Go Fly a Kite

We met up with Preacher over at Frederick's place. We just met Frederick for the first time on this trip. He's building a nice vacation home on a canal in Leeward. We were all getting together for a trip over to Sandy Point on North Caicos, in Preacher's boat. We still don't have a way to launch our skiff, and Twisted Sheets is still in the yard. We continue to be "boat poor". I realize this is probably another of those times when I shouldn't be expecting much sympathy.

Preacher had his Bimini up for this trip. He should have rigged it up last week when we watched the ocean eat his favorite hat. No kidding.

This unexpected trip to North started mid week when Preacher called La Gringa's cell phone. He calls her number because he knows that I never carry mine. I never carry mine, because nobody ever calls me. Nobody ever calls me because they know I don't carry the phone. See how well this is working? Preacher wanted to know if we were up for a trip over to North Caicos on the weekend. J.R. Delancy (aka Froggy) over in Bottle Creek had called and mentioned that he was competing in a kite flying contest. We're very interested in kites for reasons that will become clear in the next month, and we saw a chance to check out the current state of kite building technology in Bottle Creek.

A day of flying kites on the beautiful, open, windswept beaches of North Caicos?(Have you seen these beaches?) A rare chance to step away from the polyglot microcity that Providenciales is fast becoming? A day with friends for a bit of culturally undiluted Turks and Caicos Islands country side life? An event not yet sponsored by the resorts and cell phone providers, with all that that entails? Oh heck yeah. Well, one of us leapt with no further preamble. The other two ambled along with his gambol.

And once again we were treated to the rare and exhilarating experience of Preacher Stubbs running that panga of his over water so skinny that birds wade in it. Small birds. With short legs. Sadly, it was a cloudy day with the atmosphere apparently not in the mood for good photography. We had intermittent rain all day. Rain makes for some interesting scenarios when kids are competing with home made paper kites. The good news is that it was windy. Or at least I think that's good news. Unless you're competing with a wet paper kite, I suppose.

I've explained before that Preacher likes to go fast over really shallow water. Real fast. Real shallow. If something blows out of the boat it's gone. While he could certainly turn the boat around and go back to that spot, he can't stop the boat to pick anything up. We'd be aground if he stopped and let the boat come off plane. Last year La Gringa lost her favorite and probably irreplaceable "Got Rum?" hat from Salt Cay while he was demonstrating an exciting boating technique of using only the humped thickness of a breaking wave to drive diagonally over a sandbar off of Fort George Cay that was covered with just enough ocean to soak a paper towel.

While thinking about Preacher's ballcapniverous boat ,I realized that we shot a lot of GoPro footage on these last few trips and have one of these situations on video. We haven't done anything with those videos because we continue to wrestle with image quality. We're learning that there are some tricks to making the videos look good. It's starting to look like our little laptops don't have the horsepower to do a lot of video work. I knew that I could probably pull some informative stills shots from this one, though. So these next couple images are actually from the previous trip when Preacher was cooking conch and grits for us on Pine Cay.

This next one should show you how shallow the water is. If you squint your eyes just right, you can see the little individual blades of eel grass on the bottom. This water is only about 8-10 inches deep. Which is about what the boat draws at rest. To that hull depth we have to add another few inches for the prop and skeg. We absolutely have to stay up planing on the top of the water. The image is blurry due to a combination of low light and platform motion. The platform was doing about 40 mph at the time.

And this.... this is that very moment in time when Preacher's fingers reacted to that sudden feeling of light headiness as they reached for the favorite brim that, alas, is no longer of this boat. A classic case of being a second too late. Sad to see the reflexes starting to go. (He's going to get me for that.)

It didn't seem that the hat blew away. It was more a case of the hat lifting up and staying there while Preacher's head kept going, and.. a nudder one bite 'de doost.

When I showed that frame to La Gringa, she said that we should at least post that little snippet of it for you.  So, with apologies for the quality, here 'tis:



Watching that clip made me realize that I might have discovered small but positive effect of decades of gunfire, diving, and loud music. I seem to have become somewhat of a lip reader. And now I'm hoping that none of you guys are.

If you go back up to that photo taken this week, you can see the effect that the Bimini top is having. His head is in a bubble that kept his hat from blowing off. The temptation to play with words here is enormous, but I am not going to come out with any air headed comments. Bubble isn't the worst-headed thing I could think of. I was watching the tension on the straps that hold the top on. It surprised me to see how much lift that top produces at about 40 mph. I wonder if anyone has tried building a tube and canvas Bimini top with the cross section of a low speed, high lift wing. Would that provide enough lift to pick a small boat up for a ride right at the water surface at speed, leaving only the keel and propeller in the water? I've been reading about WIG boats but I think this is a different idea. I don't want a boat flying separate from the water, but a way to zip over shallows. It might be fun to try some experiments with that little skiff of ours.

We left the canal and motored through Leeward headed for the Caicos Bank. The wind was only blowing about 15 mph, and there were two meter waves crashing on the reef side. Did you notice how I mixed my measures there, miles and meters? Ah, this international living is starting to rub off. Or maybe it's the sand causing the blisters. Hard to tell sometimes. One of the nice things about islands is that you can always find a lee side with smoother water.

We had a fairly uneventful trip over. Nobody lost anything but a little time well spent.

Heading into the cut between Parrot Cay and North Caicos' Sandy Point marina we saw that the rough weather offshore wasn't hampering these ladies and their guide. That's a flats boat, normally used for bonefishing, but it looks to me like they're using spinning reels instead of fly rods. Could be fishing for a number of things.

We've never been to the resort on Parrot Cay, although I'll confess to trespassing on their more remote beaches a few times. It's technically not trespassing below the high water line from a legal standpoint. And in that spirit, we're likely to technically untrespass some more. There are no beaches on this side, however. It's rocky ledges and mangroves. This is a view of some of the buildings scattered around this end of the Cay.

