usvi-on-line
Anybody ever been to Norrth Caicos?
Anybody ever been to Norrth Caicos?
Hubs and I are looking for something different for our 2011 vacation. We went to Provo 4 years ago and at that time there was a building boom going on. Provo is too crowded for us. I found a great villa on North Caicos,just wondering if anyone has been recently and if so what your impression was. Thanks!
I have not visited North Caicos but know someone who was there on her honeymoon. (we visited Provo 2x) They loved it because there was nothing to do, really, really nothing to do. She mentioned one restaurant that was a bar/restaurant in spirit only. They ate some meals at someone's home, a woman who would cook for anyone that wandered by.
This blog has great info about Caicos off the beaten track - http://2gringos.blogspot.com/
Edit - maybe they went to Middle. Either way, they enjoyed it.
This blog has great info about Caicos off the beaten track - http://2gringos.blogspot.com/
Edit - maybe they went to Middle. Either way, they enjoyed it.
... haven't been there and am not sure this is the area you are looking for, but this is a beautiful trip report
http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/f ... rks+caicos
http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/f ... rks+caicos
... no longer a stranger to paradise
Iprof thanks for the link but North Caicos is a separate island from Provo- which is where iowaguy was. Remote...I am pretty sure that it's what we are looking for. St John this year seemed too crowded for us. I actually sat to a guy at Hawksnest that was yaking on his cell phone. I would have moved (I was there first) but it was so crowded that as a group of 7 we there really wasn't room. Maho was a zoo everyday- just seemed like alot of folks have "caught on" to St John ( good for STJ bad for us!) I am really going for quiet and remote. I would rent a island if I could afford it 
We like to eat out but we could do a bar or something every night doesn't have to be fine dining. I think we could make our own fun. Maybe we will spend 1 week in North Caicos and the last 3 days in Provo to get back to civilzation for a few days!
We like to eat out but we could do a bar or something every night doesn't have to be fine dining. I think we could make our own fun. Maybe we will spend 1 week in North Caicos and the last 3 days in Provo to get back to civilzation for a few days!I actually meant to write up the experience of our trip to North Caicos to put in my journal, and never did, so I’m glad for the opportunity now. It’s probably way too long of an answer for your question, but hopefully it will give you an idea of what North and Middle Caicos are like.
On our flight to Providenciales, the in-flight magazine contained a story about a restaurant called the Silver Palm in North Caicos. The restaurant, supposedly very good, was housed in a pretty pink-and-white shuttered building with lots of lattice work and turquoise steps. It looked breezy and Bahamian and very welcoming. The way the photograph was composed, it looked like the building was one of many on a street.
We are always up for exploring other islands, so we decided to do a day trip to North Caicos. The ferry was a narrow, small boat that left early in the morning. It was important that you reserved a ticket for the ride home as the boat could only carry so many people (maybe 20).
The woman selling the ticket said, ‘You have a trip arranged over there?’
It seemed everyone who leaves there goes on pre-arranged all-day snorkel or cave-hiking trips.
I said, ‘Oh, we just want to do our own thing, we’re going to rent a car.’
‘Well, did you arrange that?’
‘No.’
‘Um…’ She was dubious. ‘It’s not that kind of a place. When you get off the ferry, there’s nothing there.’
I said, ‘Oh, well, we’ll go into town and get a car.’
‘Um, there’s not really a town. There’s no way to get to where you can rent a car. You sure you want these tickets?’
I said we did.
She rolled her eyes, but I will admit I looked around with some measure of scorn at the other travelers who were being dropped off at the ferry dock by day-trip facilitators from the big, high-rise resorts.
The boat was so small, and so fast, that it was impossible to make conversation with anyone on it. As it approached North Caicos, we saw that there was indeed nothing there but a big, concrete, dock with two dozen empty boat slips. We disembarked and looked around. The five or six couples who had been on the boat with us were all being picked up by guides. There was a road leading out of the dock, but it obviously led nowhere walkable and everything was dry and scrubby; the day was already hot.
