Codeman00
Contributor
My wife and I went on our honeymoon in Turks & Caicos (Provo). Below is my official report of the island and of course, the diving!
The Island
The island is very American like. The US dollar is currency and most everyone speaks English which is nice. Driving on the other side of the road is always interesting. It was also interesting that there were no familiar American chain restaurants at all ! No McDonalds, no Dunkin Donuts...nothing that I ever saw. If you get a chance to get a rental car....go out and explore the houses on the southwest side of the island...amazing view. Also, it was fun to explore some beaches and snorkeling sites away from Grace Bay.
The food was very expensive...much more than Grand Cayman. The grocery prices were as follows: Case of Bud Light - $45, Box of Cheerios - $8.69, Gallon of Milk - $5.39. Some restaurants were expensive...some not so much...it was very strange how different it could be. I'll review the restaurants in another thread that I already created and link it here.
Ocean Club West
The resort was great. We had one of the cheaper rooms...with a view of palm tree tops. Oh well, not worth the added cost to us for ocean front. The room had washer and dryer, kitchenette with all dishes, etc. It was great. You can't go wrong with Ocean Club or OCW....they seem to be carbon copies of one another.
Snorkeling
We snorkeled Smiths Reef one day. The coral heads and formations were really nice and the reef was a good size. We saw all kinds of life from a puffer to barracuda, a sea cucumber and other reef fish. I was disappointed a bit though....the place is frequented by a lot of people nowadays and the corals were not in very good shape. To many fin kicks, and touches I assume. Still though, I wouldn't shy away from snorkeling this reef. It is very well marked now with a buoy and several underwater marker plates.
We also went up to Northwest Point Hotel and ate lunch. While we were there, we picked up a handmade map to a special out of the way beach and snorkeling site on the calmer south west side of the island. There were a couple of other cars there but we only saw two other people for just a few minutes. If you are looking for some remote snorkeling or beach time, I highly recommend it. The snorkeling was good...lots of life but not the diversity as Smiths reef. A lof of it was rock shelves more than coral heads but the coral that is there was in good shape.
The Diving!!
We used Caicos Adventures which from all the research I did seemed to be the best dive op to go with. We never did go out with Fifi but did see him take people out on the snorkel boat. The crew...Emma, Aisa (sp?) and others were very professional and great to dive with. I love the huge catamaran....it made the 45 min boat rides out to West Caicos so smooth!...much better than with a single hull. There was plenty of room to spread out on the bow and sun or talk. We even had a surface interval jumping off the rocks at boat cove. Lots of fun.
The diving was EXCELLENT !!! We saw reef sharks on 9 out of 10 dives....several turtles, nurse sharks, huge dog snappers, many grouper and all of the other normal sea life. I saw several fish that I had never seen before which was cool. What a great experience. There was one dive...our first dive that was pretty uneventful but other than that all of them were great! The visibility unfortunately was only 50 ft or so...nowhere near as good as it could be....but still...lots of sea life...we even swam with a huge sea turtle for about 15 minutes during one dive.
Now for the other stuff that you need to know.... Don't believe everything that is listed on the Caicos Adventures website. They advertise that they dive French Cay, the channel, and other islands but all of our diving was on West Caicos. Now I'm not saying West Caicos is a bad place at all, but we didn't go anywhere else and all of the dives were very similar....they were on the same wall. Two of the dives the anchor was set in an unmarked location....but the other dives were on on preset dive markers that all of the boats use. Not exactly GPS locations like the website says. I remember one older diver on the boat begging the captain to go south over and over again. Aisa said he was going West.....so apparently the boat always goes West. I'm not sure the weather could have got much better, but still the boat always goes West. Also, it says that they don't dive the same locations over and over...well we dove two of the same dive locations twice in 10 dives over 6 days. So that doesn't hold true either. They advertise "no cattle boats" but there were easily 20+ divers with us every day. Now the boat is big and spacious and they do separate you in to separate groups which makes things much better. But if you are looking for a 8 person boat without exception, this isn't for you. Another thing I was excited about is doing the three tank dive excursion on Thursday. Well, apparently there wasn't enough interest and after talking to one of the dive masters, it rarely happens, even though its advertised on the website. They had stories though from long ago that it has happened but it seems to be just website fluff now....among the other stuff that I listed. The dive master also agreed that there is a lot of stuff on the website that isn't really true....
But all and all, 9 out of the 10 dives were still great and I don't have any regrets. Just riding out on their spacious smooth running catamaran boat is worth the price you pay.
Tips
Definitely dive Nitrox while you are there. I dove Nitrox on the first 4 days there and was able to dive until my air was gone....on the fifth day, I switched to air....and my last dive was cut 15 minutes or more short due to NDL. I know I have a conservative Suunto but even my wife was in the high yellow on her Oceanic on the second dive. The diving is all deep there...min 50 ft...so I would recommend Nitrox to maximize your dive time..
The Caicos adventure shops have LOTS of nice shirts and island wear to buy. I could barely find a shirt in Cayman that I liked.....I wanted about all of them in the Caicos Adventures dive shop!
The Caicos Adventure's Bus....I would recommend that if you have access to a rental car, then skip the bus and drive directly to the dock! Our first bus trip involved us getting on the bus at 8:10AM and being on it for close to an 40 minutes or more. It was hot, the smell of diesel exhaust was overwhelming and we had to wait on people at several of the stops. If you don't know where the Caicos Adventures marina is, then you might want to ride it the first day just to find it and use the car for the remaining days. If you want to know where the marina is, PM me.
