Africa
Asia
Caribbean
Central America
Europe
Middle East
North America
Pacific
South America
This creepy place near the northeastern tip of Provo claims to be 'the world's only conch farm'. It strives to protect the Caribbean queen conch from extinction and also raises the molluscs commercially. On a 20-minute tour, you can learn how conchs are grown from eggs to adults.
Leeward Hwy
(Providenciales)
Info@caicosconchfarm.com
www.caicosconchfarm.com
tel info 649 946 5643
fax info 649 946 5849
| full | US Dollar 6.00 |
| child | US Dollar 3.00 |
Ever wonder how exactly to define the colour turquoise? Well, look no further. The waters of this 5km (3mi) bay, a vast, unrippled electric-blue carpet, can make you gasp with its beauty. The bay is eerily and magnificently studded with countless mushroom-like tiny islets. A slender peninsula separates the sound from the sea and is scalloped with beach-lined bays.
At Sapodilla Bay, the rocky hilltop boasts carvings on slabs of rock that name shipwrecked sailors dating back to 1844.
(Providenciales)
If you find yourself in charming, dilapidated Cockburn Town, then visit this superb museum in the restored Guinep House. This historic building constructed of salvaged ships' timbers displays eclectic miscellany such as shell tools, beads, stamps, locks, and greenstone cells. Other sections are devoted to the salt industry and life on the coral reef.
The gallery upstairs offers an incredible, lifelike underwater display in 3D, a natural history gallery with displays on local wildlife, and a room dedicated to the pre-Columbian Taino culture.
Front St
(Grand Turk)
museum@tciway.tc
www.tcmuseum.org
tel info 649 946 2160
fax info 649 946 2160
| full | US Dollar 5.00 |
The easternmost and smallest Caicos island, South Caicos, west of Grand Turk, is an arid wasteland of scrub and sand-blasted streets roamed by wild horses and donkeys. The big attraction is scuba diving: a reef with a plummeting wall runs the length of the eastern coast.
Cockburn Harbour, the only town, is a rough-edged place with a somewhat sullen population and an appealingly shantytown feel. Corrugated-tin-and-driftwood shacks are interspersed amid modern bungalows and handsome, albeit weathered, colonial-era wooden structures left from the salt-trade era.
Most historic buildings are at the southeastern end of town, centred on the old Wesleyan Church. The harbour is the perfect spot to launch across the Caicos Bank in search of bonefish. Birders should check out the flamingos which inhabit the vast salinas on the northeastern edge of town.
Much of the island is within the Admiral Cockburn Land & Sea Park, north and east of Cockburn Harbour and encompassing the Sail Rock Hills. The hills offer spectacular views east over the Turks Island Passage and west over Belle Sound, a vast turquoise bay opening to the flats of the Caicos Bank. The reserve, extending west, protects mangroves, bonefish flats and coral reefs.
Grand Turk is a treeless, brush-covered, bean-shaped dot of an isle. The island is dominated in the middle by several salinas, or salt ponds, often odoriferous reminders that 'white gold' was the island's most important industry until its collapse in 1962.
There are nice beaches at Cockburn Town, Waterloo and White Sands Beach. Cockburn Town, the sole settlement on Grand Turk, has been the administrative and political capital of the archipelago for more than 400 years. Today it also claims to be the business and financial centre.
For all that, Grand Turk remains as sleepy a Caribbean capital as they come. There are only two main streets, smothered in sand, trod by an occasional donkey and lined with pastel-painted colonial buildings. Downtown also has many Bermuda-style wooden houses erected by the wealthy Bermudian expatriate society that once dominated the salt trade.
The waterfront has the best sights in the capital, including historic government buildings surrounding a small plaza where a Columbus Monument claims cheekily that the explorer landed here in 1492. It's worth nipping into the General Post Office to admire the Philatelic Bureau's beautiful stamps, for which the Turks & Caicos are justly famous.
