Turks & Caicos | Travel Diary

Hi guys! We missed you!! How are you?

It was nice to take some time away to unplug, reset, and recharge, but we are back and excited to share some photos (and our travel vlog!) of our week in Turks & Caicos. We had such a great time! The beaches were unbelievably beautiful and the people were so friendly. I really couldn’t have asked for a better trip. This post is a long one, so go make yourself a pina colada, and then come back and settle in.

We stayed at Villa Oceanus. The villa was incredible. Great location, right on the beach, with every amenity you could possibly want, including two swimming pools!

We spent the majority of our time just hanging around the villa, swimming in the pools, or snorkeling in the ocean (Smith’s Reef was in our “backyard”).

We did venture out to explore the island though, starting with a vespa tour during one of our first days. We thought this would be a fun way to see the sights and get acclimated. Turns out, driving a vespa is a lot harder than any of us thought it would be. I naively thought that vespas were more like a scooter. I didn’t realize they were basically a baby motorcycle. Our guide was very patient though, and we practiced driving in the parking lot before we took off. The other thing we hadn’t considered is that in Turks & Caicos they drive on the left side of the road. I was thankful to have a guide to follow so I didn’t end up turning into the wrong lane! We drove all over the island, and during one stretch it got really windy, blowing sand into our eyes, and then it started pouring rain. It was pretty comical. Looking back, the tour was maybe my favorite thing we did though, mostly because I started out really scared but by the end I was proud of myself for doing something I’d never done before. As part of the tour, we stopped off at the conch farm, visited Long Bay Beach, and had lunch at Bugaloos.

On my birthday, we started the day with parasailing, another activity I’d never done before. This was actually really fun, and a lot more mellow than I thought it would be. We were up in the air for about 10 minutes, and got excellent bird’s eye views of the island. Be sure to watch our travel vlog for some great video footage if you’re curious about parasailing.

We stayed in and cooked most of our meals at the villa, but we did go out for a celebratory dinner on my birthday at Magnolia. We timed our reservation with the sunset and were rewarded with a beautiful view and even better food. I highly recommend a visit to this restaurant if you’re ever in Turks & Caicos. Every Thursday night there is a fish fry from 5:30-9:30 at Bight Park, where many of the local restaurants set up booths selling their specialty cuisines and there is a local band playing live music. Almost every local we encountered told us we couldn’t miss it. There were a lot of tourists, but there were equally as many locals. We got there about 7PM and it was packed!! I would definitely recommend you get there early if you want to avoid the crowds. We opted to grab some food and drinks to go and head back to our villa, but the park is located right on the beach if you wanted to bring a blanket and make a picnic out of it.

On our last full day we decided to do a snorkeling boat tour. We enjoyed the snorkeling right off the beach at our villa, but we excited to get into the deeper waters only accessible via boat along Grace Bay Beach and do some snorkeling along the 3rd largest reef in the world. By the time everyone on our boat got geared up and we made it out to the reef, we only had about 30 minutes or so of snorkel time. While we did see some fish, we heard from other passengers with more snorkel experience, that they were not as impressed with this portion of our tour. I mostly wish we would have had a little more time at this stop. When one of our guides saw I was bringing our GoPro into the ocean to get some video footage, he asked me to hand it to him and he free dived at several points along the reef getting some excellent close up video footage for us. I don’t remember his name, but was very thankful for this gesture! You can come along on our snorkel adventure via our video below. Along with snorkeling, the boat took us to an uninhabited island where we saw some iguanas, swam in the ocean, and enjoyed a yummy conch salad and drank as much rum punch as we could handle.

We were fortunate to see some pretty epic sunsets during our trip. I mean, come on! How gorgeous is that sky?!

It was such a fun trip. A great mix between adventures and relaxing. We already can’t wait to go back! Be sure to watch our vlog, give it a “thumbs up” if you like it, and subscribe to our YouTube Channel so you never miss a video.

 

-Ash xx

P.S. You can find links to everything we’re wearing here.