Planning a Trip

This section tackles the how-tos of a trip to the TCI, including everything from finding airfares to deciding whether to rent a car. But first, let's start with some background information about this increasingly popular destination.

Getting to Know the Turks & Caicos

It seems only yesterday that public awareness of this island archipelago was essentially "Turks & Caicos who?" For years, these islands were little more than a beautiful, slumbering backwater, home to a close-knit society of islanders called "Belongers," and the haunt of a smattering of fishermen and divers, beach bums and drug smugglers, and, of course, the well-heeled looking for an untouched cay in which to drop anchor.

Today the TCI is fast on its way to becoming one of the premier destinations in the Caribbean, winning numerous travel industry accolades -- including the 2007 World Travel Awards for World's Leading Beach (Grace Bay) for the third year running. Visitation to the TCI keeps rising, with approximately 250,000 arrivals recorded in 2006, up from 175,000 in 2005. Air flights were up 25% in 2005 alone. Resorts in the Turks & Caicos keep ratcheting up the luxe factor, with the opening of upscale properties such as the Somerset on Grace Bay, Seven Stars, and the Ritz-Carlton's Molasses Reef in West Caicos. Also in the pipeline is the luxury resort Mandarin Oriental on the previously uninhabited island of Dellis Cay, where homesites start at around $2 million and celebrities like Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are already on board.

Then there's Nikki Beach Resort, the controversial 171-hectare (423-acre) mega resort/hotel/condo/marina/shopping complex (with "opium beds" surrounding an infinity pool) at the site of the old Leeward marina. The controversy? It seems that the developers, with the government's blessing, are dredging not only a "mega-yacht" marina and man-made canals to flow between million-dollar homesites but huge parcels of sand from the Leeward seabed to build a man-made island (a la Dubai's Palm Island), known as Star Island.

(Uh, let me see if I understand this correctly: With all the lovely little cays dotting the waters, they're building a fake pile of sand in national parkland waters and calling it an island?)

So far, the boom has been largely concentrated on the main island, Providenciales ("Provo" for short). While many of the outlying islands retain the feel of an idyllic outpost that time has forgotten, Provo is the fastest-growing spot in the Caribbean.

Still, Provo isn't the only Turks & Caicos (pronounced Kayk-us) island romancing the tourist dollar. Sleepy Grand Turk has gotten something of a wake-up call, with the opening of a spiffy new cruise terminal in 2006. Grand Turk finished its inaugural season as a Caribbean cruise destination with 136 cruise-ship calls and 295,000 passengers. North Caicos is getting a new airport terminal and a golf course. Even lovely little Salt Cay is dipping its toes in the big time, with a 125-room luxury hotel and 18-hole championship golf course in the works. And amid the little fishing villages of South Caicos, the island of Ambergris Cay is being transformed into the Turks & Caicos Sporting Club by the renowned Greenbrier Resort.

Why is little TCI ripe for all this activity? For one, the country's beaches, water, and coral reef system remain astonishingly unspoiled. The seas have an intense blue-green hue that puts Technicolor to shame. The climate -- best described as an "eternal summer" -- is ideal year-round. Gentle breezes blowing in from the east provide relief from the relentless sun. For North Americans, the TCI has other pluses: English is the official language, the U.S. dollar is the local currency, and the islands are incredibly accessible by plane. Nonstop flights out of places like New York City (3 hr.), Boston (3 1/2 hr.), Charlotte (2 hr.), and Miami (1 1/2 hr.) mean you can jump on a plane in the morning and be lazing about on a tropical beach by early afternoon.

The islands also enjoy zero unemployment -- although much of its work force is now drawn from off-island, from places like Haiti, Jamaica, and even the Philippines (the native TCI population is relatively small and the growth in recent years has been fast and furious). Even more important, it has one of the lowest crime rates in the Caribbean; you simply do not see the kind of impoverishment and homelessness that continue to plague other Caribbean countries. The TCI government is stable (the TCI is a British protectorate with a representative democracy and a constitution), and the island citizens -- "the Belongers" -- enjoy one of the best primary and secondary educational systems in the region. The Belongers share such a warm familiarity that it's easy to see why many have embraced the possibility that all are connected by blood, descended from the 193 African slaves freed on these isolated islands when the slave ship Trouvadore, carrying them to lives of bondage in the Americas, wrecked on the East Caicos reef in 1841. Research is underway by a Turks & Caicos National Museum expedition team to discern whether a shipwreck found off East Caicos in 2004 is the Trouvadore -- and if so, whether its inhabitants were indeed the progenitors of the modern-day Belongers. For the latest information, go to www.slaveshiptrouvadore.com.

For those who knew and loved the TCI in slower times and who may be concerned that the islands are in danger of being overdeveloped (or even ruinously developed), it's comforting to know that of the 40 islands that comprise the TCI, only 10 are inhabited. Even the most populous beach, Provo's Grace Bay, has long, dreamy stretches where you're the only soul on the soft sand. And except for a couple of scary concrete behemoths rising up out of the beach on Grace Bay (the oceanfront height limits quietly jumped from five stories to seven -- which, I'm told, is as high as they'll get), the focus has been on sustainable development and low-impact, high-end properties -- boutique resorts with ecologically sensitive bones. Let's hope this vision holds through the fizzy boom times. In the meantime, TCI offers a fresh and exciting experience for travelers in search of a pristine (and accessible) island paradise.

Take Home a Potcake . . . or Two

The homeless dogs you see roaming the streets of many Caribbean countries generally stay that way: homeless and constantly foraging for food and shelter. The Turks & Caicos Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (TCSPCA) was founded in 2000 to better address the plight of these homeless dogs, here called "potcakes" -- the name comes from the food once fed to stray dogs, the caked remains of the bottom of cooking pots. And they've succeeded to a large degree on Provo: You rarely see collarless potcakes running lickety-split along the beach (the health department has been cracking down as well). Many people who've adopted potcakes find that they're smart, unflappable, incredibly adaptable, and very loving dogs. Potcakes look like the ultimate mutts, with floppy ears and tan or black markings, and many a visitor has fallen in love during a stay in the TCI. Along with lobbying the government to adopt animal protection laws and create an animal control unit, the TCSPCA has been able to find homes for many of these dogs all over the world. The TCSPCA has been instrumental in promoting "off-island adoptions," making it easy for visitors to actually carry home a potcake puppy (the TCI has no pet quarantine periods coming in or going out of the country). Every puppy comes with shots and medical certificates and can be carried in the passenger cabins of most airplanes. For more information, contact the TCSPCA (tel. 649/941-8846; http://tcspca.tc) or the island charity set up to improve the lives of TCI potcakes, the Potcake Foundation (www.potcakefoundation.com).