Providenciales, Turks & Caicos

Some background: the Turks and Caicos (KAY-kohss) are two groups of islands to the southeast of the Bahamas and north of Hispaniola. Looking at a map, the Caicos group of islands are on the left and the Turks islands (including the country's capital on Grand Turk) are on the right. Reading left to right you'd think they'd call the country Caicos and Turks but you'd be wrong. You'd also think that the island with the capital would be the most happenin' place. Wrong again. Instead the Caicos side is more developed with more tourism, mostly due to the fantastic diving and beautiful (but dangerously shallow) Caicos Bank just south of the big islands. Providenciales is where everything is at: trendy restaurants, dive outfits, boutique hotels, and shopping. If you're like me and your tongue hurts when you say "Providenciales", then just call it "Provo". Everyone else does.

So here we are. We are both running on just four hours of sleep, but it has been worth it to get here ahead of a fast-moving cold front. We arrived in Provo around 10 am after crossing the Caicos Bank (very shallow, lots of coral heads. For part of the trip, I was standing like Mary Poppins on the bow holding an umbrella to block the sun and pointing out the nasty looking heads for Kevin to avoid). We knew we needed fuel and enlisted the help of our friend Tanya in Phoenix. While we were in Mayaguana w/o internet access she looked up and emailed us which marinas had fuel docks that were open. (Our SSB email is a lifesaver, and great friends are even more so -- thanks Tanga!) When we started into the marina entrance, the narrow channel was blocked by a boat that was anchored and doing some dredging. The guy on deck motioned us to go around him on the left, which put us near some shallow coral heads. It was nervewracking for a time but we got through it and made the 90 degree turn to enter the marina. Of course we had one more obstacle to get past which was the two dogs that decided to swim across the channel directly in front of us. We slowed down to avoid running them down and managed to get tied up and checked in with Customs with no further trouble. There are dogs everywhere.

After some discussion we decided to rent a car, since that seems to be the best way to see the island. We drove (on the left side, as they do in Britain) over to Turtle Bay and had a fantastic dinner accompanied by the local beer, Turks Head. We got back in the car and had some more fun with roundabouts before stopping for ice cream in an area called Grace Bay. Provo is interesting in that it has one main "highway" going the length of the island and a handful of paved roads, only in the touristy areas. Everywhere else it's dirt roads and rocks. Of course we are driving around in this tiny daihatsu clown car, trying to avoid scraping the bottom on the potholes while passing dismembered parts of other cars that did not fare so well (specifically an unlucky crankshaft smack dab in the middle of the road). Yeah, we signed on for Avis' collision/damage insurance.

Where we are:
Location=Provo, Turks and Caicos
Lat=21 45.827
Lon=72 10.505