For some reason this photo reminds me of some Cape Cod vistas that I'm familiar with. If someone told me that this was taken in Waquoit Bay Massachusetts, I'd believe it until I saw that water. You'd have to distill the New England coast all the way out to Nantucket to get the water that clear. And you know how they feel about things like that up there.

This next one, on the other hand, is definitely a local image. La Gringa wore her best hat for the trip. We pulled out all the stops, I tell ya! New hat, clean shirt, shoes.... we even discussed shampooing the dog. And we would have buffed that little booger up, too, except he overheard us discussing it and did his Jack (Russell) Kerouc number.

I've written enough about the scene at Sandy Point that I don't need to repeat it. Froggy was not there waiting for us this time and Preacher gave him a call. He was home and working on his kites but came out to pick us up at the marina. He took us back to his house in Bottle Creek. This is the first time we've been back since my embarrassing incident at J.R.'s birthday party a couple years back. And unfortunately for me nobody seems to have forgotten. I think I might have the record for the whitest butt ever spotted in Bottle Creek. I'm just lucky these people aren't whalers.

We immediately noticed that Froggy has been doing some home construction work since our last visit to his home. He built himself a Bottle Creek man cave, complete with a nice shady porch. This gave me some immediate ideas for our place on Provo. I have just the spot in mind.

He gave us a quick tour of the inside.  It's filled with musical equipment. He's got a keyboard, guitars, amplifiers, mixers, CD's, and, oddly enough, a number of trophies for........ kites.

Those walls and shiny CDs make me think that there might be a mirrored ball and bright pencil beamed light around here somewhere, too. Preacher tells us that Froggy has been in a variety of local bands and he used to play at the Meridian Club on Pine Cay. He was kind enough to give us a copy of his oldy Goodies CD.

One of those songs I know, of course, and the rest are some original compositions by the artist himself. But I like MY photo of Froggy better than the one on the CD. Maybe because it’s got me and Preacher in it, too.

Now I'm wondering if he has a distorted view of us.  Is that paranoia?  And should THAT worry me, too?

J.R. was trying to be polite but also telling us he needs to finish this kite before the contest starts. He’s cutting the letters out of paper and gluing them to the kite. This ain’t no Magic Marker paint job here, bubba. He tossed us the keys to his truck and told us to take a hike. Or words to that effect. Take a hike. Fly a kite. Tossed us the keys. This reminds me of a seminar I once endured. This day is actually shaping up pretty well.

So we drove for a little tour around Bottle Creek to give Froggy time to finish the lettering on his kite. We wanted to stop by the Bottle Creek Lodge to see if the owner was around. He wasn’t but we took a quick look at the beach there. Quiet day on Bottle Creek.

Jay had a small dock here before the storms in ’08. That’s one of the aspects of big storms that people tend to not think much about unless they’re directly affected. The storms are big news while they’re happening, and then there’s a story in the aftermath. And then something else catches the world’s attention and the light and scrutiny of the media  moves on to someplace else.  An experience of such magnitude that it has changed you forever goes through a change of it's own. You coast along for a while before you realize that this intense portion of your life has made the transition from today’s news to last year’s history. For most of the world, these little local island tragedies becomes like someone else's memory. Insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I guess it's easier to see the big picture when it doesn't look like the middle of a bullseye surrounding you. The damage that Hanna and Ike did almost five years ago is far from healed across these little islands.  And we had it mild compared to what happens almost yearly to Haiti.  I'm knocking wood here.   Excuse me, Mr. Wood Sprite.

Here's a small, but representative example of what I mean. There was once a nice little dock here. In a scenario repeated hundreds of times across the islands...it's gone.

I think that if it were my place, I’d probably put some kind of small floating dock  in here next time around. Something that could be hauled ashore and pegged down solid. We worried about those clouds and their intentions in light of our purpose in being here. Was it Charlie Brown who had issues with a kite-eating tree?

Within a few minutes after we reached the beach Preacher’s phone rang and it was J.R. His kites were finished and it was time to head up to Horsestable Beach. He said kites,plural. He built three of them for this contest. The big one, Miss Pine Cay, is of course the heavy guns. He also brought along a mid size kite and a little one.

People continued to arrive throughout the rest of the morning. We walked around to the beach side of the pavilion. It was quiet out there. Too quiet. We've seen those stories, we went looking for the natives.

And we found them.

They were inside the big shelter working on their kites.

There was paper, and glue, and sticks. There was string, and stuff to make tails.

The competition was starting to show up.Outside in the parking lot, J.R. was setting up his kite bridles, pretty much perzactly. That’s the impression I got from watching the kite master at work, as a logical combination of precisely and exactly when hyperbole and redundancy are the goal.

Not everybody was interested in having the biggest kite. This was one of those times when size didn't matter because t here were also prizes to be awarded for the smallest kite. The prettiest kite. Best company kite. Most colorful kite. As many of you other old kite fliers can probably tell by looking, many of these small kites really didn’t have much chance of actually flying very well. Diamond kites typically need some bow, and a bridle, and a long tail is not uncommon for stability. But who was going to tell these kids their kites wouldn’t work? Not me. We told them how pretty they were. And what a good job they were doing.

We moved outside to watch the judging during a nice break in the clouds. And found that the three "kids" we came with were about to launch Miss Pine Cay.

J.R.’s pseudonymous mid-sized kite was flying perfectly. I held on to it for a while. Then we just tied it to an exposed water pipe and let it ride. An American Kestrel was checking it out. Yes, that's a real bird and not a kite. On the left, I meant. The free one with no strings attached.

