Tasty Groove: February 2022

Hey all! I hope life is treating you well. I am dusting off the blog because Stacy and I went to Turks and Caicos and it was requested by a higher power (my mother). We are on Grand Turk for another day and have been here for a week. Weather has been great and the diving has been very good too.

It all started last Friday night when we got on our flight to LA to then take a red eye to Miami to then hop over to Provinciales only to catch a puddle jumper over to Grand Turk. Getting to the Caribbean from Portland sucks in general and usually involves either a red eye or an overnight layover somewhere. We had some credit on American Airlines due to a COVID canceled trip to Belize back in December 2020…I think….COVID has totally screwed up my perception of what year something happened. Anyway, Belize had closed down so our carefully planned trip was kaput and our canceled flight was then in the form of credits that we had to use by April of this year or we would lose them. That whole concept is a load of BS…we paid for our flight and if we don’t use the credit by a deadline we lose the money completely? Yeah.

Anywho our credit was enough that we were able to book first class and the only reason…okay MAIN reason…I am bringing this up is because we had lay flat beds on the redeye from LA to Miami. Sure the flight was only 4-5 hours but holy crap did I sleep for most of it. Has to be one of the easiest gigs for a flight attendant too. Get everyone in their seats, dim the lights and then just chat with your coworker until its time to wake everyone up. Another fine perk was we were able to access the American flagship lounge in both LA and Miami. They have Admiral lounges which are nice but the free drinks are well drinks and the free food is okay but not great. Yes, I am saying free is just okay. I am not really sure how we qualified for the flagship lounge. Stacy has lounge access to Alaska lounges and that carries over to OneWorld now that Alaska has joined that so it might have been that. It might have also been the LA to Miami flight because one of the people sort of mentioned that too. Really I don’t care because it had a full buffet meal that we did dinner in LA and breakfast in Miami, pour your own booze open bar with top shelf booze AND showers which we availed ourselves of in Miami to wash the stink off up to that point. If you go to an admiral lounge and they say you qualify for flagship but its across the airport? Start walking, friend. It is awesome.

About half the people that were on the puddle jumper to Grand Turk were also headed to the Bohio Dive Resort where we were going. I have been on enough dive trips so when they had us load all our luggage on a large truck and then cram everyone into a 15 person van it felt familiar. Grand Turk is the capital of T&C but it is a small island. I think Stacy said 8000 people total? There is a cruise ship facility at the other end of the island from us that has seen boats every day except Sunday but we are far enough away from them it didn’t really impact us. Things here are expensive! I get it. You have to ship in everything so that drives the prices up but we have had okay meals that are priced like fancy dining in the states. Beggers/choosers. We do wonder how the locals are able to make due with how expensive things are. Grocery stores carry that same large price tag so unless there is a locals’ discount that gets applied, living here ain’t cheap. Fun fact about the island: there are wild donkeys everywhere. Ever been to Hawaii with all their chickens/roosters running around? Grand Turk has donkeys instead. Lots of donkey dung around the island.

Bohio is a 16 room place that has it’s own dive operation on site. That is really nice to have and we dove every morning Sun-Thursday for 2 dives each and then did a night dive last night. Last day is no dive so you can fly out without getting the bends. We probably could have gone this morning (18 hours is the current no fly time I think) but drying your gear is another thing that gets done on that last day. We have our own dive gear and getting it dry before flying is imperative so it doesn’t weigh too much and reek when you get home. They also have a restaurant and bar on site and while breakfast and lunch are included, dinner and adult beverages are not. Beers are $8 and bottle! Stacy and I have walked to a couple other restaurants for a little variety but they are just as expensive. I will say, for the most part, the food has been tasty and the people super friendly and helpful. I think the rooms could be a little nicer and we have a touch of mold in the shower but if you are a diver, I totally recommend the place and the dive sites are all within a 5-10 minute boat ride from the shore.

There are not a ton of other things to do here. We did do a whale watching trip and we actually snorkeled with a mama humpback and her baby for a bit! That was super awesome. Of course it was within the first 30 minutes of a 3 hour whale watching excursion so the rest of that trip was a bit of a let down but holy crap I was about 50 feet from a whale in the water at the same time!! The diving is pretty good too. We saw reef sharks and turtles most days. Strangely didn’t see many morays and the ones we did see ducked back into the reef most of the time so only one or 2 people would see it and then everyone else was looking at a hole. We did see a seahorse on one of the dives which was pretty spectacular. And we saw the occasional southern stingray in the sand. I did see a fish I had never seen before: a quillfin blenny (pic coming up). That was pretty cool…always fun when you are like “what WAS that?” as soon as you are back in the boat. The group we dove with was pretty good and experienced. We had 10 people and had a lead and trail dive master as dive guides. They were pretty good at finding interesting things to point out. Overall, thumbs up!!

We are headed back home tomorrow. As part of the traveling to the Caribbean is hard theme, we overnight in Dallas before flying on to Portland on Sunday. Looking forward to seeing the dogs but not really going back to work so much. I have rambled enough so here are a crap ton of photos!

Turtle chewing on some coral

Tiny little hermit crab (I think). Shell is maybe the size of a knuckle

The one Spotted Moray eel I got a photo of. Got this during the night dive

Southern Sting Ray with its Jack drive-by homey

This funky thing is called a slipper lobster. Again got this one during the night dive

Seahorse!

This is the Quillfin Blenny. That crest is crazy

This is a pederson cleaner shrimp. They clean fish and what not. If you stick around long enough with your finger out to it it will start cleaning it.

Usually octopus come out at night (and we saw a crap ton last night). This guy was out during the day! Look at how its coloration matches the surrounding sand and rock. Pretty cool

This is called a neck crab. It is a type of decorator crab so it adds stuff to its shell. Looks like a twig but moves

This is a scorpion fish. Fairly poisonous and hard to spot. This one easily is the largest one I have seen. It was huge.

Best photo I could get of the humpback and had to "enhance" the colors to make it stand out. I have video too which is pretty sweet

Peacock Flounder. Colorful. Usually buried in the sand.

This is a spotted drumfish. they flit around and usually are hard to get a photo of. I am happy with this shot

Crab! Head is the diameter of a frisbee. This things is large

Some of those black tipped reef sharks with Stacy looking on

Super large lobster we spotted. the restaurant here has been out of their lobster dishes the whole time we have been here. This monster would have taken care of the problem