Saturday, April 13, 2013

Day 6 - Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos

We're nearing the end of the cruise, which is sad. The cruise has been great thus far, the ocean has been fairly calm so the motion of the ship has been gentle with no signs of seasickness in this stateroom.

Today we woke up to some more beautiful sunshine and had breakfast on our balcony again. We weren't going to be docking until 1pm so we had the morning to kill. What better way to spend this time then by playing a friendly competitive game of ping pong. It's been a few years since the last friendly competitive game so the stakes were high to see who come out on top this time. The first game was a battle back and forth with Z finally winning 23-21. Not liking to lose, I suggested a best out of 3 match. I didn't fair so well the second game and lost 21-16. Ahh, until next time (likely tomorrow).

We've managed to not eat in the buffet all week, but today for lunch we decided we'd give it a try. Partly because we wanted to eat right before we disembarked and didn't want to risk having to wait for a table and also because it was just opening for lunch which meant that the food would be most fresh and not too many people would have been through.

Grand Turk is the capital of Turks & Caicos, but is a small island only 7 miles long by 1.5 miles wide with about 5000 residents. On average they enjoy 350 days of sunshine. Up until the week we were leaving we weren't sure the cruise we even stop at Turks & Caicos because for the past 4 weeks cruise ships has been skipping this stop after a bunch of tourists got sick on the island due to some problems with the water. Our week was the first week the ships started heading there again.

We decided we'd take a quick tour of the main town, Cockburn, before heading off to the beach. Cockburn town is not very large and took about 10 minutes to get to by taxi; cost $5 per person. We've spent more money on taxis this trip than anything else!! There isn't too much to see, but we got our token souvenir and saw the town's salt pond.

The crew on board really try and get you to hang out at the port beach, but we had other plans. After the town we head to Governor's Beach, which Z researched as being a much better beach. It did not disappoint. We've been fortunate to visit 4 impressive beaches on this trip. Governor's Beach is situated in front of the British Governor's residence. The beach as a partly sunken ship on the shoreline, which was pretty cool to see. It wasn't busy when we arrived so we rented a couple beach chairs for $20 and planted ourselves for the afternoon. Z snorkelled a bit and saw some really colourful fish while I decided to just wade around in the ocean before settling down with my book in the sun. This beach was pristine, white fine sand bottom with clear water. What better way to end the beach hopping than with this fantastic location!!

All on board was 6:30pm, so we got on a little earlier so we could get to diner before all the masses. We also wanted to catch two of the shows tonight and not have it be too late of a night. The magician David Cats was doing another more intimate show and we wanted to see that. He is quite amazing with his tricks. On board tonight was comedian Miguel Washington and his show was left us in stitches. We turned in after the show because I'm feeling the effects of some heat exhaustion. Have I mentioned the Caribbean sun is not to be underestimated?




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