Turks & Caicos trip report...

[Jonathan Bird]

Hi Everyone,
I'm in the Turks & Caicos on an assignment for a week. I have done 2 days diving on Provo and tomorrow I'm on to South Caicos for 2 days, then Grand Turk for 3 more, then home. I may not have time to type much, but I will post a few pics and follow up later.

First day out, we met Jojo the famous dolphin, who is apparently a lot less friendly in his old age than he was 10 years ago. He made a quick pass by us and I got 4 shots. It was the first time our divemasters had ever seen him up close. (Beginners luck for me). Also had a small Caribbean reef shark on the dive. Today we saw a manta, but not close enough for shots. There was however a very approachable grouper being cleaned. I was able to put a fisheye lens up to his face and shoot away without frightening him. This rarely happens in my experience. I couldn't believe how well I filled the frame with a 1 foot long fish using a 10-17 fisheye zoom! ( I do love this Tokina fisheye zoom...I use it a lot).


Jonathan

[Ken Hawk]

Keep up the good work :)

Ken

[Daniel]

Hey Jonathan,

Your racking up your frequent flyer travel miles jetting around!

So what's your assessment of the Turks & Caicos across the board (e.g., marine life, dive ops etc.)

Cheers!
Daniel :)

[Jonathan Bird]

Hi Everyone,
I'm checking in. I was in South Caicos for 2 days with no internet.

Okay, so where was I?

Provo was nice but it is now very developed. Apparently they are using 7 mile beach in Cayman as a model for their development (seriously) so the island is starting to look and feel like Grand Cayman. If you like Grand Cayman, you will like Provo. It has nice beaches, lots of hotels and restaurants and it's getting quite pricey. You can expect to pay at least $50/person for dinner at just about any restaurant--more if you drink.

We hopped the Sky King plane to South Caicos after 2 days of diving on Provo to continue our trek. There is almost nothing on South Caicos but a lot of development underway. The real estate prices are hovering around where provo was 10 years ago and some people are probably going to make a lot of money on that real estate. A couple big hotels are being built. (But it still strikes me when I look at these barren rocks with scrub growing on them and no fresh water at all that people are just not meant to live here!) Trivia: They are building a series of bridges to connect all the Caicos. Within 10 years you will be able to fly into Provo, and drive from Provo to North Caicos then Middle Caicos, East Caicos, and finally to South Caicos. This is how development will really open up on the other islands.

Anyway, South Caicos is known to the divemasters on the other Caicos islands as the place to go for interactions with larger animals, notably schooling Eagle rays and sharks. After 5 dives at South Caicos we failed to find even a single eagle ray, but the owner of the dive shop showed me a video showing tons of them. Just unlucky I guess to not have seen them. We did see a handful of Caribbean Reef sharks, but they kept their distance. The divers considered them "close" but we all know that when it comes to pictures, there is a difference between close enough to see and close enough to photograph. Hence, no good pictures of them either. I found the wall and the coral at South Caicos to be very healthy and pretty. However, the marine life in general is much more difficult to approach for pictures than in Provo, and I'm chalking that up to them not having much experience with divers. Often we want to go to places that are "unspoiled" by contact with too many people, but on South Caicos they have so few divers, I think the marine life is completely spooked by them. Also, they have a lot of local breath-hold spearfishermen and lobster/conch divers. Maybe they associate people with spearguns. I found it much easier to photograph the turtles/fish on Provo. South Caicos has an airplane wreck which is really cool and filled with fish. It was a nice dive. Most of the dives are on the wall which means rather deep. The wall breaks over at about 75 feet, so you are plenty deep by the time you get onto the wall. I went into deco on every single dive and spent 5-10 minutes decompressing at the end of each dive under the boat. The current is negligable so it's no big deal. The dive sites on South Caicos are protected and calm and the water was clear. Overall a nice place to dive but skittish critters. I'm told (again, this is second hand) that the Eagle rays are not afraid of divers at all and swim close to them.

There is absolutely nothing to do on South Caicos except dive. The grocery store is more like a mini-mart in the USA. The pier area downtown reminds me of downeast Maine. There are a few fishing boats, the smell of fish and the gulls swirling above. There is no night life, and women are warned not to go to the local bars because the local men can be rather "forward" with them, so we ate at the hotel associated with the dive shop (http://www.southcaicosdiver.com/). Fortunately, the food was fine and reasonable.

