May 11th to May 15th, 2021
Arrival was interesting – there’s plenty of space through the coral pass, but the buoys which were supposed to mark it were missing. And, as it’s the first time we’ve been through a fairly narrow pass and our coral reading skills were fairly new, we were probably over-cautious.
But all was fine. We made our way in, and anchored off the sailing school fairly close to the beach, before the hotel-strip begins. A substantial portion of the coast around here was made up of hotels, with buoyed off swimming zones. Here, though, we could anchor within a reasonable swim or a very short dinghy ride of the beach, which is far nicer.
As the local dinghy sailing school had a car park (and we could explain where we were over the phone), our spot made a convenient place to call for a taxi to complete the extensive paperwork required to stay here for a little longer, too (as we were on the verge of overstaying our initial tourist visa). The paperwork was not simple, especially because we had to visit the bank to pay then return to the immigration office to get our passport stamp. And the two were a long walk apart. But fine, done.
The boys enjoyed watching the kids in their sailing dinghies zooming around, particularly the few that decided to circle our boat. There was a decent supermarket on the other side of the main road – not an easy road to cross with kids in tow – so while it was a little walk, provisioning was plausible. With a lot of groceries, we opted to return by taxi, which is pretty costly, like most things in Turks and Caicos. We spent a few days here stocking up, completing the paperwork, and enjoying the beach. The offshore reef was a little too exposed for our boys to snorkel in this section.
