Turks and Caicos

Providenciales (Provo) — the main island (population 23,000, 98km²) with Grace Bay Beach (consistently ranked the finest beach in the world by TripAdvisor and travel surveys: 16km of bone-white sand backed by low-rise luxury resorts, the water a translucent turquoise layered from aquamarine to deep blue over the reef, with virtually no waves and no currents inshore) — the platonic ideal of a Caribbean beach.

💡 Grace Bay is protected by the Caicos Barrier Reef — the third-largest coral reef system in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef and the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef), running along the entire northern edge of the Caicos platform and breaking the Atlantic swell before it reaches the beach. The result is water of extraordinary calmness and clarity, with visibility of 30–50m, and a beach entirely free of the surf that characterises exposed Atlantic-facing Caribbean shores.

The Caicos Barrier Reef snorkel and dive (the 220km barrier reef running along the northern face of the Caicos Bank — with schools of French grunts, sergeant majors, queen angelfish and hawksbill turtles on the coral heads accessible from the beach at Grace Bay in 2–5m) and the Bight Reef (a 2km fringing reef directly in front of the Grace Bay hotels, walkable in from the shore, one of the most accessible barrier reef snorkel sites in the Caribbean).

💡 The Caicos Bank (the shallow underwater platform beneath the Turks and Caicos, 100km wide and averaging 5–15m deep) is one of the largest and most pristine shallow-water marine ecosystems in the Atlantic. The combination of the barrier reef, the shallow warm bank and the total absence of industry or agriculture on the surrounding islands produces water clarity and marine biodiversity that rivals the Maldives.

35 min flight. Grand Turk — the original capital and historical heart of the Turks and Caicos (population 4,000, 18km²) with the Turks and Caicos National Museum (in the oldest stone building in the islands, the Guinep House — with the remains of a Spanish carrack wrecked on the Molasses Reef in approximately 1513, the oldest European shipwreck ever found in the Americas) and the Grand Turk Wall (a vertical drop from 7m to 2,000m).

💡 The Molasses Reef Wreck (a Spanish exploration vessel wrecked circa 1513 on a reef off Grand Turk — the oldest European shipwreck ever excavated in the Americas, pre-dating the Mayflower by over 100 years) contained Spanish ceramics, anchors, cannons and navigational instruments from the early Age of Exploration. The wreck predates any documented European settlement in the Turks and Caicos.

15 min from Grand Turk. Salt Cay (population 70 — once the most important salt-producing island in the Caribbean, supplying salt throughout the New World from the 17th to 20th century, now almost abandoned, with 200-year-old salt pans and windmills still standing, the historic buildings intact and completely unchanged since the 1800s — the best-preserved example of a Caribbean salt industry town in existence).

💡 Salt Cay was the economic engine of the Turks and Caicos for 300 years — the shallow salt ponds (salinas) produced Turks Island salt that was traded throughout the Caribbean and North America, used to preserve cod caught off Newfoundland. The Bermudan salt rakers who harvested it (from approximately 1670) established the permanent European settlement of the Turks Islands. At its peak in the 1800s, 50,000 bushels of salt per year were exported.

40 min ferry. Middle Caicos (the largest island in the Turks and Caicos at 144km², population 300 — largely undeveloped, with the Conch Bar Caves (the largest accessible cave system in the Caribbean, 15km of limestone passages with stalactites, stalagmites and the bones of Pre-Columbian Lucayan inhabitants) and the Dragon Cay beach (a crescent of sand entirely surrounded by mangrove creek, accessible only by kayak).

💡 The Lucayan people (the indigenous Arawak-speaking people who inhabited the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos before European contact) were the first indigenous Americans encountered by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492, when he landed at San Salvador (possibly nearby in the Bahamas). By 1520, Spanish slavers had transported virtually the entire Lucayan population to Hispaniola to work the gold mines; the population of perhaps 40,000 was reduced to zero in 30 years.

30 min ferry from Providenciales. North Caicos (the greenest and most fertile of the Caicos Islands, with the Flamingo Pond Nature Reserve — the largest flamingo colony in the Turks and Caicos, 2,000+ West Indian flamingos visible from a roadside viewpoint — and the Three Mary Cays (a snorkel site with loggerhead and hawksbill turtle nesting on the sandy floor in 3–6m of water, easily reached by kayak from the beach).

💡 West Indian flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber — the American flamingo, the largest flamingo species, with the most vivid pink plumage of any flamingo, the colour derived from carotenoid pigments in the brine shrimp and blue-green algae they filter-feed from shallow salt ponds) roost in large numbers in the salt ponds of North Caicos and Providenciales. The Turks and Caicos flamingo population is one of the healthiest in the Caribbean.

Day trip to Half Moon Bay (a horseshoe of white sand connecting two uninhabited cays — Water Cay and Little Water Cay — east of Providenciales, accessible only by boat, with the Rock Iguana sanctuary on Little Water Cay: Turks and Caicos rock iguanas (Cyclura carinata), an endangered species found only in the Turks and Caicos, sunning on the beach at distances of 1–2m). Fly from Providenciales (PLS).

💡 The Turks and Caicos rock iguana (Cyclura carinata — an endangered species found only in the Turks and Caicos, with a total wild population of approximately 50,000 — the most densely populated of all Cyclura iguana species) is found on Little Water Cay in large numbers. The iguanas are completely habituated to humans and will approach within metres; the island is a designated nature reserve with boardwalks to prevent disturbance.