Adventures with the Bennett family

Osh had only been back at school 2 days when his grandparents came to visit. Their first time here and their first time any where quite so foreign or tropical. We took them to Grand Turk for their first weekend, and then to North and Middle Caicos last Sunday. Grand Turk involved a 30 mins flight in a small plane, but for North and Middle we took the boat (45 mins) and then drove the new causeway between North and Middle.

Grand Turk is the capital and has a wealth of historic buildings, an excellent museum and other things to explore, population about 6,000. North and Middle Caicos are a whole other kettle of fish: North has a population of a couple of 1,000 whilst Middle has a population of about 600. Both are very unspoilt, isolated and seemingly lacking in any sort of employment, although clearly there are means of making a living to support the population. A new road has been tarmaced across both islands and the causeway built (until about a year ago the only means of getting between the two was on a boat) which kinda suggests that there are plans afoot for all that unspoilt real estate...watch this space.

Here are the Bennetts on the verandah of the museum (osh as the official photographer!)

And Nicky and Mum at the lighthouse on Grand Turk where we were greeted by a lovely Tanzanian woman who is employed as a caretaker there! And Osh on his big brother's crutches on North (Daniel did something unspeakable to his ankle about 2 weeks ago).

Here are the Bennetts and Turners in one of the caves on Middle Caicos. There are many caves on the island and this one has provided evidence of Lucayan occupation some 600+ years ago (30 years after Colombus arrived in the Turks he'd managed to wipe out the small, vulnerable Lucayan indians).

To cap Sunday's adventure off, we went out for dinner at the Tiki Hut on Provo and then I managed to just about write off the Prado on the way home....someone going considerably faster than I'd estimated appeared out of nowhere on the roundabout tearing the front off the Prado (Toyota Landcruiser) and bending the chassis and rendering his mustang undrivable. The Prado is now with Claudel who is the local Haitian miracle worker, so we've had the joy of driving to the beach in the poop trucks all week! It was my second car accident in a week, so I'm feeling pretty nervous about stepping out onto the highways where no one has indicators, rear view mirrors, no idea of what to do at a roundabout, no concept of speed limits and, with no means of testing, a de facto carte blanche on driving whilst under the influence.