Turks and Caicos 2021

We knew this short trip would pass quickly, and did it ever! We planned to squeeze the most out of our last morning, so we were at the resort’s restaurant at exactly 7:30AM when it opened. By 8:30 we were in the ocean - the first of four “last dips” in the Caribbean and the pool.  The hotel extended our check-out by an hour, to noon, which worked out perfectly. We left the parking lot at 12 on the nose, stopped at the IGA for sandwiches, gassed up and returned the rental, and got the Hertz shuttle to the terminal, arriving there at 12:40, only to join the insane security line-up for the smorgasbord of afternoon departures to North America.  Our Westjet flight left on time at 2:35. We will have three hours’ connection time in Toronto and should arrive at home by 2AM. It’ll be a short sleep before heading to work. But it was all worth it - even the Covid testing and plethora of online form submissions to the USA, Turks and Caicos and Canada. This was a 10/10 November getaway fo...

Our first full day was as good as a day in the Caribbean could be. And honestly? Today was a repeat of that!  We started the day with a 7:30AM beach walk in the center of massive Grace Bay and had breakfast at a beach cafe. By 9:30, we were on the beach at our own resort, where we lounged and swam the morning away and chatted with the Ontario couple (she was born in Newfoundland!) in the loungers next to us.  After lunch on the patio of our hotel room, we headed to Turtle Cove Marina and tried to explore Chalk Sound National Park (see photo caption below for the explanation of why I say “tried”!).  Then it was a snorkeling stop at Coral Gardens, part of the Princess Alexandra Marine Reserve. We ended the afternoon with a sunset swim, before heading to a wonderful last dinner at the Windsong Resort, where we stayed in 2014.  As I said at the outset of this post, it was another Caribbean vacay-day that was as good as it could have been! 😀 The rich array of colours on...

We came to Turks and Caicos for three days of pure R&R. What can I say about our first full day, other than the fact that it lived up to our complete expectation:  29°, sun, swims in the bathwater-warm Caribbean, nice meals = a 10/10 type of day after a hectic Fall.   We were at breakfast by 8AM, but the slow “island time” service meant that it took an hour to get and eat our bacon and eggs.  There were only two tables occupied in the restaurant, so we think they had to chase down a chicken to lay some eggs. Anyway, after a morning of beach time and a long walk, we had lunch in our room and waited for our Covid PCR test company to show up at 2PM (necessary for the return to Canada on Sunday). They arrived at 1:50PM and by 2, we had been tested and were getting ready for a short afternoon excursion to the southeast coast of Providenciales Island.  That was followed by ice cream near the resort, more beach time, a drink by the pool as the sun went down, and an Ital...

We are all doing our best to get through this time in history. And everyone is trying to keep their chin up. But sometimes, the strain of working in a completely different model than we have known all our lives can really get to us. Or at least to me. In that vein, I woke up one day in September and said to Pam, “I need to get away for a few days on a beach; do you?”  Well,  you can guess her answer.  So, in keeping with our tradition for most of the last 15 years to escape for a pre-Christmas “pause” around Remembrance Day, we decided to make plans to return to a Caribbean island that is one of our all-time favorites: Turks and Caicos.  Besides the fact that it is a favourite location, what else pushed us towards T and C?  Honestly, it was the fact that the Centres for Disease Control continues to rank T and C as one of the lowest Covid risks in the Caribbean. Here is the rating scale used by the CDC to evaluate the Covid risk of all countries on earth: Most C...