And J.R. ‘s dreadnoughtess Miss Pine Cay wasn’t getting through unscathed. It’s a heavy kite. I asked him about the design, and he explained to me as sort of a flying W shape of his own design. It’s a rigid frame with no springy bamboo type things to absorb impacts. So what does absorb impacts is the frame. Fortunately Froggy came prepared with glue and paper and everything he needed to make repairs on the fly, as it were. Or maybe repairs between the flies would be more accurate.

Frederick picked it up pretty fast, and soon he was making repairs right along with J.R. Every little trim change that didn’t work right caused an impact with the ground. This, as you know, is probably one of the leading causes of damage to aircraft of all kinds. So it was re-trim, launch, crash, patch, re-trim, launch, crash…well you get the picture. I never realized that amateur paper kite flying required a pit crew.

While J.R., Freddie and Preacher were  patching, crashing and bashing, La Gringa and I took a little side trip next door. This is the location of a small resort facility that was under construction when we first came here to Whitby several years ago, called the St. Charles. I don’t recall the exact nature of the advertising claims, but it looks like a condo development. And a nice one. And it apparently was completed. For the most part. It’s sad to see it abandoned and falling to ruin.

The main pool looks like it would be really nice if it was filled up with clear, clean water and surrounded by waiters carrying anything from the rum or tequila families. That’s not the case here.

The pool side bar wasn't open.   And didn't appear to have been serving anyone for quite a while. Those in-water bar stools are looking pretty rough, too.

The design and even the workmanship of the outdoor pool area looked pretty good. I’m sure at least one of our readers here in the TCI will know what the story is on this development. Perhaps they’ll write and summarize the issues. I know I’m interested in what happened. This is a beautiful setup on a beautiful beach. It doesn't look too far gone to recover. What happened?

I asked Dooley the Disgusted if he wanted me to throw a stick in the pool so that he could use that as an excuse to jump in and fetch it. He didn’t show any of his traditional signs of enthusiasm when swimming is offered.

We didn’t try to look into the building at all, so can’t really say much about the interior state. We did see that plywood had been nailed over the lower, accessible sliding glass windows. We headed on back over to the kite contest next door where things were a lot more lively.

Froggy’s Bottle Creek team were still fine tuning the big kite. All they had to do was get it up into the air flying while the judges were witnessing it to qualify for biggest kite. It’s looking like Miss Pine Cay could also be known as Patches, for short. Check out that ball of twine.

You can also get a good view of J.R.s Flying W frame design there, in the photo above. If you’re a kite enthusiast interested in that kind of thing. It sort of reminds me of a Delta-Cornyne design, in some ways. You might interrupt me at this point to ask “WELL? Did it FLY?” Yes. It surely did.

We didn't think to ask their names, but these were the distinguished judges for this event. One of whom would have appreciated a bigger event t-shirt in his size. Being a judge and all.

I suppose he could use it as a bib. There was some delicious food being cooked up inside. We had conch fritters and cheeseburgers.

I don’t recall ever seeing a palm frond kite before. It flew, too, after a fashion.Perhaps anything can fly with enough wind and a properly designed tail.

We noticed that the judges seemed to be getting into the proper spirit of the event, being draftees and all. They took an interest in each kite in the cosmetic categories.

I would assume that they personally knew most if not all of the contestants. And would probably also be related to some of them. This is a pretty small community.  Finally, the crowd gathered as the judges started compiling their decisions.

I was thinking about that, and it occurred to me how very delicate something as simple as judging a contest could be when you're related to all the players. These effects of extended family relationships permeate most facets of TCI life for the people born here.

Of one thing there was no doubt, Froggy won the trophy for biggest kite. The Miss Pine Cay lumbered into the air looking like the battle scarred veteran of a dozen aerial combats, but it was enough.

He also took second place for the smallest kite. I think they should have also had a category for best flying kite, too. He would have won that one with this mid size. It was rock solid all day long.

I think this photo La Gringa took of two old beach bums pretty much summarizes the weather. It was a bit stormy. But what a relaxing way to spend the day.

Except for Preacher's boat handling. Relaxing is not one of the words in that description. He zipped us back over to Provo via a circuitous route because it was low tide and the shortest route was blocked by water even too shallow for Mr. Stubbs and his magic carpet. We were passing some of the new sand bars dredged up when the Dellis Cay fiasco was being developed. I noticed that the very first substantial vegetation to stabilize the new land is Casuarinas trees.

These trees grow fast. It was a bit strange for me to see land and trees where I was accustomed to seeing open water just five years ago.

J.R.'s wife, Henny was kind enough to send us home with some island sweet potatoes to try. They looked like this.

They have a wonderful taste that reminded me of a cross between a small red potato and a full sized sweet potato. I wonder if such a hybrid has developed on North Caicos.

I wanted to post these photos before they were too dated. We've already got some plans for the next post, and some more DIY and camera experiments to show you. Dooley has been very supportive in letting me fit him with various video camera attachment ideas. I think I'm on the right track there. The dog must be supportive, he's been constantly underfoot in the shop lately.

I suspect part of the reason he was napping in the garage was that he got a special treat for lunch that day. I had a plastic peanut butter jar that I wanted to clean out. I needed to use it to store some small parts in the workshop. I was just about to drop it into the dishwasher when I saw the look in Dooley's eyes...so I though "why not?"..

So if you ever want to spend an hour watching free entertainment and clean out a peanut butter jar at the same time, I recommend giving it to your dog. It's amazing how far they can reach. Make that two hours.

I had a few more things planned for this post, including a pretty cool looking time lapse sequence sunrise.  Plans get interrupted, however, and we were called away very suddenly due to a family emergency situation in the USA. Once again we got to experience an unexpected snow storm, with about 10" of snow falling on us in Boulder.   We thrilled to the joy of scraping snow off a rental car while wearing sandals.  We got out of Denver, and landed in Miami yesterday.... only to experience the biggest computer shutdown American Airlines ever had. We are still in Miami 24 hours later, and I am writing this in the Miami Airport. Rather than delay this any further I decided to go ahead and post it without any further embellishments.