It was only ten o’clock; our return ticket wasn’t until four pm. We went over to one of the guides and explained our situation. He looked surprised that we’d come with no plans, but at the same time, he didn’t make a big deal of it. He just said, ‘Go see Susie,’ and pointed to a lady near a car.
Susie was a big, friendly lady who gestured to her car and said, ‘Well, you can rent this, but you’ll have to drive me back home first.’ Turns out she owned a small hotel and had a few vehicles to rent. We drove with her for a good ten or fifteen minutes down a road that passed absolutely nothing except trees, and finally arrived at a very old, tiny motel. It was obvious there were no guests. It looked like it had been built in the very early 60’s. Pelican-something hotel, was the name.
We paid cash for the car, promised to fill it with gas at the island’s only gas station and leave it back at the dock when we left. Susie gave us a map. She told us that the British government had put a lot of money into building roads and bridges with the expectation that the building boom was going to come to North and Middle Caicos. But then the economy went belly-up and Hurricane Ike did tons of damage and now there was a big long road but that road didn’t really go anywhere. Off we went.
Once on the big long road----brand-spanking-new, dark black with a white stripe down the middle-------we saw a tiny storefront that we almost stopped at, for water. But we figured it wasn’t too long until lunch time, and the map indicated that there was a place called the Conch Bar in the middle of the island. Conch Bar sounded great! I pictured a little beach village, kind of like a remote place on St. Kitts that I knew about, just a tiny place with great food and drink. (The Caicos archipelago is the conch capital of the world so we were looking forward to some excellent conch fritters.)
We drove for a good half hour without seeing a soul or more than one or two cars. We did see some houses and a small air-landing strip, but mainly the road followed a very quiet landscape.
I was getting hungry. I hadn’t had any breakfast, and I was really looking forward to stopping at the Conch Bar.
I have to laugh now, thinking about how I kept anticipating, around every corner, that I would see a little cluster of civilization, a beachy oasis, a sign: Conch Bar. But as we drove, and passed more trees, more water, more flat landscape, I looked at the map, realized we had passed “Conch Bar,” and realized, with alarm and dismay, that Conch Bar was simply the name of a section of land.
And then, suddenly, we were truly in the middle of nowhere. We came to a long causeway that Susie had spoken of—---expensive, newly-built, connecting North Caicos to Middle Caicos. The hurricane had blown much of it away but it was still passable.
We stopped and got out here. You felt like you could see forever. The view was vast and glorious.
We drove on into Middle Caicos, which was even more desolate than North Caicos. Vast and desolate.
At one point we stopped when we saw a sign that read, ‘lots for sale.’ Roads for a subdivision were all laid, with street signs.
We drove a total of thirty miles and saw nothing, not a house, not a person, not another car. Nothing. We were on a brand-new road to nowhere. We began to get a tiny bit worried—we had no water. We drove to the very end of the island. There were some very old, small cottages here, but again, no people. Not a one. Did anyone live in the cottages? Maybe, but it didn’t appear so. One tiny building had a sign on it: DENTIST.
The road ended at the water. There's South Caicos in my picture. Don't think they will be getting a causeway anytime soon.
We turned around to head back the 30 miles, anxious for some water, and hungry. At this point, we just wanted anything==crackers, whatever. Back over the bridge to North Caicos, we turned right off the main road onto another road that led to a tiny settlement. There were a few houses, a mad barking dog, and a small, square building with a hand-written sign that read OPEN. A little oasis. Inside this mostly empty, square, cinderblock building was a makeshift counter, four stools and a big cooler full of ice cold water and beer.
We got talking to the man who owned the spot who honestly expressed horror that we were staying in Providenciales. That was a terrible place, he said. They kill you there, they rob you!
(We felt as safe as anywhere while in Providenciales. )
We left him and began to examine the map more closely. It was about 1:30 and though we don’t usually freak out about food, we had gotten up early, hadn’t eaten breakfast, and really wanted some lunch. It had seemed like a nice part of a day trip. There had to be a place !
