Well here we are, once again docked in Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos. But this time, we were not alone…… the Emerald Princess was docked right across the narrow pier from us. This ship was built in 2006 and has the capacity to house 3084 passengers with 1200 crew members. Her gross tonnage is 113,561, and appears a bit larger than the Nieuw Statendam. We assume she is sailing with far fewer guests, like we are.
Before our Club Orange breakfast, we found a note on our door, once again promising the missing ship tiles to be delivered to our home in the near future. We do have a growing collection of these tiles from many other HAL ships, but we do not have these from the N. Statendam.
There are about 5000 people that live on this small island of 7 miles long by 1 mile wide, and much of it is covered with salt flats or salinas as they are called here. The Grand Turk Cruise Center where we docked was built in 2006, reportedly attracting 300,000 visitors a year. The historic center of the island is Cockburn Town, a three mile ride from the cruise center. The visitors guide spelled out the taxi prices to get to Cockburn Town and beyond. It would be $5 per person for a one way ride. If you chose to go to other beaches, then you could pay up to $9 per person or less.
Surrounded by coral reefs, Grand Turk also has a famous 7000 foot deep coral wall located only 300 yards from the shoreline. Of course, it is for tank diving. You might see underwater tunnels, sand chutes, coral pinnacles, and dizzy vertical drops. Sea life viewed are turtles, nurse and reef sharks, eagle rays, octopus, and huge barrel sponges. The reef waters can be described as neon blue.
Columbus may have made landfall here in 1492, and there are some old vessels sunk along the coastline. Now they are diver's objects to explore.
A short distance from the island of Grand Turk, is a small dot of land called Salt Cay. It is only 2.5 square miles, but there are abandoned salt ponds that attract birdlife. In addition, during the months of January through April, about 2500 humpback whales migrate from the northern areas to calve and breed for next year's babies. It is said there are good beaches there with tiny seashells and weathered sea glass. There was talk of building a luxurious resort there with a huge golf course, but that was back in 2009. Doing some research, we discovered those plans fell through the cracks.
Watching the foot traffic from both ships, we decided to go off around 10am. Even with two big ships here, there were just a few folks snorkeling in the shallow waters, and a few more lounging sea side. It looked like a large group of about 50 were congregating with a guide to go on a tour. We wondered if these tours possibly mixed the guests from the Princess ship with the HAL guests. No one had an answer to that, but we did notice everyone, for the most part, was wearing a mask.
Strolling around, we went into some of the shops, and ended up at Margaritaville. Many of the passengers were here, taking advantage of the meandering swimming pool. Today the Flowrider was working and we watched two fellows try to master it on a boogie board. Trust us, it is way harder than you think. Once they lost their balance, it was head over tea kettle, which looked to be painful to us. We're not sure if there was a charge to this, but you would have to pay one of us to do it in this lifetime!
Making a swoop through the local market, we picked up some conch shell jewelry, or something that looked similar. One of the vendors said she was not having a lot of luck with sales today. It was true, as we saw little shopping being done here. All aboard for us was at 1:30pm, while the Emerald was staying until 4:30pm. She still had time to make some more money we told her.
We went back to the ship by 1pm, and spent the afternoon on our balcony waiting for the sail away. It was around then that we got another notice about the in transit process in FT. Lauderdale on Wednesday. Wayan in Club Orange told us that about 800 new passengers are due to board, and close to 200 will be going onwards. The big question with the new passengers is how many will cancel a day before the cruise or will they test positive with the virus? Time will tell on that one.
Lunch for us was in the Grand Dutch Café, with two toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, a plate of fries, and a slice of apple tart and one cookie. One big cookie.
Except for the blowing of our horn a few times, the sail away was slow and easy. Captain Noel stated that he has never gotten so close to a beach before like he does here. We think his contract is up, and he will be headed home on January 12th. He will be missed.
Dinner for us was in the Canaletto. Barb had said she would join us, but must have changed her mind. So it was just the two of us, and the meal should have gone quickly and smoothly. But it didn't. We had requested our waitress to bring one order of veal meatballs with our salads. The salads came, but not the meatballs. Truthfully, we noticed she brought the little pot of meatballs to another customer, who said he would like to taste them. We waited for another serving, with apologies from the manager. Both of us ordered the short ribs, but with different sides. The chef had made them the same, so we chose to wait for the correct plates. Presty had stopped by, and he personally brought us our entrees. The ribs were delicious, and that is what we told the chef when he came by for a visit. There really was no room for dessert, but both of us had the trio of gelatos anyway. We are going to have to walk more tomorrow to wear some of these calories off.
Reading tomorrow's When and Where, we saw an article saying that the Rolling Stone Room Band will be suspended tomorrow due to medical reasons. Hope it's not Covid , but that is probably what it is. We get tested at 8am, so please wish us luck……
Bill & Mary Ann
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Report #24 Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos Monday - January 10, 2022 Sunny & 78 degrees