But we do have some fun new stuff planned for the next one. You know we always come back from the USA with new camera toys.

Holiday Weekend

We decided to play tourist last weekend, so this post is about a mini-vacation over to the eastern edge of the  Islands.   It's a bit of a long read, by latest standards, such as they are.   No DIY, though.  Not in this one.   (But  I'll tell you right up front that the second half of this post is completely full of junk. Trust me.)

 We found ourselves with motive, weather and a three day weekend all at the same time.   We got an early start on  Friday, packed up Dooley the Doozy and a couple changes of clothes, and away we went.  Drove to Leeward-Going-Through, hopped on the TCI Ferry, and rode over to Sandy Point on North.   This Middle Caicos trip was a little different.  This time it was just the "three" of us (rounding Dooley up to a whole number) and we were totally on our own agenda.      No fishing trips, no visiting guests, no tasks,  no model boat races, no crowds.  Just Middle Caicos as it normally is when left alone.

We'd arranged to spend two nights in Bambarra, in a small cottage just steps from the beach.  We had plenty of time to look around, and didn't have to worry about rushing back to Provo before dark.    Whoops, almost forgot, and speaking of Provo and dark, here's a recent sunrise photo La Gringa took:

We went  to Middle to make one of our periodic check ups on a  long-running dream. Our decision in 2005 to build on Providenciales was based upon factors that don't all still exist in 2012.  And it was a close decision to begin with.  Things change. From time to time we like to both entertain and torture ourselves by thinking about packing up our life here and moving it along to another  adventure in island living. We've enjoyed  a lot of trips to Middle Caicos over the years, and have been asking  ourselves if that's a good place to relocate the whole kit and kaboodle, as it were.   This would be the Turks and Caicos equivalent of getting out of the "big city" and moving to a simpler life in the country.   That's the fantasy, anyhow.  I know some of you will be laughing at the thought of Providenciales being compared to a big city. You've got to think of it in our new scale, though. We'd be moving from a 38 square mile island of 24,000 people to a 48 square mile island with a population of less than 170.  I looked this stuff up on the official 2012 census site so it's probably pretty accurate.  Except any census of Provo probably skipped a whole lot of people living 'off the grid' and away from the pavement.  There are small shanty towns in the bush here, whether anyone official wants to admit it or not.

To put it in another perspective, Provo has a population density of 640 people per square mile.  Middle Caicos..... three and a half.    And they all know each other and everybody knows the half. Hey, you have to admit, this remote island idea has some attraction to some of us. Especially those who would actually move to a small island in the first place.    I think that surviving that  first big step of  living somewhere outside of your native country makes the thought of subsequent moves much less intimidating.    There are degrees of  remote, though.   I was going to say that I don't recall many people  wanting to move to a small crowded island.  But then I realized that  isn't accurate.  I do know people who would love the idea of living on Manhattan.  I know people who love Singapore. I'm sure there are some happy folks in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and lots of other places that I'd consider crowded islands.  You have to be wired a certain way to seriously entertain the idea of living on an island with only 170 people and only the barest of infrastructure.    SO, La Gringa, Dooley, and I decided to go spend a few days  on 'Middle' with the express purpose of deciding once and for all if we wanted to live there full time. 

We knew we'd get some good photos for the blog out of it, too.   That was our other justification: a break from boating and beach-combing West Caicos.  Well, we got enough photos for three blog posts.

We parked the truck at Leeward and took the TCI Ferry over to Sandy Point on North Caicos.  Susan Gardiner met us at the ferry with a Toyota mini-van that I had contracted for a couple of days.  We also ran into some old friends at the ferry terminal We know our way around pretty well, and navigation is pretty simple on islands with only a few roads, so we were shortly at our first stop for some refreshments.

La Gringa went into the store with a $20 bill for a bottle of water and  a diet Coke.  I was surprised when she came back out and asked if I had any smaller bills.  I did have, but couldn't understand why they didn't just change the $20.   There were at least a half a dozen people in the vicinity. I figured they must be doing a pretty decent business on a holiday weekend Friday.   La Gringa came out with the water and a Sprite.  No diet Cokes.  Ah well.  Welcome to smaller island life.  And this is North Caicos. Ten times the population of Middle Caicos.  We found out later, in a conversation with friends in the restaurant business, that this scarcity of small bills is actually a problem for the merchants here.  People come over for the day, hit an ATM on the way, and arrive with a pocket full of large denomination bills.    They tend to hand the cashier a $20 or $50 expecting change.  There just isn't enough small bills in the register to do that too many times before they're all cleaned out of $1's, and it's not easy to get small bills.  I'm not sure about this, but I think that the bank here got closed down some time back.   Hmmm.   Another factor inherent in living remotely.  Something I wouldn't have even thought about before, a difficulty in making change due to pure logistics.

We thought this sign was interesting.  Someone was enthusiastic about this half way point on the road.   Enough to build a frame, paint a sign, and pour two concrete footings.    It's a mile and a half to either settlement, and I'm sure that this is useful information to have.  I guess I just cannot imagine someone factoring in those distances in their decision as to which way they're going.

The fact that the sign is hand made doesn't mean that it's not official, by the way.  Just about all the signs we see over on this sparsely populated end of the nation are locally made.  There are no sign companies here. In this case, I am thinking that they were already planning ahead to the days when the budget got approved for the Police Department to add a cell phone.  Or maybe the Bottle Creek policeman wants you to ask him for his number.