This morning we got up early and headed to the airport to catch the SkyKing flight to Grand Turk. This island is easily the prettiest island so far, more quaint, and very friendly. Unfortunately, there is a huge wind blowing, it is cloudy and the viz on the dive this morning was about 5 feet (literally) with huge surge back and forth. I set a record in that I shot only 6 pictures on a dive because I couldn't focus on anything! The viz right now is considerably worse than the absolute worst viz I have ever seen in Eastport, Maine. So, I have had a beer and I'm hoping tomorrow will be better. I will export a few pictures from South Caicos shortly....

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

Some topside shots from South Caicos. The town pier, ocean view, wild horse (lots of them on the island), & the local DMV.

[Jonathan Bird]

Rocky coastline and a salt pond....

[Jonathan Bird]

Some South Caicos underwater....

Swim through, Hawksbill on the plane wreck, sponges on the wall, plane wreck.

[solisti]

Do you really have time to post process your pics, when you are travelling this often? Or do you just do it on the airports? Just thinking...

Anyway, great shots!

[Jonathan Bird]

Do you really have time to post process your pics, when you are travelling this often? Or do you just do it on the airports? Just thinking...

I work on it whenever possible. Sometimes an hour at the hotel between getting back from the dive and heading out to dinner, or after dinner, or sometimes I stay up too late at night. I find that if I do keywords and captions as soon as possible, I remember things better! Tweaking the images is secondary to doing the captions before my brain resets. When you travel from island to island in a whirlwind, you forget stuff very quickly. "Hmmmm....where did I shoot this???"

I tweak a little here and there, but I do a lot of tweaking on the plane on the way home. I only put real effort into "final" tweaking once I am on a calibrated monitor, but usually I can get things in the ballpark on the laptop.

Viz is a little better here today. We are up to about 20 feet of viz. Needless to say, I'm shooting macro. The weather seems to be moving out and it will probably be beautiful by the time I leave. :rolleyes:

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

Well, I'm home now and I can finish my mini-trip report. I really enjoyed Grand Turk. It is small and quaint. You can walk to most anywhere you need to go and I think the reefs are quite pretty and healthy. I dove with all three of the dive operations on the island (only one day each) and I enjoyed all of them. Great divemasters, and the diving on Grand Turk was definitely catered to a more advanced diver. While Provo does a lot of certifications and there are more noobs on the boat that need attention, Grand Turk seems to attract a more experienced group and so the divemasters are a little more laid back.

The weather cleared up on my last day so that I had one day of really nice sunny weather and great viz so I could get the full experience. On that day, I had the nicest dive of the whole trip at a site called "Fish Pond."

All the dive operators seem to get along fine....nobody was saying anything bad about anyone else. They all have the same kind of boats (Carolina Skiffs) which are nicely set up for the local diving, and none of them were overcrowded. I have to say that no matter which operator you dive with, you can't go wrong.

First I dove with Mackie (not sure if I'm spelling that right) from Oasis Divers (http://www.oasisdivers.com/), and he completely cracked me up all day. You will never meet a nicer divemaster! The weather was terrible. Our viz was so bad on the first day that he came out of the water and said "Man, in 22 years I have never seen the viz that bad." Yeah, it was that bad. Oh well, at least he was fun to dive with even though I couldn't see anything that day!

My second day was with Mitch from Blue Water Divers (http://www.grandturkscuba.com/). Mitch is a local musician and all-around character--and just plain lots of fun to dive with. He is full of one-liners and good jokes and immediately makes everyone feel at home. He doesn't take himself too seriously, and it makes for a fun day on the boat.

My last day I dove with Smitty from Grand Turk Diving. He is an outstanding critter-finder and found me some great macro stuff, like miniscule pipehorses, pipefish and batfish. Smitty has recently set up a new dive shop and I haven't found his website. His shop is right across the street from the hotel where I stayed (Osprey Beach Hotel (http://www.ospreybeachhotel.com/)).

As for the hotel--it is wonderful. Reasonably priced, right on the water, comfortable rooms with amenities like fridges and a friendly staff. I would absolutely stay there again.

So how can I sum it up? Here's my analaysis:

PROVIDENCIALES:
Provo has the friendliest critters because (I believe) they are used to divers and they know that the divers won't hurt them. I found the marine life in Provo approachable and photographable. My best pictures of the trip came from Provo. On the down side, the ride to the dive sites can be long, and the boats often have 10-14 divers on them, including noobs. Provo is getting very built up and it is expensive. Reminds me of Grand Cayman.

