Turks, March 29th thru April 5th

[CODMAN]

Doug, don't forget the trip report whe you get back!

[brooklynik]

just want to give props to Provo Divers, they were really professional and I had a great trip to French Cay. I was there in March 2008, hope to get back soon...

[Doug B]

My Turksand Caicos Post-Trip Report:

The Diving:
I made seven dives, all with Caicos Adventures. Six of the dives were at West Caicos, all along the north west wall. Boat ride to West Caicos was about an hour each way.

Two days, Fifi was the boat captain. One day, "Acer" was the boat captain. The crew was generally the same folks. They were all very professional. Richard was from Brooklyn. Paul, Pete, and Steph were all Brits. All were fun to talk to... nice folks.

The boat was a little crowded, about 15 to 20 divers on the boat every trip, but I didn't feel too much like cattle. The divers were grouped into groups of about five or six, by relative skill level (I guess), and each group was assigned to a dive guide.

About 2/3rds of the divers were diving completely in rental gear. Only about a third of us had our own gear.

The dive guides spent about 15 minutes pre-breifing the day of diving during the boat ride out. Explaining rental computers to folks, etc... Again, everyone was very professional.

After the boat was anchored, Fifi would climb down from the flying bridge, and give a redundant dive site brief. "You a-gonna find maybe a shark, maybe a ray, sandy bottom, etc......" His french accent, coupled with an island accent overtop, made him difficult to understand at times. But hey, it's his boat, so let him talk for a few minutes.

Then, the groups would go into the water together and part ways. The more "novice" groups stayed on the plateu and near the wall edge - in about 50 feet of water. The other groups would go over the wall, one group would go left, the other would go right, generally, drop down to about 80 feet, and swim slowly along the wall until somebody in the group hit 1500psi. The the group would turn around, and head back to the boat - generally, climing up to 70 or 60 feet on the way back to the boat. Once near the boat, we would explore the bottom around the boat, until about 600 psi, then up for a 3 minute safety stop, and exit.

The boat had an aluminum hang bar, wide enough for about four divers on each side, with a hanging regulator, and an accent/decent line. Very nice. I generally made my safety stops off to the side of the boat - and it was nice to have the hanging bar as a visual reference.

We dove the sites: The Anchor, Magic Mushroom, Brandywine, Blue Chromis (my favorite), Cape Corsica, and Boat Cove South

Max depths were about 80 to 85 feet, and I was getting between 40 and 45 minutes of bottom time, exiting the water with between 400 and 500psi (some times I'd hang out for longer safety stop, just to keep looking around, or simply waiting for an open ladder above to get out).

Things I saw were typicall of carribean diving. Turtles, stingrays, large crabs hiding in the walls, puffers, 'cuda, cow fish, grouper, etc.. Saw two sharks - but only breifly as they were on the edge of visibility. The last dive I made, I was the first to point out a spotted eagle ray, about 7 foot wing span, to my group. Very distinctive pattern on his back - a lot more white that blue. Very unique. He (she?) was swimming very very slowly along the edge of the wall.

At least one of the groups on the boat saw a shark on every single dive.

One neat thing I saw was a huge cloud of sand being kicked up in a narrow sand channel. I swam over to it and found a stingray, about 5 feet in diameter, trying to eat something in the sand, and kicking up the cloud. Very cool.

The walls were very plush. Looking down along the wall, in some places you could see another step at about 150 feet, and then it would step off down to 6000+ feet deep. In other places, you'd go over the wall, and look down into the abyss. Very cool. I like to see the bottom at around 150 feet though - gives better perspective and gives me the feeling like I'm flying along the edge of the wall.

Visibility varied from 80 feet to 150 feet depending on the day and the weather. Water temps were about 78 or 79 degrees. I was wearing a 3mil shorty for all my diving, and was only cold toward the end of my second dive one day.

Fresh water showers on the boat. Twin ladders to climb back in. We were served submarine sandwiches between dives. The ham/turkey was good. I liked the tuna sandwich too. You could bring your own drinks if you wanted, but they had (bad tasting) fresh water and a watered down lemonaid to drink on the boat. I brough my own bottled water. I always bring a bottle of water with me. Threw the tomatoes from my sandwiches into the water and the yellow tails, the piranna of the ocean, would eat them in about 2 seconds flat. Very cool.

I was happy with the diving, and had a great time. I didn't like being thrown into a group for every dive.... because some folks in the group like to swim really fast and see how far they can get. I'd rather swim slowly, and take my time exploring a smaller area. To each his own. I had a lot of fun, and I'd dive with them again.

I also booked a private charter for my family of four, and my brother-in-law's family of four. The eight of us spent about 6 hours on Caicos Adventures' smaller boat, Hercules. I got to dive on the north side of Provo, while the rest of family snorkeled. Diving here was similar to West Caicos, but not as dramatic of a drop off. Played with a 4 foot 'cuda, saw a shark again at the edge of visibility for about 10 seconds, some nice lush walls to explore. Then, we boated over to an unihabited island for BBQ lunch and beach combing. Saw a small yellow-sand colored shark in about 2 feet of water there, picked up some sand dollars with the kids. The coolest part of the day was when we were headed back, to another site to snorkel, and Jojo jumped in front of the boat. Jojo followed the boat for five minutes or so, then we thru the anchor and snorkeled with Jojo for about 15 minutes. I got some good photos and video. Very cool to snorkel with a "legend" like Jojo. Many times, Jojo swam only three feet away from us, interested in us like we were interested in him.

