Half an hour delay so far…

Delayed yet again!! But I am thinking I am on island time already!!

Of the Caribbean Sea as we approach Turks and Caicos.

Blue has to be the most beautiful color ever. Although, my Russian speaking friends probably see two different colors in what we simply label “blue” in English.

Unforgettable blue colors

The water is at least 15 feet deep. You can clearly see our planes shadow at the bottom of the water. If you zoom in, you will get a feel for how clear the water is.

You can also see the sky blue water and the deep blue water on the north side of the island.

Surprisingly no birds so far this evening

Saw these lanterns after a long time. They were at our dining tables by the beach. I have seen some of these put up for decorative purposes in many places before – but none in actual use.

In the village, we grew up sitting with family members in the evening by these things chatting away to glory. Later, in Durgapur, during those days of “loadshedding” (rolling blackouts), we did our homework and studies by these lanterns in the evening.

I asked the waitress if there was a special name for this in the island. There was not. They are simply referred to as a “lantern”. In Bengali, we used to call them “hurricane” (no relation to the storms – although if you let the wick out too much, it would cough up a storm of soot cloud quickly).

Folks who remember this, do you recollect the two clever pieces of engineering – a spring that was used to open up the glass container for cleaning and the lever that you pushed down to make space to stick in the lit match stick to get it going?

Steering wheel on the right side and driving on the left side. If only I can stop myself from starting the wipers every time I want take a turn, I should be in a good shape.

PLS was very smooth for immigration and customs. Out in 5 minutes.

153 is an Armstrong number, by the way. The cubes of the digits add up to the number!

The sands were as fine and white as talcum powder!

Feast of blue colors

Almost three out of four American tourists we met are from New York!! I now have a friend whose mom lives in Haiti. Need to plan a trip there now that I know a local person!

The deal I have with Geo is that when he starts his water scooter business, he will let me serve at his beach bar. Or when he goes to visit his family in Bahama. For the longest time, I have thought that it would be a dream job for me to do for a couple of years.

I passed his test when he showed me a bottle and asked if I knew what it was. (It was Mamajuana)

After our successful trip to Sapodilla Bay, we had become very hungry. Found that the only one Indian restaurant in Provo was literally a kilometer away from us while we were driving. It is called SJ Curry Club. Not sure why, some of the best Indian restaurants I have found are in the Caribbean! Remember Indian Summer in Nevis?

The food was incredibly good. It is difficult to differentiate yourself on yellow dal but SJ absolutely nailed it. Sharmila thinks it was the lemon zest that gave it the uniqueness.

Got to know the owner and his wife. But the highlight was getting to know their two daughters. When we entered, the two kids – Neha and Sudha – were sitting in a corner table playing games. After I tried some of my long lost Tamil on them, they were at our table.

Specially, the younger one – Sudha. The entire time I had my lunch, she kept me entertained with one story after the other.

They invariably started with “Can I tell you something? It is a secret!”

Again, as I have always maintained, the best part of vacations for me are the natural sights and the local people. Never been into long dead people… the living ones energize me so much!

Another riot of blue colors.

We wanted to try some snorkeling but it was a very private beach. There was nobody renting out or selling snorkeling gear.

Great sand, great waters. Coral Gardens Reef right on the beach. Still no snorkeling gear 🙁

Off to explore North Caicos and Middle Caicos

Off to yet another bright colored compact car with the steering wheel and driving on the “other” side!!

Beautiful azure waters, one long straight road with vegetation on either side growing on hard rock!

Reminded us so much of Coco di Mama Beach, The sand you see on the other side is Parrot Cay. You can pretty much walk on the sandbars (and maybe swim in spurts of ten yards) and reach the private island. Some of Hollywood’s who’s who own properties there or stays there often.

Needless to say, we stayed on this side of the sandbars.

Beautiful sand, perfect waters and not another human being. The seaweed was an eye sore, though!

… assuming there won’t be much teal color around…

But for this causeway, we would have never made it to the Middle Caicos (which would have been a shame… wait for future posts on that). This was built for the first time with European funding literally after I even moved to Atlanta. It got battered not by one but by two hurricanes (Hanna and Ike). It has been rebuilt. There was a portion we had to drive thru where construction was still going on.

This spot promises some spectacular views. But first things first. Some cocktails.

Since Mother Nature provided the green and blue, I threw in some red (Bloody Mary).

The riot of blue colors is mesmerizing!

We climbed up some nearby rocks for a view of the waters that words cannot possibly describe.

There are very beautiful beaches at the bottom but I do not think they are accessible other than by boats.

The seem to exist to separate out the deep blue waters from the sky blue waters.

Note how the waves are coming in from two opposing directions to her

Look at the amount the sand kept giving every time we stepped on it. My toes dug in about 4 inches.

You remember from the previous picture how much the sand was giving in. And then suddenly, in the middle of the beach, there is this formation. Almost like a cliff of sand. How do you explain that?

You would expect the cliff to have broken down and be like a gentle smooth slope. The rest of the beach was. Just in this portion there was this cliff. To test out whether there were rocks underneath, I started breaking down one small portion of the cliff at the end. There was nothing other than sand. The sand there did feel a little more wet.

Why this complete anomaly in the geographical formation?

Can anybody help me?

A vacation is never a vacation without making friends with new strangers. Had a great chat with Christine who has moved to Middle Caicos from the Philippines. Always great to hear stories of how far people will travel to live their dreams!

As if the right hand steering and left hand drive was not enough… The cars have speedometers in kmph, but the posted speed limits are in mph. And they do not mention that they are in mph. I had to google it to realize it.

Mark Dillon was born and brought up in Montreal, Canada. Fifteen years back, he came to Turks and Caicos and decided to move permanently. He brought his family here, started doing lots of different work to earn a livelihood (like construction work) and then eventually made enough money to start his own Italian restaurant called Lupo.

According to Mark, he works here harder in terms of hours than before but the pace of island life makes a very big difference in how much he enjoys it.

His son who is going to school here and his wife helps him out in the restaurant. Sharmila and I spent two evenings at his bar!

If you ever come to this end of the world, do pay a visit to him. He has some great stories to narrate.

In the island of Providenciales, every Thursday, they have something called Thursday Fish Fry. It is very popular. As you can see, we parked our cars ON the sidewalk. There was live music going on – a lot of dancing. Many food stalls, many more cocktail and beer bars. A lot of local wares being sold.

And there was that one solo stall that was selling fish fry!!

But a great sense of camaraderie can be had with other tourists and locals at this event!

We were airborne and did a three quarter of a full circle turn banking to the south and then straightened out north wards. As we flattened out, we could see West Caicos. Even thru the airplane window, the picture came out well. The island is mostly empty but I understand it is being built out as a high end resort place.

The lake inside (Lake Catherine) has the same sky blue water. And the reason is that it is connected to the ocean thru underground inlets. (Even the tides come in and out! )

Flying over Fort Lauderdale enroute to Atlanta. FLL was where I used to fly out for work from before we switched to DFW and then finally ATL. First time I came out in the open air in the USA was right there below. About 30 years back.