SOUTH CAICOS
This is the wild west of the T&C islands. The place is remote and there are almost no divers. If you want to go to someplace where you will have the boat to yourself for a few days and see something few people have seen, this is the place for you! The wall is gorgeous, the coral is healthy. There are sharks (but there is no chumming so they only come close occasionally). The eagle rays are supposed to be amazing, but in my limited 2 days of diving, I never saw them. (They saw them the day after I left, of course!) Most divers there are more advanced and the owner of South Caicos Divers (http://www.southcaicosdiver.com/) (Greg) is an all-around great guy who can accomodate whatever you want to do. The downside is that there is not much else to do on South Caicos and the amenities there are very basic. The critters are a bit more skittish than Provo.

GRAND TURK
This is easily the quaintest of the islands and definitely seems to be the nicest place to spend a week topside because of the range of restaurants within walking distance and reasonable prices. The dive operators cater to more experienced people and I found that helpful for photography. The divemasters on Grand Turk are fantastic. The coral is healthy and the walls are nice.

My interisland flights were all on Sky King (http://www.skyking.tc/). I found them professional and on time. No problems at all. I had two carry-ons and two check-in bags. Each Check-In was about 45 pounds and I was only charged for excess baggage on one out of 3 legs (a whopping $15). Ironically, I was charges the excess baggage fees on the only flight that was practically empty. :confused:

My overall summary is that the T&C have nice reef diving. The walls break over kind of deep, so if you really love the wall diving, use nitrox or your dives will be short (unless you like decompression diving). The coral is healthy and there are a variety of typical Caribbean critters. You are not likely to see anything really amazing/big there like whale sharks or anything unless you go during Humpback season and get lucky. But the diving seems to be good viz, low current and low stress, which is what most people want in a dive vacation.

I had a couple days of bad weather but once the weather left, the viz cleared in only 24 hours.

I'll post a few pictures from Grand Turk next....

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

OK, I shot macro in Grand Turk due to the fact that the viz was bad for part of the trip, and I also needed more macro because I shot all wide angle on Provo and South Caicos. So here are some shots underwater.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

A couple more plus a couple topsides.

[Neptune7]

Yo Jonathan,
Good report. It makes me wanting to go!

Pierre

[sorvju-f]

OK, I shot macro in Grand Turk due to the fact that the viz was bad for part of the trip, and I also needed more macro because I shot all wide angle on Provo and South Caicos. So here are some shots underwater.

Jonathan

Absolutely great collection of photos...this time I had difficulty to choose my favourite...maybe ray eye!

From my angle you have a dream job:D

Jukka

[Clay Coleman]

Whoa!!! You've got a picture of a pipehorse in there! Do you have any closer views of it? I've never seen one. Cool batfish, too! -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

Clay,
That's the closest I got to it. It was just over an inch long and I had a 50 macro not a 105 on the camera....when I got the lens too close, it moved. (but that shows the flexibility of the 50 because fish portraits and the pipehorse were done with the same lens.) Anyway, it was the first pipehorse I ever saw....they were all over the place at one dive site. The divemaster found several of them.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

Here's a more cropped version of the pipehorse.

[dascubanut]

Hey Jonathan, nice shots. I've gone to Grand Turk 2 times and I totally agree with your trip report. I don't know if I could live there, but I could easily spend a couple of weeks there diving and drinking beer. I've never been lucky enough to see the pipehorses or batfish, but did get to spend 45 minutes swimming with a friendly manta. Those Carolina skiffs are nice for diving but if you take them over to Salt Cay it's a trip your behind won't forget soon. The only bad thing is Turk had to go and put in a cruise ship dock,although the last I knew they are only there 2 times a week, and I was told it is helping the economy. Anyways, welcome back.

Doug

[Daniel]

If memory serves me correctly, Mark was there aboard the Aggressor for a couple of weeks. You should compare notes.

Very nice sampling of photos Jonathan.

Daniel

[Jonathan Bird]

Thanks guys.

Doug, I agree, it sucks that they put in a cruise ship port, but on the plus side they built a little fake "downtown-like" area that the locals call cruiseville for them to hang out in and buy trinkets. Not many people end up in the real town, which is good. They keep them contained. A few go diving, but not many.

If you want to see the pipehorse or batfish, there is one site known for it. I forget the name. Go out with Smitty and I guarantee he will find them for you. I found one of the batfish myself at the site, and Smitty found the second. He also found a couple pipehorses easily. They are small but he knows exactly how to look for them.

Jonathan

[PalmDivers]

Wow, amazing shots!

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"We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children"

Jeremiah Kogon
http://www.palmdivers.com