Closer to Susie’s hotel, we forked off her road toward the short road that led to the north coast. Like a beacon, we suddenly saw a billboard. It had a photograph on it of a four or five story brand-new-looking resort. It even had a website address.
We drove down the road, and turned into the parking lot. It was completely empty. It was adjacent to a lavish-looking pool area, but when we looked that way we saw not a soul.
‘Maybe this isn’t the main entrance,’ my husband said, just as a truck turned down a side road seemed to lead to the other side of the hotel. We were at the wrong entrance, we rationalized, and followed the path of the truck. But that led to a dead-end, a fence, and we turned around, went back to the parking lot, turned around, turned around again, and then rationalized yet again: “Maybe everyone takes the ferry to get here. They get picked up at the dock and no one rents a car.”
We parked, got out of the car, and walked over to the pool. Somebody had put a lot of money into this pool—it had a triple-basin kind of thing happening, with bridges and a swim-up bar. But the swim-up bar was shuttered, and the pool’s water level was down a good foot. We were remarking on that when we noticed, off to the right, another person--- a pool boy—and at first we were thinking, oh look, a person, it's open. But there was something 'off' about him. He was grinning at us as he swept the pool with a big long broom, back and forth, back and forth.
We asked, "Is the hotel open?'
'Oh yes,' he said.
Inside, there was nobody at the front desk. Nobody in the halls. We called out hello a few times, but it was starting to feel way too Steven King. Back outside, we asked the pool boy, “Is there anybody staying here????” He didn’t make a lot of sense when he talked, but we finally made out that there might have been one couple staying at the hotel; they might have been down on the beach.
Back in the car, we remembered: the restaurant in the in-flight magazine. That had to exist. That pretty little street with the Bahamian buildings. We studied the map, found "Whitby," drove there.
It WAS a pretty little building, but it was all by itself, and it wasn’t on a street. It sat by itself near an old condominium complex, near a beach. There were no cars in the parking lot; it didn’t look open.
At that point, I was resigned to the fact that we weren't going to eat until we were back on the Providenciales, but we walked up the turquoise steps and opened the door anyway, hopeful.
Surprise! The owner was there! The chef was there! It was about 2:30, the lull in between lunchtime and dinner but they would cook for us. It was a clean, pretty place and the owner mixed rum punches and explained all about local conch and how it must be cooked properly.
She was from Canada. Her dad had built the next-door condo complex in the 70s. He had sold it some years back, built the restaurant for her, and then, had died a few years earlier. She obviously missed him. She was obviously very close to her cook, who seemed like a nice man. She spent part of the year in Canada. She said that hers was essentially the only restaurant on the island, and that at night she got very busy. The other hotel had suffered damage from the hurricane, she said, but also, had just opened before the hurricane hit, so had never had much business. There wasn’t much business around there anyway. Most people who visited rented houses and just wanted to be completely ALONE. (So I’m thinking you must provision… for sure.)
She left us to help the chef in the kitchen. My husband picked up a local magazine, and I went for a short walk. I walked down a path, near the condos, to the beach. I did not realize the path I had taken was private. As I turned to walk back, a mean-faced, gnome-like woman marched down the path to block my way. One eye glared at me while the other roved madly. “THIS IS PRIVATE!” she barked, the mean eye fixed on me and ready for a fight. It was horrible, and it was just so weird, to be in the middle of nowhere and have someone behave like that. !!!
She is my singular defining memory of North Caicos.
Back at the Silver Palm, we had a platter of the best conch fritters we've ever eaten. The best. I had a warm lobster sandwich that was served on homemade bread that had a texture, almost angelfood-cake-like, that was distinctive and wonderful and which was made more delicious by the knowledge that I most likely would never have it again.
Before we returned to the ferry dock, we drove to the other side of North Caicos where there was a little bit of a town. Sort of. We saw some children playing. There was a bit more civilization there, but this is all a year ago now so I don’t remember too many details.
