The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The pinch-me perfect isles where seeing is believing
With new direct flights, you can now escape to Turks and Caicos for some winter sun in under 10 hours,
Seeing is believing – but not, perhaps, in Turks and Caicos. As you turned this page, you probably looked at the picture and scoffed: nowhere, surely, has sea so outrageously turquoise as this – Photoshop trickery, surely. And the sand: honestly, who does The Telegraph’s picture desk think they’re kidding? But no, this clutch of islands in the northern Caribbean is replete with the region’s most glorious clichés. No filter needed, no edits required.
Mere weeks ago, my toes were digging into that chalk-white sand, the midday sun high over the bright, lidoblue shallows. An implausible scene – the stuff of daydreams. I was on Grace Bay beach: the three-mile star of Providenciales, or “Provo”, the archipelago’s most populous isle, and other than a few little cotton-puffs up high, the sky blazed clear – and the smooth, clear water almost seemed to glow. It was the hue of Listerine, or a Gatorade “Cool Blue”: the kind of colour surely only achieved with an unholy amount of E-numbers. But this shore is exactly as nature intended – only with a few extra sunloungers, and a surprisingly scant handful of holidaymakers.
Until now, reaching Turks and Caicos – “TCI” – has been somewhat convoluted, with British Airways flights calling at Antigua or the Bahamas en route – a total journey time of around 12 hours. But from today, Virgin Atlantic will commence a direct service between London Heathrow and Provo, flying twice a week yearround, with a duration of nine hours 50 minutes. This idyllic archipelago will be easy to reach, just in time for that lifeaffirming dose of winter sun.
TCI has a wealth of opportunities for both: with 40 low-lying islands and cays, this tiny British Overseas Territory is quietly famed for its lavish resorts and billionaires’ villas, yet still has a wild, untamed edge. Its westernmost Caicos isles lie a few hundred miles south east of the Bahamas, scattered like pearls across the North Atlantic; they’re separated from the Turks, to the east, by the Turks Island Passage, an ocean trench more than 7,000ft deep. Grand Turk’s port is well-served by cruise ships, but Provo – part of the Caicos chain – is the nation’s only island with an international airport. And just a 15-minute drive from arrivals is Grace Bay, one of the most gorgeous shores you will ever set eyes on.
Holiday joys come easy-peasy on Provo. My hotel, Beaches Turks & Caicos, sits on Grace’s sensational sands, a vast, family-friendly resort with endless activities, 10 swimming pools and 21 restaurants. You can stroll barefoot between them, with piña colada in hand, stopping to swing in a sun-warmed hammock or coo over the mini geckos sunbathing on the path. Beaches is part of the Sandals group, the Caribbean-wide pioneer of all-inclusive indulgence. The brand’s founder, the late Gordon “Butch” Stewart, invented the swim-up bar in 1984 – and this resort has five, where waiters whip up cocktails with names like Island Smile and Sea Breeze at a rate of knots.
Home to one of the world’s largest and healthiest coral reefs, TCI is ever popular with divers – though you don’t need to be PADI-qualified to enjoy the show. During my visit, I swam with a turtle just a few fin-kicks from the beach, the most incredible snorkelling moment I’ve ever experienced. It had been munching on the coral, its dark shell camouflaged by the reef, but we came eye-to-eye as it drifted up to the surface for a breath or two – before spiralling down to its dinner again. I kept a few metres’ distance, and the pair of us floated together slowly over the coral, until it gently tipped a fin and glided off into the distance.
A 10-minute stroll along the sand, Bight Reef is another rich wildlife spot. Like the rest of Grace Bay, it’s a strictly-protected part of the Princess Alexandra National Park, which promotes ecotourism and keeps new developments to a minimum. While snorkelling here, I spotted huge yellowfin tuna, three-foot-long barracuda and countless buck-toothed parrotfish, their rainbow scales shimmering in the underwater sunbeams. It’s like finning through a tropical aquarium – another of TCI’s unbelievable scenes.
And they just keep on coming. A 20-minute boat ride to the east, you can laze on desert island sandbars which emerge at low tide, amid shallows as clear and smooth as a swimming pool. On Little Water Cay, rare rock iguanas emerge from a tangle of trees to sprawl on (yet another) white-sand beach, like tiny cartoon dinosaurs with punky green mohawks. Tour company Island Routes runs half-day cruises to all of these spots, as well as full-day trips to the nearby isles of North and Middle Caicos. And while Provo’s fly-and-flop bliss is tough to leave, its less-visited neighbours are even more idyllic.
The ferry – a speedboat, really – plies the smooth crossing to North Caicos, whose largest settlement has a population of just 907, and its smallest merely 40. The island is so laidback, it makes Provo seem like a metropolis: the roads are wide and empty, flanked by small farms, coconut groves and pastel-painted houses with picket fences and peach-pink bougainvillea.
Behind this Elysian scene, there is a much darker history. In the North Caicos province of Kew, TCI’s National Trust works to preserve Wade’s Green, an 18th-century sisal, cotton and sugar cane plantation, which was once farmed by African slaves. “Many TCI islanders, or ‘Belongers’, can trace their roots here,” explained local guide Charles, whose own ancestors were enslaved at Wade’s Green. “Stubbs, its founder’s surname, is still one of the most common local family names.” Long abandoned, the estate lies in ruins, its limestone skeleton intertwined with fruit trees, cacti and ivy. All around, new saplings thrive, somehow, in the crumbly, centuries-old mortar – a triumph of nature’s bounty over humanity’s cruelty.
Heading southwards, crossing the long causeway to Middle Caicos feels like driving on the ocean’s surface. At high tide, the road is barely a yard above the water: look carefully and you might even spot sea turtles swimming alongside. By this time, your mind will be long-boggled by TCI’s beauty – but it isn’t quite finished with you yet. Middle Caicos, population no more than 300, is blessed with arguably the nation’s most winsome shores, Mudjin Harbour and Bambarra Beach. With barely a footprint upon them, these wide, wild swathes of white sand stretch out for miles, tickled only by the softest of turquoise-blue waves.
Linger awhile, in the shade of a casuarina tree, watching yachts skim the horizon and pelicans swoop for their supper. Reality or reverie? It’s hard to tell. This is truly the Caribbean at its most pinch-me perfect.
I swam with a turtle just a few fin-kicks from the beach, my most incredible snorkelling moment ever