If you ever visit the TCI, you'll probably notice abandoned houses scattered around.  That's been true on all of the inhabited islands that we've been to so far, which is all of them except South Caicos.  Since we were playing tourista and looking around, we saw quite a few of them on North and Middle Caicos. This one got my attention because it's wood framed.   That really dates a place here.  Hurricane Donna essentially wiped this place out fifty two years ago.   At some time during that rebuilding, the government changed the building code.  New homes and businesses were to built to a much stronger code.  We've been told that a house built to today's code should survive 140 mph wind gusts.  Of course you can build them stronger if you want.  But  wood frame homes are totally verboten.  So this one either survived Hurricane Donna in 1960, or was built very quickly thereafter before the codes changed.   There are not very many surviving wooden structures in the Turks and Caicos Islands from what we've seen.   This kind of looks like a 1960's house, doesn't it?

For comparison, most of the deserted houses on these islands are of much older construction.  It's hard to date something made of native stone and mortar.   Remember just a couple of post before this one we found native stone and mortar still holding together in a tidal action zone after 160 years.  I wonder how many hurricanes and tropical storms have battered this place in that time.

This one's been plastered over, but the door and window hinge designs are the same.   This is of some interest to me.  We often think about how we would build the next time around if we built another house here.  We think we've learned a few things.   And paying attention to how the old timers did it is one of those things we've learned.   I guess I could say that if it's lasted for a hundred years in this climate, it's worth some thought.

Obviously, this construction still accommodates more modern techniques where someone wants to use them.  For example, this building has a metal roof, rainwater collection system and mostly glass windows.

This next photo is not as good as it should have been.   It was actually taken on our way back to Provo on Sunday.  When we came by here on Friday from the other direction, we just got a quick glimpse of a man sitting on the top of a pile of gravel on the side of the road. I didn't have the camera ready and we were not sure what he was doing until we were already past.  His back was to us, the approaching traffic.   It wasn't until I saw that he had a hunk of limestone in one hand and a brick hammer in  the other that I realized where the  big pile of exceptionally clean gravel came from..  He was manufacturing gravel by hand.

He sits under this battered plastic tarp tied in the tree,  on a mound about eight feet high at the moment, and chips these rocks into that gravel.    I know you can't read the little sign but it basically says: 'For Sale' and has a phone number.  This is about as basic a small business as you can get.   I have no idea how much gravel he sells.  But if we were landscaping   I think we'd stop and talk to him.  How many places do you know of where you can get hand cut gravel?

This is the man's workspace.  Fresh air, sunshine, unlimited free raw materials, and probably the lowest overhead for miles.  We've got to come back and meet this guy some day.  He was here on a Friday, and not on a Sunday.   That's a start.

I wish we'd turned around on Friday and taken some photos when he was at work on his pile.  He was turning raw material into finished product.  I never seem to learn that we should never pass up an opportunity for a photo.  A specific photo can only be taken at that one exact moment in time..  After that, it's a different photo.  I'll just have to file this one under "things I wish I'd paid more attention to at the time".  It won't be alone.

Here's another nice old ruin on the best part of Bottle Creek.   What a great location.

We were noticing how so many of the old, small houses were located close to the road.   Then we realized that the old houses were built when there was only a path from house to house.  And the road followed the path.  So it runs through a lot of old front yards. Nobody wanted to be far from the roads.  Traffic is just not a problem.

Eventually we got to the eastern end of  North Caicos and onto the causeway that is the lifeline from Middle Caicos to the rest of the country.  It's even more important now than it was in the past.  Middle has no deep water harbors, and the airstrip is the only other way in and out.  We had not seen the causeway in at least a year, during which there has been another hurricane (Irene) and a few tropical storms. Sadly, it's in even worse shape than the last time we were here.  One more good storm should just about do it, I think.

We were slowed to about 5 mph in the rented minivan. It adds a considerable amount of time to the trip.   For the people who live on Middle Caicos and drive to North Caicos for supplies or for further travel, it's been an inescapable reality since September of 2008.  That was when Hurricane Hanna impacted us all here.

Hanna's storm surge tore the pavement up by undercutting it, and Hurricane Ike came by a week later to peel the pieces off and finish the job.  It's only gotten worse since then.

Here's a map of Middle Caicos showing the causeway and road structure of Middle.  If you've read this blog over the years, most of these places are already familiar.  As you can see, there are not a lot of options if you're staying on the pavement.   There are a number of dirt paths and roads in reality that don't show up on the official map, by the way.   We did get into a few of those on this trip.  Would love to have one of the Land Rovers over here for some serious exploring.

See that bump there on the north shore, between Conch Bar and  Bambarra Beach?  I know the printing is hard to read but it says "Platico Point".   I was scoping this place out on Google Earth, and a structure at that spot got my attention.   Most of this post is going to be about that.   But first some accommodation photos.

We stopped by Daniels Cafe in Conch Bar and picked up the keys to the small cottage we rented for the weekend.  We drove to the cottage planning to drop off our bags and open the place up to air out.  We're accustomed to open air living on our little hillside on Provo.   Well, we dropped off the bags okay, no problem.  But as far as opening the place up to air it out, well, it was not what we had anticipated.

The cottage is beautiful. Nice two bedroom, with a small kitchen and a big enclosed screen porch.  It's all just a few steps from Bambarra Beach.  We brought snorkeling gear with us, and an underwater camera.  We had plans to spend a big part of Saturday in the water taking photos and checking out the fish, conch, lobster situation.   We never got in the water.  We spent maybe five minutes on the beach. And we paid in blood.

Mosquitoes.

We probably had fifty bites each before we even realized we were under attack. This happened the moment we stepped outside the car.  We had our own individual, dedicated clouds of  bugs just waiting for fresh meat.  Which was us. I had bugs inside my sunglasses. Crawling in my nose. The high pitched whine in my ears could have been a leprechaun with a chain saw, but it wasn't. It was mosquitoes trying to find an artery.

Then they called in reinforcements.

