Turks and Caicos

[flyboy08]

HNY all!!!

During a search, all I see are live aboards?

We are considering a land base dive trip this May/June and I've never been.

What to expect? Who to dive with? What are the conditions like?

I understand Reef Divers (whom I used often in the Caymans) now operates out of T&C?

TIA,

 

[tridacna]

A few reports already. Just search... "South Caicos" for Reef Divers.

 

[drrich2]

Turks & Caicos Research Notes - Turks & Caicos Research Notes
Turks & Caicos Aggressor II Report Apr. 2018 - Trip Report - Turks & Caicos Aggressor II 4/21-4/28 Trip Report

During a search, all I see are live aboards?

There's a reason for that. Long boat rides and expensive topside on Provo., from what I understand. Hence I did the live-aboard route.

'Turks and Caicos' is a large enough group of islands that lumping them all together under that term doesn't really give the right picture of what your dive trip might be like. It seems to me there are 3 main options:

1.) 'Turks and Caicos' - usually refers to trips out of Providenciales (a.k.a. 'Provo.'), diving West Caicos, Provo. and if you're on a live-aboard and conditions are favorable, perhaps French Cay.

2.) Grand Turk. Very short boat rides from what I've read. Do a search on Bohio Resort in Grand Turk.

3.) South Caicos - the Reef Divers offering that's recent.

So, the first thing to do is figure out which of the 3 places you want to go. Only if you plan 1.) do I anticipate you'll have some work to do to figure out where to stay and who to dive with.

 

[Akimbo]

Highly recommend, @drrich2's dive travel planning thread:

Info - Dive Travel Planning

Dive Travel Planning Map of the Caribbean by CIA World Factbook (Public Domain) Recreational divers enjoy a wide range of underwater environments; local flooded rock quarries to coral reefs, ship wreck diving in the Great Lakes or ocean, kelp forests to shark diving, cave exploration and...

scubaboard.com

 

[loosenit2]

Beaches Turks and Caicos Review

Recently went on a family vacation to the Beaches Resort in the Turks and Caicos. Thought I would post a review for anyone considering a similar trip. My family has two divers (me and daughter) and one non-diver (wife) so we chose the Beaches resort because it 1. Was a family resort, 2. Had...

scubaboard.com

I have non-diving family members so chose the beaches resort in T&C in 2019. Diving was included, allthough no choice on where you are going to, show up, dive, etc. For my family it was a good choice.

 

[Hoag]

I highly recommend the Bohio on Grand Turk!

It is run by Tom and Ginny, two Canadian expats. When you arrive, Ginny will try to learn everybody's name and by the second day, it was not uncommon for her to have everybody's name memorized and to greet people with a big hug. (I bumped into her a few years after my trip at the Toronto outdoor adventure show and when she saw me, she yelled out "HOAG!" and came over to hug me.)

To get there, fly into "Provo" and then take a "puddle jumper" over to Grand Turk.

A typical day at Bohio will go something like this:

• Get up & go for breakfast
• After breakfast, go back to your room & get into your swimsuit
• Go to the dive lockers and get ready for your dive (including putting on your wetsuit)
• Hop on the dive boat and head out for the first dive (take your mask fins & camera gear if you have any. The DM will carry your BCD & Reg out).
• Transit out to the dive site & do your first dive
• After the first dive is over, the boat heads back to Bohio during the surface interval
• Place your lunch order and head back to the boat
• Head out to do your second dive
• When it is done, back onto the boat and then back to Bohio
• Shower, Change and head back to the restaurant for lunch. (They already have your order so it is there very quickly.)
• After that, the rest of the day is yours to spend how you want.

Transit times from the resort to the dive sites are often a "grueling" 5-10 minutes and a couple sites are even closer. That is why you get into your wetsuit before even getting on the boat.