When we returned to Providenciales, I looked up the website of that hotel with the half empty pool. It was a normal website, ready to let me book a room, with the promise of a welcome drink upon check-in, that very day if I liked.
On our flight to Providenciales, the in-flight magazine contained a story about a restaurant called the Silver Palm in North Caicos. The restaurant, supposedly very good, was housed in a pretty pink-and-white shuttered building with lots of lattice work and turquoise steps. It looked breezy and Bahamian and very welcoming. The way the photograph was composed, it looked like the building was one of many on a street.
We are always up for exploring other islands, so we decided to do a day trip to North Caicos. The ferry was a narrow, small boat that left early in the morning. It was important that you reserved a ticket for the ride home as the boat could only carry so many people (maybe 20).
The woman selling the ticket said, ‘You have a trip arranged over there?’
It seemed everyone who leaves there goes on pre-arranged all-day snorkel or cave-hiking trips.
I said, ‘Oh, we just want to do our own thing, we’re going to rent a car.’
‘Well, did you arrange that?’
‘No.’
‘Um…’ She was dubious. ‘It’s not that kind of a place. When you get off the ferry, there’s nothing there.’
I said, ‘Oh, well, we’ll go into town and get a car.’
‘Um, there’s not really a town. There’s no way to get to where you can rent a car. You sure you want these tickets?’
I said we did.
She rolled her eyes, but I will admit I looked around with some measure of scorn at the other travelers who were being dropped off at the ferry dock by day-trip facilitators from the big, high-rise resorts.
The boat was so small, and so fast, that it was impossible to make conversation with anyone on it. As it approached North Caicos, we saw that there was indeed nothing there but a big, concrete, dock with two dozen empty boat slips. We disembarked and looked around. The five or six couples who had been on the boat with us were all being picked up by guides. There was a road leading out of the dock, but it obviously led nowhere walkable and everything was dry and scrubby; the day was already hot.
It was only ten o’clock; our return ticket wasn’t until four pm. We went over to one of the guides and explained our situation. He looked surprised that we’d come with no plans, but at the same time, he didn’t make a big deal of it. He just said, ‘Go see Susie,’ and pointed to a lady near a car.
Susie was a big, friendly lady who gestured to her car and said, ‘Well, you can rent this, but you’ll have to drive me back home first.’ Turns out she owned a small hotel and had a few vehicles to rent. We drove with her for a good ten or fifteen minutes down a road that passed absolutely nothing except trees, and finally arrived at a very old, tiny motel. It was obvious there were no guests. It looked like it had been built in the very early 60’s. Pelican-something hotel, was the name.
We paid cash for the car, promised to fill it with gas at the island’s only gas station and leave it back at the dock when we left. Susie gave us a map. She told us that the British government had put a lot of money into building roads and bridges with the expectation that the building boom was going to come to North and Middle Caicos. But then the economy went belly-up and Hurricane Ike did tons of damage and now there was a big long road but that road didn’t really go anywhere. Off we went.
Once on the big long road----brand-spanking-new, dark black with a white stripe down the middle-------we saw a tiny storefront that we almost stopped at, for water. But we figured it wasn’t too long until lunch time, and the map indicated that there was a place called the Conch Bar in the middle of the island. Conch Bar sounded great! I pictured a little beach village, kind of like a remote place on St. Kitts that I knew about, just a tiny place with great food and drink. (The Caicos archipelago is the conch capital of the world so we were looking forward to some excellent conch fritters.)
We drove for a good half hour without seeing a soul or more than one or two cars. We did see some houses and a small air-landing strip, but mainly the road followed a very quiet landscape.
I was getting hungry. I hadn’t had any breakfast, and I was really looking forward to stopping at the Conch Bar.
I have to laugh now, thinking about how I kept anticipating, around every corner, that I would see a little cluster of civilization, a beachy oasis, a sign: Conch Bar. But as we drove, and passed more trees, more water, more flat landscape, I looked at the map, realized we had passed “Conch Bar,” and realized, with alarm and dismay, that Conch Bar was simply the name of a section of land.