I've traveled and worked in a few places.  Now please bear with me on this. I'll keep it short.... ish.  Grew up in Texas, and worked my youth on the US Gulf Coast. Worked both coasts of Central America, and have spent months up tropical rivers in the jungles of South America.  Southeast Asia.  Alaska. Canada.  And my point here is that these places are all well known for their mosquitoes. I've seen mosquitoes that needed runways.  I've seen clouds of mosquitoes with a combined tankage capacity larger than my blood supply.  That's worrisome when you think about it.    But until we stepped out of the car  here at Bambarra, I had never seen this many mosquitoes per cubic yard of airspace anywhere in the world.  We dashed to the house with the key ready, and rushed inside and slammed the door.   We looked at each other in shock as we listened to the frustrated little dive bombers bouncing off the windows. It was hot enough to bake bread on the kitchen table  inside that closed up house, but our first order of business was to stand there slapping each other silly.   It was a mutually agreed double assault. I think each slap probably killed twenty mosquitoes in the area of a hand print, and we had hundreds that rode in with us.  Little bitty mean ones. Fearless, voracious, persistent  crafty and evil little vampires.  After our slapfest we looked like a couple of victims of a Smurf drive-by paint ball attack.  In red.  These things define bloodthirsty.. We cranked up the air conditioners and tried cracking one window to let some of the heat out.    There were big glass sliding doors out to the screened porch, but  having learned from our experience just blithely hopping out of the safe rental car, we did a careful reconnoiter of the porch before venturing out there.  Good thing we did.  It revealed a tear in the screen, and thousands of hungry mosquitoes; quivering in anticipation..  We narrowly avoided another ambush.

They don't show up in the photos, of course, they're too small. But never mind that.  You all know what a mosquito looks like.   I did take some photos from inside the cottage, looking through the glass sliding doors (that we were now afraid to open) and the screened porch out toward the beach.  It's really a great location with the beach right there a few yards away.

I zoomed in on the view down the little path through the Casuarinas trees.   You can see that the reef is off a little distance out from the beach here.

You can also see some little flying black spots there in the foreground between us and the water. Blurred because they were moving so fast.  These are some of the billions of dragonflies that are feeding on the eleventy gazillion mosquitoes. Go, dragonflies, go. We love dragonflies. And lizards, and bats and birds and anything that will eat mosquitoes.  I wonder where our DNA ended up on this trip.  I think the large Cuban Crows we saw were probably the top of this food chain.  We saw them strafing the dragonflies that were gorging on the mosquitoes that were struggling into the air weighted down by their fresh load of Gringos blood.

And we got woken up by the Cuban Crows in the mornings.  It's an interesting start to the day, if you want to get up at dawn.  They actually make a pretty good alarm clock.  I can't imagine sleeping through it.   Have you ever heard one of these guys?

Turn your sound on and check this out:  (Just press the Play button)

And that really isn't a very good recording.   The ones we have here are a lot clearer,  sing a longer song, and sing it a whole lot louder.  I'll look for an opportunity to get a good recording next time we get a chance.  This one came from a birding blog.

We did take the path to the beach.  We sprayed each other down with a product called Deep Woods Off.   We know this stuff.  It's pretty good bug repellent. We laid on a good top coat.  Rubbed it everywhere we could reach.   Or so we thought at the time. We quick-stepped down the sandy path to Bambarra Beach, optimistically dressed in our swimming garb and carrying towels.   We were determined to try out this beach we were paying a premium rental for. We never made it into the water. By the time we got to the beach, the horde of flying assassins had discovered that the repellent was thinner in some spots than others.  I can only assume they were able to hold their breath long enough to drill through to the oxygenated blood below the skin holding the thin layer of repellent.   By the dozens.    We did find the can of repellent useful in squashing the smaller packs, but it was a losing battle on our side.  Now I think I know how George Custer must have felt after the first few arrows.   So we quickly ran back down the path, with me astonished at a new awareness of places where I should have put repellent.   Behind the ears.  The webbing between the fingers.   The bottoms of my feet.  Parts of my anatomy that  I had mistakenly assumed that my clothing would protect, if you know what I mean..  Tropical cotton was not enough,.  We needed Kevlar. With the optional inserts.

The cottage was very clean and well-equipped and nicely decorated.  It's adequate and comfortable.  Good enough.  We could tell it hadn't been used in a while, but this IS hurricane season here.  August, September and October are pretty dead in the tourism market.   Found a small scorpion trapped in the bathroom basin.   He couldn't climb up the smooth sides.  I noticed something  that had escaped my attention before.  Notice how this guy's stinger curves to the left?   The little barb and his tail are set up to sting to the right.

We thought we better take a quick look around.  And we only saw one other scorpion.  This one was in even  more of a predicament than the one in the basin.  He'd somehow gotten inside a plastic garbage bin in the bedroom. We puzzled over this one a bit. We finally chose to believe that he'd climbed up the wall and mistakenly lost his footing on the plastic.   Because the other alternative was that he'd dropped down from the ceiling and we quickly agreed that the weekend required us to believe that this was just not possible.  We're sleeping in this room.

But notice the stinger.  This one is constructed curving to the right, so that all  his stabbings are conducted to the left.   Is it possible that there are both left and right handed scorpions? English and French scorpions  maybe?  Anyhow, that was really the only issues with the cottage. We don't worry much about the scorpions, by the way.  We have been lucky not to have been stung so far, but we've talked to people who have and the word we get is that it's really no worse than a bee sting.   (Tell you what, I think I'd trade one sting for  five hundred mosquito bites if I had a choice.)  And they're not aggressive.  They'll run and hide from you if they have an escape route.