One of the dives was a bit interesting. I pulled on my corregated BC inflator hose to pop the valve and vent air from my BC, and the hose split and broke. I was unable to put air in my BC for bouyancy. I was weighted pretty well though, and completed the dive. Made a quick in-the-field fix on the boat between dives. Now that I'm home, I need to fix it right.


The Conch Farm:
We made a taxi trip to the Conch farm. It's the only commercial conch farm in the world. Started by a guy from Connecticut about 20 years ago. The tour cost about $21 for a family of four, takes about 20 minutes, and is interesting. I recommend it. The taxi ride, for my family of four, that was about 4 miles each way, cost $80. Still cheaper than the $90 per person tour offered by the hotel though.


The Hotel experience:
In short, for the money we spent, I was very disappointed. I will never go back to Beaches, and I would dissuade anyone from going there.

We stayed at Beaches. From the front, the hotel is beautiful. Apparently, they only paint the front side of the buildings though. In my opinion, Beaches at Provo is terrible for the money. Although the plantings and flowers were very well maintained, the entire hotel had, in my opinion, the look of a 10 year old run down facility that needed new concrete and new paint everywhere. It's hard to explain, but when I looked around the complex and saw a lot of what appeared to be poorly made "home made" plywood signs, instead of professionally made sandblasted signs or stone signs.... it just set the whole mood of the facility for me.

The pools were nice. The people who worked there were friendly, except for a couple people. The beach itself was beautiful.

But... the whole place needed a coat of paint, in my opinion.

The tour package desk people were very rude, imo. Wouldn't let us sign up for tours early in the week because, "there's too much turn over in people on saturday and sunday. figure out what you want to do, and then tell us on Monday". We knew what we wanted to do, signed up on Monday, and all of the tours we wanted were cancelled because the hotel wanted ten adults on every tour to make it worth thier while. So, we didn't know until the morning-of if we were going to be on a tour or not. Very frustrating. Finally said "F-you" to the tour desk lady, and booked our own tours through local operators.

The hotel room was dirty, imo. My bare feet would be black after I walked across the floor barefoot a couple of times. We had to call down to the desk more than one occasion to get towels. There were beetles and geckos running around in the hotel room. No screen on the patio door to let the fresh air in. The airconditioner was set at 70 degrees, but it never felt cool in the room, and NOTHING would dry out in the room. It was too humid.

My brother-in-law's room was just as bad. He was complaining about the same things as me.... and we're both guys, we don't care if a room is dirty. That's how bad it was.

Two of the restuarants were good, the others.... I didn't enjoy at all. At the place called "schooners", the fish was terrible and dinner took 90 minutes because the waiter was no where to be seen. We gave it a second shot a couple days later with a repeat performance. WTF?

The alcohol at the all-inclusive bar seemed to be watered down to me. I'm a lightweight drinker, and yet I could slam back five rum and cokes and not get a buzz. At home, I have one, and I'm buzzed. Turks Head beer is good.

To top it off, my wife had $350 stolen from her wallet while it was buried in her purse in the hotel room. In hind site, I guess she should have locked it up in the safe, but it wasn't laying out in plain site. It was buried in her purse, in another bag. Obviously, the staff who cleaned our room had no problem searching thru bags to find money. The hotel management refused to accept any responsibility - I can understand thier position, but it still makes me very mad.

My wife was so fed up with the hotel situation, that she was ready to go home a day early. It was that bad.

Total Summary:
The diving was good. I recommend Caicos Adventures. Strongly recommend private charter with Caicos as well. Would make a good day tour in the ocean the last day before flying home. Fifi comes off a little rude at times, talking sternly to customers about proper boat etticut (spelling?)... but it's not intentional... it's just Fifi. I enjoyed talking to him. He made the long boat ride interesting.

The conch farm was fun. The water and beach were beautiful. The weather was very nice.

I do not recommend Beaches Resort at Turks and Caicos. I'll never go there again.

[CODMAN]

Doug, thanks for the very in depth report!! I'm glad you had good diving! And am sorry for you and your family about the hotel accomodations... That all sucks...

To be honnest, I'd love to go back diving to the Turks and caicos. The one thing keeping me back is the lack of easily arrangeable/ cheap accomodations. Accomodations there are expensive and hard to arrange on your own (unless I don,t know what I'm doing), which makes a custom diving vacation there difficult. I just returned from the Philippines where finding good accomodations/ dive operators at reasonable costs is easy as pie.

Thanks again for the report!

[tarheeldiver]

Originally Posted by CODMAN

Doug, thanks for the very in depth report!! I'm glad you had good diving! And am sorry for you and your family about the hotel accomodations... That all sucks...

To be honnest, I'd love to go back diving to the Turks and caicos. The one thing keeping me back is the lack of easily arrangeable/ cheap accomodations. Accomodations there are expensive and hard to arrange on your own (unless I don,t know what I'm doing), which makes a custom diving vacation there difficult. I just returned from the Philippines where finding good accomodations/ dive operators at reasonable costs is easy as pie.

Thanks again for the report!

My wife and I stayed at the Sands when we were there in May '05 and I thought that resort was very good I don't remember the price being that bad and thats where Fifi lived back then.

[harb99]

Thanks for the report- - always good to hear about people's trips so you can gauge where to put the location on your wish list of places to go - I have always thought T&C would be a nice trip

[CODMAN]

The walls, especially West Caicos, are unbelievable...

Originally Posted by harb99

Thanks for the report- - always good to hear about people's trips so you can gauge where to put the location on your wish list of places to go - I have always thought T&C would be a nice trip