And then, suddenly, we were truly in the middle of nowhere. We came to a long causeway that Susie had spoken of—---expensive, newly-built, connecting North Caicos to Middle Caicos. The hurricane had blown much of it away but it was still passable.
We stopped and got out here. You felt like you could see forever. The view was vast and glorious.
We drove on into Middle Caicos, which was even more desolate than North Caicos. Vast and desolate.
At one point we stopped when we saw a sign that read, ‘lots for sale.’ Roads for a subdivision were all laid, with street signs.
We drove a total of thirty miles and saw nothing, not a house, not a person, not another car. Nothing. We were on a brand-new road to nowhere. We began to get a tiny bit worried—we had no water. We drove to the very end of the island. There were some very old, small cottages here, but again, no people. Not a one. Did anyone live in the cottages? Maybe, but it didn’t appear so. One tiny building had a sign on it: DENTIST.
The road ended at the water. There's South Caicos in my picture. Don't think they will be getting a causeway anytime soon.
We turned around to head back the 30 miles, anxious for some water, and hungry. At this point, we just wanted anything==crackers, whatever. Back over the bridge to North Caicos, we turned right off the main road onto another road that led to a tiny settlement. There were a few houses, a mad barking dog, and a small, square building with a hand-written sign that read OPEN. A little oasis. Inside this mostly empty, square, cinderblock building was a makeshift counter, four stools and a big cooler full of ice cold water and beer.
We got talking to the man who owned the spot who honestly expressed horror that we were staying in Providenciales. That was a terrible place, he said. They kill you there, they rob you!
(We felt as safe as anywhere while in Providenciales. )
We left him and began to examine the map more closely. It was about 1:30 and though we don’t usually freak out about food, we had gotten up early, hadn’t eaten breakfast, and really wanted some lunch. It had seemed like a nice part of a day trip. There had to be a place !
Closer to Susie’s hotel, we forked off her road toward the short road that led to the north coast. Like a beacon, we suddenly saw a billboard. It had a photograph on it of a four or five story brand-new-looking resort. It even had a website address.
We drove down the road, and turned into the parking lot. It was completely empty. It was adjacent to a lavish-looking pool area, but when we looked that way we saw not a soul.
‘Maybe this isn’t the main entrance,’ my husband said, just as a truck turned down a side road seemed to lead to the other side of the hotel. We were at the wrong entrance, we rationalized, and followed the path of the truck. But that led to a dead-end, a fence, and we turned around, went back to the parking lot, turned around, turned around again, and then rationalized yet again: “Maybe everyone takes the ferry to get here. They get picked up at the dock and no one rents a car.”
We parked, got out of the car, and walked over to the pool. Somebody had put a lot of money into this pool—it had a triple-basin kind of thing happening, with bridges and a swim-up bar. But the swim-up bar was shuttered, and the pool’s water level was down a good foot. We were remarking on that when we noticed, off to the right, another person--- a pool boy—and at first we were thinking, oh look, a person, it's open. But there was something 'off' about him. He was grinning at us as he swept the pool with a big long broom, back and forth, back and forth.
We asked, "Is the hotel open?'
'Oh yes,' he said.
Inside, there was nobody at the front desk. Nobody in the halls. We called out hello a few times, but it was starting to feel way too Steven King. Back outside, we asked the pool boy, “Is there anybody staying here????” He didn’t make a lot of sense when he talked, but we finally made out that there might have been one couple staying at the hotel; they might have been down on the beach.
Back in the car, we remembered: the restaurant in the in-flight magazine. That had to exist. That pretty little street with the Bahamian buildings. We studied the map, found "Whitby," drove there.
It WAS a pretty little building, but it was all by itself, and it wasn’t on a street. It sat by itself near an old condominium complex, near a beach. There were no cars in the parking lot; it didn’t look open.
At that point, I was resigned to the fact that we weren't going to eat until we were back on the Providenciales, but we walked up the turquoise steps and opened the door anyway, hopeful.
