make their way onto restaurant menus. One enterprising pizza shop offered lionfish pizza.

The other thing that impressed me was the large number (and size) of the Nassau grouper. They, too, are protected from spear fishing.

On every dive vacation, I consider success to include seeing things I've never seen before. By that standard, this trip could be called a "qualified success." There were no jaw-dropping sea creatures observed on this trip, but there were a few very cool things.

First, I saw a pair of orange and black trigger fish doing a mating dance. I'm not sure that they were mating, since they were both brightly colored thus possibly both males. (Yes, of course, they could have been mating anyway--or else just fooling around on a nice spring day.) I also saw a pod of four eagle rays flying in formation like the Blue Angels. Others said that the four were trailing a larger group of six.

Typically, our rides to dive sites were about 50 minutes. Mostly, we departed from a marina on the south side of the island, but on our last day of diving the wind shifted and the operators moved a boat to the north side. While making our way to West Caicos, we noticed a whale breaching maybe 300 yards behind us. We turned the boat around and went back to see humpback whales spouting, breaching, and diving with tails in the air. We were told that female humpbacks travel to the Caribbean to give birth, while the males remain in colder northern waters.

Dive Provo is a first class operation. They have a well-stocked dive shop, and I could have bought any number of t-shirts. I restrained myself to buying just one--a long-sleeved model. I don't think I've ever seen a long-sleeved dive t-shirt before, but it came in handy one night. The Turks and Caicos are southeast from the Bahamas, due east of Cuba, and a one-hour flight from Miami. Thus, winter in the Turks and Caicos can be cool in the evenings. We were fortunate to have high temperatures near 80 every day.

The dive shop staff advised us to watch the big game at Danny Bouy's, an Irish Bar. Midway though the first half, a large group of locals came in and sat between us and the ancient TV. They were loudly discussing which team was going to win the NBA championship this year. We decided to leave a half-time, thus missing the Black Eyed Peas show. One critic noted that next year's show will feature Yoko Ono and a troupe of wild hyenas, who will rub balloons together.

For the second half, we settled into the bar at Hemmingway's, the hotel next to ours on the beach. Behind the bar was a modern flat-screen HDTV with an excellent picture. Behind us was a rowdy group of Americans who swung their "terrible towels" whenever Pittsburg scored. Too bad (for them) that Green Bay won in the end.

The tourists on Provo were overwhelmingly Americans with a few Canadians thrown in for good measure. Here is an interesting piece of trivia: in the 1970s and 80s, there were moves to make the Turks and Caicos part of Canada. There is currently a direct flight from Toronto, accounting for most of the Canadian tourists.

However, the staff at the dive shop was mostly British with a couple of S. Africans and a Dutch woman in the mix. There were no natives (called "belongers" on the staff. While riding out to West Caicos, I had a chat with the boat captain. I said that the natives at Danny Bouy's appeared happy.

I speculated that a vibrant tourist economy meant lots of jobs and money to go around. He told me that the natives hardly ever work in the tourist economy. He said the work was too hard that the natives we had seen were probably Jamaicans, who work most of the tourist jobs. He went on to say that the belongers prefer to work for the government or else to be silent partners in various enterprises. All businesses in the islands require a belonger to be a partner in order to get a business license. Many of these partners do little work in exchange for a slice of business revenue.

Thus the informal apartheid between tourists and locals was nearly absolute. We didn't see many locals until our last day on the island, when we rented a car and drove around the island.

Whenever I go on a scuba trip, I try to find a wooden fish souvenir to go on the wall of my upstairs bathroom. Looking around for a suitable fish is always a good way to kill some non-diving time, and provides a reason to go shopping. With that in mind, we drove downtown and went into the mall. It became immediately clear that this mall is for the locals, who have no want or need for a wooden fish souvenir. The wooden fish was to be had in our tourist enclave around Grace Bay. In fact, I opted instead for an artsy metal fish which I purchased around the corner from the dive shop.

Provo is not very big, so we were able to see the entire island in an afternoon. We started at Shark Bites, a restaurant near the Turtle Cove marina, from which our boat had departed on our last dive day. We started with a Buffalo conch appetizer before moving onto grouper sandwiches. Noticing that the dive boat had returned from the morning dives, we went over to chat with the crew and have some pictures taken.

After touring downtown (where there was nothing much to see) we headed towards the northwest corner of the island. After driving about five miles over unpaved roads, we arrived in the National Park, where we encountered an even narrower dirt track through the woods. At the end of the track, we came upon a remote beach where some American tourists were fishing. I guess we knew in advance that there wasn't much to see, but we were determined to see it anyway.

Our last night on the island happened to coincide with my birthday. That's not a coincidence. I like being out of the snow and ice of February, and it's a nice birthday present to myself to go scuba diving. To celebrate, we went to Lemon, a Mediterranean restaurant near our hotel.

Partly as a consequence of my dive travels, I have garnered an exotic rum collection numbering 28 bottles, at last count. During the week, we drank some of the local Bambarra rum, which was very pleasant on the rocks. At the airport duty free store, is seemed logical to buy the more expensive 15 year old Trouvadore rum, made by Bambarra. Unfortunately, I found it less good than the cheaper stuff. At $27 duty free, there were other choices that probably would have been more satisfying.

patowmack divers

Dive Report: Turcs and Caicos by Bruce Baker

February 5-12, 2011