We talked to quite a few people about the mosquitoes and everyone was in agreement that they were the worst they'd seen in four years.   There were unusually heavy rains about two weeks before we got there.  We just happened to catch the hatch, I guess.  And to be fair, we've been to Middle Caicos a dozen times, at least.  We've spent all day sitting on a blanket on the beach here at Bambarra without a single bite.  We've walked the beach at Wild Cow Run with Preacher, and spent the day digging Froggy's truck out of the sand, without noticing any mosquitoes    We've been on a boat with Dolphus, while Keith was fly fishing for bone-fish here.  No bug problems.   So we know, for sure, that as soon as the drier weather shows up, the bug problem goes away.  I can't tell you exactly when that will be, but we know they're gone sometimes before the annual model sloop regatta  right here on this same beach in February.  And that's the best time of year to be here.   This cottage would be a really great place to spend a few days in February.  I'm guessing that the rainy season is the hurricane season, which is over in early November.  Give the low spots a month to dry out, and I'd say come visit Middle Caicos any time between Christmas and September.  Heck, this cottage even has a parking spot for visiting ex-wives.

That's a hand made broom from here on Middle Caicos, by the way.  Straw work is a specialty of some of the good people here.  Baskets, hats, brooms, and other things, made by hand the old way.

We decided to give the cottage air conditioners time to do their thing and we headed out for some sight seeing.  We also saw this as an opportunity to learn a little bit about living in a place like this. We decided to make a  grocery store run.  We needed some basic supplies, and most specifically another can of bug juice and a bag of ice to be sure  La Gringa had some for her rum.  She'd filled the trays in the freezer at the cottage, but we had no idea how long it would take them to freeze.  We decided to drive back to the last grocery store that we'd seen on the way down, and pretend this was a normal, grocery run.   The last store we remembered passing was in Bottle Creek on North Caicos.  The round trip took us two hours.   The main issue is the damaged causeway between Middle and North.  We've read that the government has approved repairs.  That will change things.  When it happens.  But at the moment, a bag of ice is a two hour round trip.

 Now, I've broken this weekend trip up into three segments for the purpose of this blog.  They're not in chronological order, but it shouldn't matter.   They're divided up by subject matters.  The next two posts should be more scenic and less complaining.

We started out several of our trips at Daniel's Cafe in Conch Bar.  Daniel and Sara Forbes run the restaurant , a real estate company, and the Middle Caicos Co-Op.   This is a good place to buy straw work and native arts.   Daniel's Cafe is right on the beach.

Daniel's is kind of centrally located for Middle Caicos excursions.  If you look to the east you can see the old coast road that follows the beach for much of this part of the island.  This is different from the very well paved road that runs through the middle of the inhabited areas.

Before I get too far off the subject, Daniel's is an excellent place to get native dishes.  We usually eat at least one meal here every time we're on Middle.   Most often it's lunch, but we've also had some nice dinners here as well.  And if he has advance notice, Daniel will arrange to have conch and grits for breakfast.   On the Saturday night we stayed over this weekend, we had spiny lobster tail, collard greens, roasted tomato, peas and rice (which uses beans instead of peas but that's another story) and a salad.  We also had a nice bread pudding desert.

Here La Gringa is talking to Devon Forbes, Daniel's son and the chef at the cafe.   Devon has fathered a new baby daughter since the last time we've seen him.  La Gringa was commiserating with him, explaining how life changes when you start having children.  Isn't that the understatement of the morning?

If you look west from the Cafe, you can see the water off the settlement of Conch Bar.   I'm calling these settlements instead of towns, because they just don't seem to get up to the level of a town. The buildings up on the hills overlooking the ocean in the distance are the Blue Horizons resort.  We were trying to decide whether to head east or west from here.    Finally, remembering the structures I had seen at Platico Point on Google Earth, we decided to head the other way and save Mudjin Harbor for when we had more time to spend there.

This is the feature that caught my attention on Google Earth when I was researching this place.  This is an old image, from 2006.   I was originally scanning the reef line looking for openings where we could get Twisted Sheets in through the reef if we wanted to come drop the anchor here for a few days.  So first I spotted that break in the reef.   Then I zoomed in and saw the structures on the beach.  My first impression was that it was some kind of a wharf or breakwater.   There are pieces of equipment scattered around the bush surrounding the road.  There is sand built up on the up current side.   I really wanted to know what this was, and if we could get the sailboat in.  So we had a destination in mind.   I think I do better when I have a specific goal.

This also shows you both the paved road ( which is in great shape, by the way) and the old sand road that follows the shoreline.  You can see some of the rough trails that are scattered here and there on the island.

Now, if any of our friends at Enterprise Rent a Car in the US are reading, relax.  This was NOT one of your cars.   The folks that rented it to us know where we're taking it, for the most part.    This is what the sand road along the beach turns into not far into the bush.   At least the branches scraped the mosquitoes' little drilling crews off the side windows.   I could still hear some of them working on the locks of the tail gate.  Thank goodness they don't have tools and  thumbs or we'd look like those dried out husks you find under spider webs by now.

We knew we were getting close when large rusty hunks of what was once very expensive machinery started showing up in the underbrush.

Here's another 'slide video' shot, using a car instead of the slide this time.   I'll try not to overdo this like someone who just discovered the zoom button.



We found the spot we were looking for.  Not that it took any great navigational skill.  This is what the place looks like from the west.  It's the part where the beach sand has built up. Makes it pretty easy to determine which way the long shore current runs, doesn't it.

This photo shows the break in the reef to the north.  It was that possible way in through the reef that first caught my attention.  Obviously, someone was able to bring some pretty big stuff in.  There's plenty of depth for our boat here.  Of course Dooley the Delinquent immediately sniffed every single piece of hardware and structure on location.  He always does.

If you examine that photo above you can see how this was all set up. Someone built a substantial concrete wharf right on the shore, and snugged barges up against it for on and off loading.  There are also a couple of big concrete blocks poured a distance away from this  main one.  They were used to run lines from the barge ashore to stabilize it.   A good plan, but it seems to me that somehow, things got left in place a little too long. Now, they'll remain in place for a whole lot longer.

