Sunday brought our first real day of adventure. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't planning on writing about this trip. Not only does it feel a bit indulgent to be traveling during such a difficult year, but I also didn’t think I’d have anything interesting to write about. There are only so many ways to say, “We had a lovely afternoon on a beautiful beach.” But three events made me realize that there may be a few interesting stories to come out of this trip. The first was the scramble after our cancelled flight, the second was swimming with directly on top of a six foot shark, and the third was today.
Our plan was to spend the night on Middle Caicos, two islands over from Providénciales (our home base). To get there we had to take a ferry to North Caicos, rent a car, drive about an hour, and pass over a small causeway connecting it to the smaller Middle Caicos. Not much of a production. And really, it wasn’t. Dean booked the hotel a couple of days earlier, I booked the ferry last night, and we had read that it wasn’t hard to just walk off the ferry and rent a car at the dock.
The ferry ride itself was easy and fun. It was comprised of about two thirds tourists exploring another island, and one third locals commuting to work. The entire ride took about 20 minutes.
As expected, it took maybe five minutes to rent a car. We were hoping for a Jeep, since most of the roads on the outlying islands are pretty rough, but those had all been reserved ahead of time. So we got a small Japanese import similar to what we were driving on Providénciales.
The closest thing we had to an agenda or destination was a hike on the far side of Middle Caicos that was supposed to be very pretty. We decided to head out there first, Since the rest of our schedule was nothing more than putting our feet up at the beach. But since everything on both North and Middle Caicos is on the single main road that runs across each, we were going to drive right past our hotel first. We thought it might be nice to drop our luggage off before we explored the islands. Crimes against tourists seem to be exceptionally rare in Turks and Caicos, but it seemed prudent to not leave all of our belongings in an unattended car during a remote hike.
We drove for about thirty minutes, past palm-tree lined shanties and the occasional mini-mansion almost certainly owned by Canadian expats. We saw three restaurants (all closed), and at least twice as many churches (all open). It was a quiet Sunday morning, and sleepy was an understatement. The only cars we saw on the road (literally, the road) were the Jeeps we saw for rent at the dock. We nearly drove right past our hotel until we saw a faded sign through some overgrown foliage. We drove up a cobblestone driveway with a long-since abandoned guard tower. The unfathomably-beautiful natural surroundings created quite the juxtaposition with the built environment straight out of a murder-in-paradise Hallmark movie.
The hotel itself consisted of a couple of cottages scattered on a lush green cliff overlooking a secluded beach. It either was previously a plantation estate, or that was a strong inspiration for the architect. There was a big house in the middle, and a handful of smaller quarters surrounding it. Since each of the smaller cottages only slept two, we had reserved the big house. It wasn't too hard to identify which one was ours because 1) it was big, and 2) there was an older white man sitting outside of it, the only sign of life in a complex that otherwise seemed abandoned. In fact, we couldn’t even find an office to check in at. Nobody had said it out loud (at that point), but I knew I wasn't the only one having second thoughts.
Running out of alternatives, we slowly walked up to the man in front of the big house. He had been watching us ever since we pulled in. We meekly introduced ourselves ("hello, we aren't carrying much cash and we taste terrible") and asked if he knew where the office was. He chuckled and said, “Yep, there’s no sign,” pointed to what could generously be described as a shed and said, “But there won’t be anyone there until two.”
A housekeeper emerging from one of the smaller cottages snapped us out of our confused paralysis. She came running over to us and held up a phone. She pleasantly explained to us that the manager is typically only on site for the afternoons, and then dialed her up for us. Over speakerphone, she told us that check in was at three. We thanked her, and didn’t even bother to ask if we could leave our bags. The housekeeper went back to her work, and we made our way to the car. But before we could get in, we saw the man from earlier quietly walking towards us. It was immediately obvious that no good was going to come of it. “Hey, so, I don’t want to be a wet blanket on your trip, but they have a serious bug problem here. They call them water bugs, but I don’t know if they’re cockroaches or whatever.”
Ok. We can work with that. At least we still have all of our kidneys.
He explained to us that he was here with his grandchildren (collective exhale, almost certainly not a serial killer), and they didn’t have any other boarding options with such a large group. But he strongly suggested that we look elsewhere, or even just head back to Providénciales. He said that hotel staff had sprayed for insects that morning. But since the "water bugs" only come out at night, there wasn’t any way to know if it had worked.
Shocked, and again paralyzed by our confusion, we didn’t really know what to do next. We had plunked down quite a bit of money on this hotel room (like, embarrassing amount of money), but recouping our investment wasn't worth being trapped on Nightmare Island. There weren’t really any other hotels to speak of out there, and once the last ferry left at 4:30 that afternoon, there was no way of getting out. We decided that we'd figure out want to do over lunch, and asked the man if there were any places to eat around here. He said, “There’s a place down the road called Seaview Cafe. No much of a sea view, but the food is pretty good.” This guy was turning out to be a walking backhanded Yelp review. We thanked him for the info, and got back in our car.
None of us knew what to do next, but everyone stayed level headed about the predicament we had found ourselves in. We decided that we could see what the house looked like when we checked in, and if it was a dump, we would make a beeline back to the dock and catch the last ferry back to Providénciales. But it was just 10 am at that point, so we had plenty of time to kill. We figured we would check out Seaview Cafe and figure it out from there.
And with that, I think I'll cap of this post. I know that's not fair. Sorry, not sorry. I could move the story along with another couple of paragraphs, but that's not what happened to us. We didn't get to just keep reading, knowing we had survived by the simple fact of this post existing. We had to sit wordlessly in a parked car watching some literal and figurative storm clouds roll in, and then drive aimlessly around an actual desert island for two hours trying to figure out what to do. And without any telecommunication service, we had no choice but to presume that water bugs were the size of golf balls, carried mysterious tropical diseases, and swarmed by the hundreds.
Who wants some lunch?
