Grand Turk Travel and Dive Report

Dates: March 8 - 15, 2008

Destination: Osprey Beach Hotel, Grand Turk.

Getting there from Minneapolis takes a long day. Delta offers jet service
to Atlanta then to Providenciales. Delta wants you at the airport two hours
early for the 5:30 AM flight - but don't count on anyone from Delta being at
the airport to greet you. Delta didn't open the ticket counter until 4:30
or so. From Providenciales a twin prop aircraft transports you to Grand
Turk. The airports in Providenciales and Grand Turk are typical of what one
would find at island destinations. You take a short cab ride from the
airport to the hotel at a cost of $7. That's the stated cost. The driver
will take whatever you give him over $7. The cab fare includes luggage
service. That is, the cab driver will repeatedly check the airport for when
your bags arrive and bring them to you at no additional cost. My bags
arrived late the same day - not always the case, so I'm told.

Grand Turk is located east of the Bahamas and north of the island of
Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in the North Atlantic Ocean.
See links: http://www.turksandcaicos.tc/grandturk/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providenciales

The hotel property is old, located on the beach, and offers beach front
rooms, a pool, bar, and normal hotel amenities. There is no dive shop at
the hotel. The room was clean and freshly painted with a comfortable bed.
Windows opened toward the beach and the waves crashing on the sand beach
lulled you to sleep. The in-room critters were limited to a slow cockroach
and a mosquito too fat to fly fast enough not to wear to her grave the blood
she sucked. Not bad considering the daily cleaning involves leaving the
doors open to air the room out.

The down side of much of the island is that it appears to be located too far
from a recycling center. The hotel property was littered with glass
bottles, aluminum cans and paper. There were numerous lots on the island
with junk cars, cans, bottles, and garbage. The lagoon in the center of the
island appears to be a settling pond for sewer. It appears that solid trash
was mixed with cement and used for wave breaks. If you snorkel or walk
along the beach there are parts of cars and boats in the water, electric
wire, fish line, and glass shards protruding from cement. "Unspoiled" is
not an adjective to be used to describe Grand Turk. Snorkeling in front of
the hotel involved more junk identification than fish identification. It
looks like the canopy of a crashed hydroplane makes up part of the reef.

The hotel supposedly offered shore diving. The way it works, or supposedly
works, is that the dive shop you contract with provides tanks to the hotel.
The wall in front of the hotel is reportedly 400 yards out so it's probably
a good thing tanks were hard to come by.

I used Oasis Divers: http://www.oasisdivers.com/ Pontoon boats carried
approximately 14 divers to the dive sites a short distance away. Divers
were then divided into two groups for a brief tour of the wall. Guides
opened the pool and allowed returns without restriction on time or them
being in the water. They repeated guidelines for air remaining when
returning to the boat and maximum depth. The boats anchored on the top of
the wall and guides expected divers to stay off the wall after the brief
tour. Water temperature was in the upper 70's so thermal protection was
necessary for most divers. All tanks were aluminum 80's generally filled to
2,700 or more PSI.

I did 11 dives during the week including a night dive. The dives are as
follows:
Site Time Max Depth Air Used
Finbar 67 Min 71 Ft. 1,396 #
Austin's Reef 67 Min 47 Ft. 1,392 #
Amphitheater 67 Min 89 Ft. 1,752 #
Chief Minister's 67 Min 59 Ft. 1,404 #
McDonalds 72 Min 79 Ft. 1,627 #
Coral Garden 69 Min 66 Ft. 1,623 #
English Point 66 Min 79 Ft. 1,527 #
Canyons 77 Min 50 Ft. 1,610 #
Gregorian Wall 67 Min 85 Ft. 1,545 #
The Annex 71 Min 71 Ft. 1,505 #
Coral Gardens N. 70 Min 54 Ft. 1,334 #

That's 760 minutes of diving and 16,715 PSI deflated, if the math is
correct. Diving was generally good with abundant sea life. I was busy
taking pictures. I archived 979 pictures from this vacation. Here is a
link to those available to view:
http://stu50guru.spaces.live.com/pho...4559249DAC!163
The night dive omitted my camera and a dive light, making it an interesting
experience. At dusk the sea life was tranquil and easily approached. Then
it got dark and I spent my time looking at the light show.

The British seem to have it all figured out on Grand Turk. They direct the
Jamaicans, Dominicans, and Haitians in their daily work routines. The three
Jamaican dive guides joked the population of Grand Turk is 3,003.
Dominicans and Haitians cook, clean, and provide services like taxi,
construction, and bakery. I quipped, there just aren't enough Haitians or
there wouldn't be all this garbage. That's probably true; since it appears
that Haitians are no longer welcome or there would be many more on the
island.

One would think that since the British allow some of the best cooks in the
world in from the Dominican Republic that the food would be tasty. Not so.
Apparently they require their cooks to go without spices in order to
"blandify" everything that is prepared. A Dominican gal served red beans
and rice (a favorite of mine) that tasted like, well, nothing. The food was
fine, just not a culinary adventure or anything more than bulk to fill the
empty cavity behind your navel.

They tell you at the hotel not to drink the water from the tap and give you
the first gallon and instructions for obtaining more. That's advice I
followed so I can't tell you what consequences there might have been for
failing to heed the caution.

Generally, everything is expensive in and on Grand Turk. It costs from 1/3
to
½ to stay in Cozumel for the same length of time and the flying to Cozumel
is more travel friendly. Grand Turk is a once in a lifetime adventure
that's
hard to recommend.