What will you see? That is hard to say. I was there in March (not this year) and the whales were migrating through. We could hear them on almost every dive. We saw more turtles than any place I had ever been, and that includes Grand Cayman. TCI are known for being "very sharky", but we didn't see a lot of sharks.

There are a couple more things about Bohio that I would be remiss if I didn't mention. First the food. Breakfast and IIRC, lunch were included, but dinner/supper was additional. Prices at the on-site restaurant seem very high, but the portions are huge. I found that I took leftovers home with me every night. (Every room has a fridge so no worries about bringing leftovers "home".) The next night, I would bring my to-go pack back to the restaurant with me and they would happily warm it up for me. I would order a salad, and I was good to go. So, when you see the price, don't let that scare you. There is almost enough food served for that to be two meals. (Others would share a meal rather than have left overs.)

The other thing that I need to mention is that if there is a cruise ship in port, the Bohio opens up a part of their beach to the cruise ship passengers. They charge for this and that is used to help keep the costs for the guests of the resort where they are. This was not something that was a huge deal, since there were several areas that the "boat people" were not allowed to go and were reserved for the resort's guests.

One final thing to keep in mind is that when you look at the cost of the Dive Packages on their website, it includes the inter-island flight from Provo to Grand Turk.

Here is a short video of my time at Bohio. (By the way, that is me at the 3:55 point doing a summersault into the water.)

I guess the true test of a recommendation is "Would I go again?" My answer would be a resounding "YES! In a heartbeat!"

 

[RockyMountainRichard]

I had the opportunity to dive both Provo and Grand Turk this past October (I've never been to South Caicos, however). I lived and worked on Provo many years ago, back when there was but one large hotel on the island (and that's where I worked). And I continued to travel there for work for years after. I probably logged 100+ dives there and have great memories of those dives.

This last trip in 2021 felt strikingly different (and my most recent trip there was probably in the past 4 years or so). Maybe it was just a fluke of timing or weather. Or maybe there's some other explanation (currents? topography? storms?). But the dive experience between Provo and Grand Turk, all of maybe 80 miles apart, was dramatically different. The dive sites on Provo (some in the bay, some at Northwest point) felt tired, worn down and sad. Visibility was good and there was some marine life, particularly at shallow depths, but either my memories are much brighter than reality or things have significantly changed. By contrast, the dives on Grand Turk felt much more alive: healthier and diverse corals, more abundant marine life, sharks that happily swam with us for the entirety of 1-hour dives. And -- as an added bonus, and perhaps an explanation for everything -- only one other boat out on the water diving, aside from me, my buddy and our guide from Blue Water Divers. In October, 2021, cruise ships had not yet returned to the port on Grand Turk. The reef was virtually ours to play on.

All of our dives, on Provo and on Grand Turk, were in the max 60fsw to 90fsw range. A 10-minute boat ride to any site along the western, leeward side of the island was probably the longest trip we ever made.

While the diving on Grand Turk restored our faith (it was our second stop in T&C after a week on Provo), the landside experience on the island is, to be polite, still pretty rough around the edges. Grand Turk is the capital of the country, and I had figured that it would have matured in the decades since I was last there, but Provo definitely feels like the more grown-up little brother (at least in terms of things like infrastructure and options). If feral donkeys and dogs and abandoned salt ponds are your thing, book a trip to Grand Turk NOW! But if tourist comforts are more your cup of tea, or you don't want to subject yourself to the vagaries of interisland T&C travel, then Provo is the place to stop. On Grand Turk, Bohio certainly seemed nice (we did our SIs there) and the few guests that we spoke to on the beach were happy. The food was, as @Hoag pointed out, portioned for monster appetites (we went for the island night BBQ), and my steak dinner bled my wallet but fed me for days afterward. Locals far outnumbered visitors at dinner, and everyone left with at least one, large clamshell container of food to go. We stayed at Osprey Beach (mostly serviceable) and dove with Blue Water Divers (recommended). Hotel, dive shop and beach all within about 50-to-100 feet of each other. It's the same at Bohio.