Reefs, beaches, pet conchs greet sun at Turks and Caicos
Posted on Sunday, August 31, 2008
PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos — Blue angelfish flash over the reef like neon lightning. Rock iguanas shimmy for shade under Silver Top Palms. Pet conchs, Sally and Jerry, uncurl out of their shells at the sound of their keeper’s voice.
It’s a bit of wild kingdom on the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Flung like a meteor tail from the Bahamian archipelago into the Atlantic Ocean, this British overseas territory of 40 isles in the British West Indies still exudes an aura of the old Caribbean.
True, construction cranes have taken over the most-visited island, Providenciales (affectionately called “Provo” ), and tourism has displaced the traditional conch-and-lobster economy, but Turks and Caicos still has an authentic feel about its locals, called “Belongers,” and its animals.
While much of the world’s reef system is warming, bleaching and fading to white, Turks and Caicos has protected the purple and ochre corals and rainbows of fish that make it one of the world’s top five dive spots. Even snorkelers can get in on the action, following underwater sign-posted trails at Grace Bay, Smith’s Reef and Bight Reef.
Wide with pearlescent sand, 12-mile Grace Bay on the North Shore is Provo’s crown jewel. Hotels, houses and condos hug her Atlantic strand, the newest and tallest, the teal-roofed Seven Stars resort.
Some travelers are content to spend every moment on Grace Bay or any of Turks and Caicos’ other 212 miles of beach, nabbing a chaise before breakfast and throwing in the towel just before dinner. But there’s much more to see and do on Provo and her neighboring cays, and the animals are waiting for you.
The first, funky stop is Conch World, where as many as a million and a half conchs begin life each year. In what sounds like a script from Gilligan’s Island, marine biologist Chuck Hesse and his wife left Mystic, Conn., and were sailing through Provo’s narrow Leeward Going Through channel when they wrecked in 1974.
A conch scholar, Hesse decided there were worse places to plant anchor, and in 1984 started the world’s only conch farm.
Like the turtle farm in the Caymans, this operation has indoor incubators for the eggs and juveniles, and outdoor pools and ocean pens for the growing conchs. By age 4, when their graceful pink-lip shell begins to flare out, they’re ready to harvest for local restaurants and the Miami market. By agreement with the government, a half million are put back into Turks and Caicos waters each year.
Two, however, are chosen to live out their lives as “pets,” and Sally and Jerry dutifully come out of their shells when guide Danver Fortune picks them up.
“Are these the same Sally and Jerry I saw 10 years ago ?” a traveler asks.
“Five years ago, maybe,” Fortune says, “but not 10. But it’s still Sally and Jerry — it’s like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.” Even better is to dive off the side of a boat and snatch your own conch from the sandy bottom. At Pine Cay, Capt. Shaun Deane of Caicos Dream Tours cuts the engine and hands everyone masks and fins. Freedive down just a few feet and help nab lunch.
As the boat cozies up to the shelling beach at Fort George, across from Chuck Norris ’ house, first mate Ashley Handfield hops onto the sand to clean the catch. Tapping a wedge into the shell to loosen the conch, he pulls out the tenacious mollusk, trims it and tosses bits into the air for squawking gulls to catch and into the sea for crabs to snap up. With the shell for a souvenir and the conch diced into Capt. Deane’s secret-recipe ceviche, there’s not a bit of conch that goes to waste.
As recently as 20 years ago, conch and lobster exports to the United States fueled the Turks and Caicos economy. It’s still the basis of business at Da Conch Shack and RumBar on the North Shore beach at Blue Hills, the original name for Provo. Grab a picnic table beneath the palms, fronds flapping in the trade winds, and settle in with Alicia’s “infamous” Rum Punch. Sniff sizzling conch fritters and steaming grouper on the salt air. Try it all with rice and peas, slaw and fries. Coupled with a Turk’s Head beer chaser, this is the taste of Turks and Caicos. And, as the menu promises, that “Fuzzy, Happy Feeling” is free.
The stout Turk’s head cactus, that seems to wear a red fez when it blooms, gave the islands half their name. The Lucayan Indian word for “string of islands” supplied the rest.
These low-lying limestone islands, eight of the 40 inhabited by just 35, 000 people, have been claimed by France, Spain, Britain and such pirates as Anne Bonny and her lover, Calico Jack Rackham.