Surprise! The owner was there! The chef was there! It was about 2:30, the lull in between lunchtime and dinner but they would cook for us. It was a clean, pretty place and the owner mixed rum punches and explained all about local conch and how it must be cooked properly.
She was from Canada. Her dad had built the next-door condo complex in the 70s. He had sold it some years back, built the restaurant for her, and then, had died a few years earlier. She obviously missed him. She was obviously very close to her cook, who seemed like a nice man. She spent part of the year in Canada. She said that hers was essentially the only restaurant on the island, and that at night she got very busy. The other hotel had suffered damage from the hurricane, she said, but also, had just opened before the hurricane hit, so had never had much business. There wasn’t much business around there anyway. Most people who visited rented houses and just wanted to be completely ALONE. (So I’m thinking you must provision… for sure.)
She left us to help the chef in the kitchen. My husband picked up a local magazine, and I went for a short walk. I walked down a path, near the condos, to the beach. I did not realize the path I had taken was private. As I turned to walk back, a mean-faced, gnome-like woman marched down the path to block my way. One eye glared at me while the other roved madly. “THIS IS PRIVATE!” she barked, the mean eye fixed on me and ready for a fight. It was horrible, and it was just so weird, to be in the middle of nowhere and have someone behave like that. !!!
She is my singular defining memory of North Caicos.
Back at the Silver Palm, we had a platter of the best conch fritters we've ever eaten. The best. I had a warm lobster sandwich that was served on homemade bread that had a texture, almost angelfood-cake-like, that was distinctive and wonderful and which was made more delicious by the knowledge that I most likely would never have it again.
Before we returned to the ferry dock, we drove to the other side of North Caicos where there was a little bit of a town. Sort of. We saw some children playing. There was a bit more civilization there, but this is all a year ago now so I don’t remember too many details.
When we returned to Providenciales, I looked up the website of that hotel with the half empty pool. It was a normal website, ready to let me book a room, with the promise of a welcome drink upon check-in, that very day if I liked.
Wow Maryanne that's quite a story! I guess I'm weird but I would rather have desolate than crowded. We have to vacation during high season since I work in a seasonal business where it's impossible to go from April til November. Plus we love to ditch Chicago in Jan/Feb. I think North Caicos is a place you need to plan for. We would rent a car and like I said before I just want QUIET!!! I want miles of deserted beaches just me, my hubs,daughter and our friends. I have decided to try it for 1 week and then head back to Provo for the last 3 days. The villa I rented is lovely and maybe we won't go back(if we encounter what you did) I might be sorry but I'm going to try and not over think it too much. As JB would say "There's booze in the blender and soon it will render that frozen concoction that helps me hang on"!
The couple we know that went to North Caicos also go to Alaska, get dropped off in the middle of no where, totally off the grid, for two weeks to hunt. No wonder they liked North Caicos.
She did mention the ferry ride nearly shot her nerves.
On our first trip to Provo in 2003 or 2004, I remember seeing real estate ads for the outer islands. Oceanfront lots were $100,000 or so, which seemed like a bargain. Sounds like they are still waiting/hoping for the boom.
Pine Cay is on our wish list for a future trip.
She did mention the ferry ride nearly shot her nerves.
On our first trip to Provo in 2003 or 2004, I remember seeing real estate ads for the outer islands. Oceanfront lots were $100,000 or so, which seemed like a bargain. Sounds like they are still waiting/hoping for the boom.
Pine Cay is on our wish list for a future trip.
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bubblybrenda
- Posts: 549
- Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:57 pm
- Location: Vancouver, BC
Seriously! The cost of beer took our breath away during our first trip to Provo. I know we paid $48-$50 for a case of Miller Lite, more for the better stuff.iowaguy wrote:I enjoyed reading the weekly drink specials from the Silver Palm in North Caicos:
Tues Mojitos $8.50
Wed Beer - 2-4 $8.00
Fri Martini Night $9.99
Makes the Woody's happy hour look pretty good.