If I think of anything else, I will post it !!
The Island
The island is very American like. The US dollar is currency and most everyone speaks English which is nice. Driving on the other side of the road is always interesting. It was also interesting that there were no familiar American chain restaurants at all ! No McDonalds, no Dunkin Donuts...nothing that I ever saw. If you get a chance to get a rental car....go out and explore the houses on the southwest side of the island...amazing view. Also, it was fun to explore some beaches and snorkeling sites away from Grace Bay.
The food was very expensive...much more than Grand Cayman. The grocery prices were as follows: Case of Bud Light - $45, Box of Cheerios - $8.69, Gallon of Milk - $5.39. Some restaurants were expensive...some not so much...it was very strange how different it could be. I'll review the restaurants in another thread that I already created and link it here.
Ocean Club West
The resort was great. We had one of the cheaper rooms...with a view of palm tree tops. Oh well, not worth the added cost to us for ocean front. The room had washer and dryer, kitchenette with all dishes, etc. It was great. You can't go wrong with Ocean Club or OCW....they seem to be carbon copies of one another.
Snorkeling
We snorkeled Smiths Reef one day. The coral heads and formations were really nice and the reef was a good size. We saw all kinds of life from a puffer to barracuda, a sea cucumber and other reef fish. I was disappointed a bit though....the place is frequented by a lot of people nowadays and the corals were not in very good shape. To many fin kicks, and touches I assume. Still though, I wouldn't shy away from snorkeling this reef. It is very well marked now with a buoy and several underwater marker plates.
We also went up to Northwest Point Hotel and ate lunch. While we were there, we picked up a handmade map to a special out of the way beach and snorkeling site on the calmer south west side of the island. There were a couple of other cars there but we only saw two other people for just a few minutes. If you are looking for some remote snorkeling or beach time, I highly recommend it. The snorkeling was good...lots of life but not the diversity as Smiths reef. A lof of it was rock shelves more than coral heads but the coral that is there was in good shape.
The Diving!!
We used Caicos Adventures which from all the research I did seemed to be the best dive op to go with. We never did go out with Fifi but did see him take people out on the snorkel boat. The crew...Emma, Aisa (sp?) and others were very professional and great to dive with. I love the huge catamaran....it made the 45 min boat rides out to West Caicos so smooth!...much better than with a single hull. There was plenty of room to spread out on the bow and sun or talk. We even had a surface interval jumping off the rocks at boat cove. Lots of fun.
The diving was EXCELLENT !!! We saw reef sharks on 9 out of 10 dives....several turtles, nurse sharks, huge dog snappers, many grouper and all of the other normal sea life. I saw several fish that I had never seen before which was cool. What a great experience. There was one dive...our first dive that was pretty uneventful but other than that all of them were great! The visibility unfortunately was only 50 ft or so...nowhere near as good as it could be....but still...lots of sea life...we even swam with a huge sea turtle for about 15 minutes during one dive.
Now for the other stuff that you need to know.... Don't believe everything that is listed on the Caicos Adventures website. They advertise that they dive French Cay, the channel, and other islands but all of our diving was on West Caicos. Now I'm not saying West Caicos is a bad place at all, but we didn't go anywhere else and all of the dives were very similar....they were on the same wall. Two of the dives the anchor was set in an unmarked location....but the other dives were on on preset dive markers that all of the boats use. Not exactly GPS locations like the website says. I remember one older diver on the boat begging the captain to go south over and over again. Aisa said he was going West.....so apparently the boat always goes West. I'm not sure the weather could have got much better, but still the boat always goes West. Also, it says that they don't dive the same locations over and over...well we dove two of the same dive locations twice in 10 dives over 6 days. So that doesn't hold true either. They advertise "no cattle boats" but there were easily 20+ divers with us every day. Now the boat is big and spacious and they do separate you in to separate groups which makes things much better. But if you are looking for a 8 person boat without exception, this isn't for you. Another thing I was excited about is doing the three tank dive excursion on Thursday. Well, apparently there wasn't enough interest and after talking to one of the dive masters, it rarely happens, even though its advertised on the website. They had stories though from long ago that it has happened but it seems to be just website fluff now....among the other stuff that I listed. The dive master also agreed that there is a lot of stuff on the website that isn't really true....
But all and all, 9 out of the 10 dives were still great and I don't have any regrets. Just riding out on their spacious smooth running catamaran boat is worth the price you pay.
Tips
Definitely dive Nitrox while you are there. I dove Nitrox on the first 4 days there and was able to dive until my air was gone....on the fifth day, I switched to air....and my last dive was cut 15 minutes or more short due to NDL. I know I have a conservative Suunto but even my wife was in the high yellow on her Oceanic on the second dive. The diving is all deep there...min 50 ft...so I would recommend Nitrox to maximize your dive time..
The Caicos adventure shops have LOTS of nice shirts and island wear to buy. I could barely find a shirt in Cayman that I liked.....I wanted about all of them in the Caicos Adventures dive shop!
The Caicos Adventure's Bus....I would recommend that if you have access to a rental car, then skip the bus and drive directly to the dock! Our first bus trip involved us getting on the bus at 8:10AM and being on it for close to an 40 minutes or more. It was hot, the smell of diesel exhaust was overwhelming and we had to wait on people at several of the stops. If you don't know where the Caicos Adventures marina is, then you might want to ride it the first day just to find it and use the car for the remaining days. If you want to know where the marina is, PM me.
If I think of anything else, I will post it !!
