Westward bound

We finally got to West Caicos on Saturday. This involved taking an early morning boat (6.30!) on a beautifully flat calm sea. The journey took about 45 mins and Osh thought this was great fun – possibly his first trip on a speedboat. Four boats went altogether – full of labourers for the hotel building site over there. The only interlopers were me and Osh (women and small children are a rare sight over there at the moment). We had breakfast when we first arrived and then Nicky set to work and Osh and I went to play. We had lots of fun in the ‘swimming pool’. Not a swimming pool as such, more of a pool in which we could swim, if you see what I mean. Nicky’s job over there is to make electricity and water. He makes the water by sucking up cold sea water from out of the harbour and sending this through an RO machine (reverse osmosis). This takes the salt out of the water giving us fresh water which is good enough to drink. More importantly, good enough to make concrete with which is it’s main use at the moment. Anyway, a by product of the process is, of course, salt. And this is spewed out of the machine, down a pipe under the road and out into a depression which has, of course, filled with the water which is more salty than the sea, but not unbearably so. This pool of waste water was about thigh deep on me and vast. We had lots of fun playing in it (it was, in fact, a long, hot and dusty walk to the beach which is steeply shelving) and got very salty!

By mid-morning the heat and dust are up and the glare off the sand is blinding so we retreated to the shade of the two containers that Nicky houses the equipment in. Then the fun started! Being one vast building site (in fact, West Caicos is a National Park and the government have recently given permission for Ritz Carlton to build a luxury hotel there – the hotel site makes up a tiny part of the island itself) the island is stuffed full of boy’s toys: diggers, bulldozers, forklift trucks, tankers, concrete pourers (huge telescopic cranes that pump the concrete into awkward spots). Nicky drove us down to one of the sites where we watched him fix a generator (the source of electricity). Actually, we did more messing around in the bush than watching Nicky! The bush is no more than about 6’ high in most places – just the right height for small boy to run around in and just the right height to force me to crawl along through the prickles and spiky bits!

After a spot of lunch we came back on the speedboat very hot, tired, dusty and (me) a little sun burned! Thank heavens for aloe which is growing outside the front door which provides some instant relief.

Sunday we went out to lunch down by the beach – at a hotel that Nicky had to deliver some plants to so Osh helped load up the plants and unload at the other end. After lunch Daniel and I (with a little help and plenty of distraction from Osh) played giant chess, Daniel beat me….but only just! That afternoon we went to plant some plants at the home of the lovely Emily down on the beach. It was late afternoon by this time – a lovely time of day when the intensity has gone out of the sun and the light is fabulous. Osh helped with the watering and then climbed the tree with Daniel.

Above you can see photos of Daniel and Osh up the tree (sorry it's a bit dark!), Osh watering trees, Osh having breakfast on West Caicos and an example of the sort of ground Nicky has to plant in…..huge swathes of limestone rock on West Caicos…pretty unforgiving stuff if you fall on it!