I'm not entirely sure what this piece of equipment is.  I would guess it's a big centrifugal  pump. Maybe someone was planning to do some suction dredging.  That would make sense.  Dredging a harbor, or channel, or excavating a shipwreck.   I can think of several good uses for a big pump here to move water and sand.  My own opinion is that whomever started this wharf project should have built a breakwater to protect it first. Waves coming through that hole in the reef must be a real factor in working close to shore here.   It was a calm day when we were there.

I did snap a photo of  this thing, to get the name.  Just in case anyone cares.  

This is a nice stainless steel tank.  It was in such good condition, I was wishing I had some kind of a practical use for it.  A submarine?  A hot tub?   Bomb Shelter?  Boat? Well casing?  A camping trailer? Now there's an idea.  We could put this on a chassis with wheels and build a TCI version of a stainless steel Airstream travel trailer.  Because I can tell you up front, the aluminum (or aluminium) version wouldn't survive long here. Oh well.  It looks like junk but  I suppose it belongs to somebody somewhere.  As I used to tell my kids when they were growing up, you might not know who it belongs to, but you do know it's not yours.

I know this would be an insanely long trip to find our traditional yearly "Christmas Stump" in a couple of months, but if we DID want to find one, I got a candidate already located.

I'd be a bit surprised if that tree is still there after Tropical Storm Sandy went by this week, though. Oh well.  There are plenty of others.

This is one of the more interesting items here.  This old crane is sitting there, one tread sitting on these huge timbers, and the other barely touching the surface of another sunken barge.  It almost looks like someone left for a lunch break, and never came back.   Who would leave a piece of equipment like that parked in the edge of the salt water?  There's got to be a good story here.  I tried an internet search on Platico Point, but really all I could find were some vague references to the abandoned wharf here.   Another small mystery for the  list.

Of course we had to walk around and examine the thing from several angles.   I am totally speculating here, but I wonder if perhaps at one time there weren't more timbers under those treads, and the sea has taken the rest of them away.   Only the weight of the crane is pinning these.

The other barge is also completly collapsed, and the inside forms a nice protected little kiddie pool.  Should one consider a smooth sand bottom over tons of rusty iron a suitable pool.    I bet you could cut your toe in there if you worked at it long enough.

And the rust.  Oh my.  I believe that this crane is long past its expiration date, by any criteria.   I suspect it will be here, turning back into iron oxide, long past the day all of us have returned to our own elements..

I have gained some experience in rust while living here, and I'm pretty sure this is now past the point where a can of WD-40 and a roll of duct tape are going to make much of a difference.   I do have to wonder if whomever is responsible for it thought to drain the oil out before the ocean gets to it.

Once upon a time, someone tied that line from this cleat to a ring on a  concrete bollard up on the shore.  I cannot help but wonder what happened here.  Someone had some big plans.  Someone invested a lot of money, and time, and effort.   I think one has to live here to appreciate how much really went into this in a location this remote. And now it all sits in the tropical breezes, overlooking the reef and the Atlantic ocean. Journey's over for this boat.

Well, by this point we had pretty much realized that living on Middle Caicos full time is full of challenges even above and beyond those of living on Providenciales.   We know people who are doing it, and we've long loved the idea of it.   The mosquitoes really don't bother us that much. We know how to deal with that. We'd build a home up on a ridge back away from the water's edge and the  low rainwater pools where bugs breed in storm season. Up in the cooling breeze and a fifteen minute walk from the beach.  Or we'd do what a lot of people do, and be somewhere else  in the fall.

Is this too remote for us?  We're still discussing it, with a bunch of new factors to consider.   This is hours from the nearest serious medical facility. It would take us an hour to go buy a loaf of bread.  There's not really any good place close by to keep Twisted Sheets.  As I age  I've noticed that  what  I once would have considered inconvenient appears increasingly unacceptable.  I'm in that transition from middle-age to geezer and have to start picking my projects a little more carefully.  Got too many irons in the fire already.   From what I am seeing on Middle, a lot of people have underestimated what it takes to live here in the style they had in mind when they started.  Maybe this island doesn't want to be covered in people full time.  The evidence so far sort of points in that direction.   Especially if one is feeling ancient and looking for excuses.

I like to believe that if I were even 20 years younger I'd be on this place like a duck on a june-bug, though.

We like knowing that there are still places this beautiful where someone can get away and really experience peace and quiet without having to  get lost in a wilderness.   This is 90 minutes of flying from Miami.  There aren't many people here, but those we've met are some of the nicest and most helpful people in the islands.  There is world class bone-fishing all around this part of the country.   And it's quiet. We heard no traffic, no airplanes, no jet ski's this weekend.  If I wanted to get away, and walk a beautiful, remote beach by myself all day without seeing another soul... I know where to go.   This would be a great place to rent a cottage and write a novel, for example.  Or learn to play the trombone and drums, if one were wired that way.  My point is meant to be that you wouldn't bother anyone, and no one would bother you.

While La Gringa and I are still undecided on whether or not we want to move to Middle Caicos, we  are also in agreement that we want to start coming over here for weekends more often.   This kind of island is good for the soul.

Oh, before I forget.   Several people have expressed some concern because Dooley the Delinquent has not been seen in the previous two posts.   He is with us, and we saw THIS photo posted on his Facebook page....

I waved this under his nose but he absolutely refused to discuss it with me.   There will be more photos of him in the next couple of posts.  After we decided  to take our ideas about moving to Middle Caicos under advisement for a while we just relaxed and played tourist for the rest of the weekend.   Got some good photos and videos.  Stay tuned, it gets prettier and Dooley's out on parole.