Some Turks and Caicos islanders are adamant that Columbus’ first footfall in the New World was on their capital island, Grand Turk, rather than on the Bahamas’ San Salvador, and the argument has raged since 1492.
Then, no one was on the island to verify things: the Lucayans from Haiti had lived on Grand Turk from about A. D. 705 to 1170 and were gone before Columbus. In the 1600 s, Bermudans settled Grand Turk, Salt Cay and South Caicos, bringing slaves to rake the vast salt pans. They deforested the islands to speed up evaporation.
During the American Revolution, Britain gave Loyalists vast tracts of the islands for cotton and hemp plantations, to be worked by slaves.
For generations, Turks and Caicos locals, the Belongers, have contended they were direct descendants of African slaves being shipped to the West Indies aboard the Spanish ship Trouvadore. The ship wrecked off East Caicos in 1841, with most of the 193 Africans surviving. Since Turks and Caicos was British territory, where slavery had been outlawed, most were apprenticed to the salt trade for a year, then freed on the islands. They represented perhaps 7 percent of the population.
Anthropologists dismissed the tale, but now researchers are taking DNA samples across the islands to trace bloodlines. Some speculate that all Belongers may be linked by blood or marriage to this one shipwreck. The work, coordinated through the Turks and Caicos National Museum and Ships of Discovery, is still in progress, but it looks as if the oral history may be right after all.
In 2004, divers found some intriguing evidence: a wreck from the right era. Is it the Trouvadore ? They’re still looking for chains and manacles that may have survived the salt water to prove the story.
Today, vacationing in Turks and Caicos is a cinch for North Americans: Less than a 90-minute flight from Miami, with English the language and greenback the currency. Even Americanmade appliances work without adaptors.
Big names like Tiger Woods, Eva Longoria and Ben Affleck have discovered the islands, as have vacationers. Prices are high, as in most of the Caribbean, but especially so on an island that imports every bite of food, besides conch, fish and a few herbs grown in chef-tended gardens. Turks and Caicos is the third-largest importer per capita of American goods, so when a hurricane hits South Florida, Turks and Caicos’ supply line suffers.
These low islands seem remarkably hurricane-proof, sheltering behind the Dominican Republic and Haiti as that island takes the brunt of storms.
But rains do blow through, fast and fierce, dimpling the sea and leaving rainbow fragments over the sand of Fort George Beach. A sea gull wheels within its arc, clamoring for conch and pointing the way home to harbor. Ways and means RECOMMENDED ACCOMMODATIONS Grace Bay Club, Grace Bay. Phone: (800 ) 946-5757; www. gracebayclub. com. A member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, with a number of adultonly suites available. With private air facilities. Doubles from $ 501. The Somerset on Grace Bay, Princess Drive, Grace Bay. Phone: (877 ) 887-5722; www. thesomerset. com. The one- to four-bedroom suites have full kitchens, dining rooms, living rooms and wrap-around terraces. On the beach. From $ 275. Coral Gardens, Grace Bay. Phone: (800 ) 532 8536; www. coralgardens. com. Suites with kitchens and terraces, plus a dive and tour shop. From $ 275.
Ocean Club and Ocean Club West, Grace Bay. Phone: (800 ) 457-8787; www. ocean clubresorts. com. Suites with oceanfront, garden, ocean, pool or island views. Ocean Club West, a mile down the strand, has condo-style suites, shared amenities with Ocean Club and a water sports and dive shop. From $ 195.
The Sands at Grace Bay, Grace Bay. Phone: (877 ) 777-2637; www. thesandsresort. com. Suites with screened terraces, plus a lighted tennis court and oceanfront pool. From $ 185. Sibonne, Grace Bay. Phone: (800 ) 528-1905; www. sibonne. com. This is the smallest hotel on Grace Bay, right on the beach. From $ 110.
RECOMMENDED DINING O’Soleil at The Somerset on Grace Bay, Princess Drive, Grace Bay. Phone: (877 ) 887-5722; www. thesomerset. com. Sophisticated island-inspired cuisine in a white-on-white decor. Reservations recommended. Dinner entrees from $ 34.
Anacaona at Grace Bay Club, Grace Bay. Phone: (800 ) 946-5757; www. gracebayclub. com. Gourmet Magazine has called this open-air restaurant on the bay “one of the most captivating restaurants on any Caribbean Island.” Caribbean cuisine with a European and South Pacific touch. Adults only. Dress code is resort elegant. Reservations required. Dinner entrees from $ 33.
Coyaba at Caribbean Paradise Inn, off Grace Bay Road, Grace Bay. Phone: (649 ) 946-5186; www. coyabarestaurant. com. Fresh fish and seafood, plus beef and pork. Closed Tues. Reservations recommended. Dinner entrees from $ 32. Hemingways at The Sands, Grace Bay. Phone: (877 ) 777-2637; www. thesandsresort. com. A popular beachfront restaurant preparing the local catch as well as burgers and filets. Breakfast and lunch under $ 10; dinner entrees from $ 15. Tiki Hut Restaurant & Bar at Turtle Cove Inn, dockside at Turtle Cove Marina. Phone: (649 ) 941-5341; www. tikihuttci. com. Breakfast under $ 10. Lunch and dinner entrees from $ 14. Da Conch Shack and RumBar, Blue Hills Road. Phone: (649 ) 946-8877; www. conchshack. tc. A favorite beachfront spot for lunch and dinner and a swing by the RumBar. On Friday nights, dance in the sand. Conch, grouper, snapper, shrimp and lobster, in season. Lunch and dinner entrees from $ 12. FOR MORE INFORMATION Turks and Caicos Islands: Phone: (800 ) 241-0824; www. turksandcaicostourism. com.
— Betsa Marsh Nature on Turks and Caicos Unlike many Caribbean islands, Turks and Caicos retains the luxury of space: About 80 percent of its 166 square miles of dry land is uninhabited. So it’s easy to hop a boat or plane and carve out some privacy to see the wildlife. The second-largest population of flamingos in the Caribbean call North Caicos’ Flamingo Pond Nature Reserve home.
Lobsters, conchs, turtles and flamingos flourish on the vast North, Grand and East Caicos Nature Preserve.
From January to March, migrating humpback whales, turtles, dolphins and rays cut through the 8, 000-foot-deep Columbus Passage between the Caicos Islands group and the Turks. Donkeys, descendants of those used to carry salt to the ships, roam freely in their sanctuary on the north shore of Grand Turk. Magnificent frigate birds nest on Middle and Grand Caicos. The bottlenose Jojo dolphin swims in Grace Bay, Provo. The 500-mile Turks and Caicos reef system is the world’s third-largest, after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Belize’s reefs. Divers can fin along with nurse sharks, hawksbill turtles, eagle rays, snapper and parrotfish, beside coral banks bright with sea fans, anemones and purple gorgonians. On Grand Turk, the amazing wall drops from 40 to 7, 000 feet only 300 yards from shore.
— Betsa Marsh Angel protects potcake pups While the Turks and Caicos Islands have created iguana sanctuaries for the native rock iguana and reef preserves to shelter the coral, one species is fair game for neglect and abuse: the potcake dog.
These wild dogs, descendants of ratters on old merchant ships, breed on Turks and Caicos, which has no spay / neuter tradition. Locals call them “potcakes” for leftovers in the bottom of the cooking pot, formed into a cake and tossed to strays.
For Briton Jane Parker-Rauw, this would not stand. She began informally adopting potcakes to North Americans soon after she arrived on Provo 13 years ago, then formed the registered charity, Potcake Place, two years ago. She has placed 850 pups since she began her crusade.
Americans and Canadians who pass inspection, either in person or online, can adopt a puppy for as little as a $ 100 airline transport fee. Other pups go to no-kill shelters that give the dogs more shots, spay or neuter them, then adopt them out for larger fees. Tails of Chicago charges $ 350; Animal Rights of New Jersey, $ 450.
Why bring even more strays into America, which kills millions of unwanted animals each year ?
“People want puppies,” Parker-Rauw said, “and by selling these for $ 450, Animal Rights can afford to keep the unadoptables, such as pit bulls, for the rest of their lives.” Kalua Di Basilio, boutique manager at Seven Stars resort, found an ailing mother dog and her five pups starving in the bush, hand-fed them and is fostering them until they can find homes. With her other potcakes, she now has nine dogs. “We want to eventually go out of business,” said Parker-Rauw, who leads a spay / neuter education campaign across Turks and Caicos. In the meantime, she and her volunteers find, feed and foster pups until they can find their own potcake place. For more information: www. potcakeplace. com.
— Betsa Marsh
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