A Closer Look at Turtle Rock

In which the Gringos Explore the Islet Underwater, Undergoing Another Change of Plans on a Very Nice Day. Dooley the Devious Claims a Rock while Going With the Flow.

This is going to be a shortish (is that even a word?) follow-up post to that Turtle Rock trip we did a couple of months ago. We tried to get some good photos of Taylor Bay and failed miserably on that day, due to weather. But we've gotten over that. For the most part. Because the good thing that came out of that was that we found Turtle Rock. And if you recall, or even if you don't, I said we'd plan to return someday with some snorkeling equipment. Well, we just did exactly that. And here are the photos for your examination. And perusal. And hopefully, some slight enjoyment.

First I want to put a sunrise photo in here. I don't know why but it's just become sort of a micro tradition kind of thing with us. Does that make me a 'traditionalist'? I guess that sounds better than retro-grouch. Start with a sunrise, end with a sunset. Got a kind of a symmetry to it, or something. Feng-shui? Or as Dooley might say.. Fang-Shoe.

I'm kidding. He hasn't eaten any shoes in years. To my knowledge.

Here's a sunrise directly over the old freighter wreck. I can't get this strange idea out of my head that this is something holding up a cosmic pearl between it's fingers for our examination..



or Godzilla swallowing the sun. Could be that, too.

Maybe we should look at changing that sunset thing up a bit. Maybe put in a close-up photo of a local flower sometimes instead of the same old thing. Now that I think about it, I like this idea of putting some flower photos in from time to time. La Gringa likes taking them and has a good camera for it. And the color is a nice way to start a visual blog like this one. That was how the sunrise thing got started in the first place. I just wanted to have a nice colorful photo right up there at the front of the blog. I could write something like.."This is a Bougainvillea. They grow up the side of the house and have thorns. I have to clip them often, especially during the summer."



I freely admit I'm not much of a 'flower person', despite any rumors you may have heard from the '60's. Being somewhat colorblind, I never paid that much attention to ornamental type plants until we moved here. It wasn't such a big deal when we had no landscaping here on this rock. But we kept adding things, and I have slowly realized that I've somehow gotten myself involved in an ongoing relationship with these growing things. Prior to buying my first hedge trimmer, the only plants I was ever interested in were those I could somehow ingest. Tomatoes, as just one example of the potential joy of horticulture. But now... oh man. I got clippers, loppers, trimmers, three machetes.... and can still barely fight these suckers to a draw. They're not even good to eat and these Bougainvillea are some well-armed rascals, let me tell you. I come away bleeding from most encounters with them. Even though I wear my welding gloves (No, they're not Crocs) while clipping them. Likewise with some of the cactus plants around here. Bending over to double-tap a weed and backing into a Blue Agave plant will reset several of the upper limits of your surprise-response switches. Stabbed in the butt with a sharpened awl at a distracted moment. It will bleed. And sting. And cause you to exercise parts of your vocabulary normally kept dormant. Some people have used these things to sew bark canoes together. I'm just saying.

And this is their prime growing season, right now. All they've been waiting for was more rain, and if you've been reading this blog you know we get it this time of year. The thorny nightmares are growing crazy. The plant kingdom equivalent of Mardi Gras or Carnival, with some of the same morning-after results; the start of a new generation. Of course plants grow all year here, right along with the bugs. And by the way, if you are ever re-incarnated as a bug, I suggest you look into choosing a tropical environment for it. You're going to love it. We are loaded with happy bugs down here. Most of them ignore humans, but not all of them. The wasps are especially serious, but will apparently respect a truce if you leave them alone. Mosquitoes are not all that common here in the western, drier part of the islands. Not enough water, too much wind. But there are some mosquitoes and those gnatty little 'no-see-ems" that seem to consider coconut oil a candy coating.

How did I get off on that rant, anyhow? Probably because I trimmed the bougainvillea yesterday. Only cost me an ounce or two of hemoglobin. Well, back to the point of this post. Our trip back to Turtle Rock. I am not going to post up a bunch more photos of us launching the boat, choogling out of the canal, etc. I'm trying to keep the download time on these posts shorter for you, and besides you've seen all that in previous posts. What I can put up is what it looks like from the perspective of the skiff driver, headed across the Caicos Bank on a nice calm summer day:


Music is 'Groovin' by The Rascals

I was hoping you could see some of the underwater rocks and coral heads we were going over, but the camera was already starting to fog up at that point. We were having a lot of fogging issues with the little video cam. We think we've finally got that under control now, but all we could do at the time was to open up the waterproof case and air it out until the fog disappeared from the inside of the glass outer lens. Then we were good for about fifteen minutes of video before it went all cataract on us again.

This is approaching Turtle Rock from the landward side. That cumulonimbus cloud formation in the background is marking the location of the island of West Caicos, by the way. You can just see it on the horizon. You see, on a normal day, one really doesn't need a compass to navigate on the water here. On the typical Trade Winds Day, every island has its own cloud that stays right over it. It's when these clouds get out of hand and go wandering off that the trouble starts.



When the water is smooth like this every puff of wind puts ripples on the surface. Over the years we've found out that sometimes the ripples actually help to visually navigate around the coral heads and rocks. When the water is glossy like this, it acts like a mirror reflecting the clouds. And like a mirror, it's difficult to see through it at oblique angles. And looking out ahead of the boat is at an oblique angle. In this photo, I wanted to show you how the roughened up water surface works to let us see the rocky bottom underneath. Notice that you can't see much of the bottom detail past the ripples.



It makes navigating interesting sometimes. We try to look a few hundred yards ahead and plan the route to avoid big dark patches under the water. But shadows from passing clouds and areas of ripples that let bottom show through the mirror can sure be confusing. And heading west into the sun in the late afternoon on a day like this..... well... it's like flying IFR if there's a GPS track to follow, but pretty hard if there isn't. The sun reflects off the water right into suddenly seared retinas. We don't worry much about the thousands of uncharted coral heads when we're momentarily blinded in our little boats in open water, but we sure do in the Contender. And near other rocks, like this, there are usually some big pieces that have fallen off just under the surface. I was looking at a chart of this area after we made this trip, and discovered that there is an old submerged shipwreck marked on the shoal surrounding this rock. I need to do my homework before we make these trips. Well, it gives us an excuse to stop back by on another day and look for the wreck.

As we came up around the western side of the rock we startled a few birds who flew off shrieking like they'd been goosed with pine resin and set on fire .



And no doubt Dooley the Delinquent got a visual fix upon from whence they flew. He's good at stuff like that. Pays attention. With a memory an elephant would envy. He still remembers the exact spot where he ambushed an iguana five years ago on Pine Cay. Oh he didn't hurt the big lizard, he just wanted someone to chase through the bush. He would have been perfectly happy to turn around and let the iguana chase him for a while, too. Well, I guess maybe iguanas are kind of standoffish to dogs they haven't been properly introduced to. Or maybe they just panic at the sight of a Jack Russell bearing down on them. He probably looks a lot more threatening from ground level, but in either case they sure don't seem to get into the spirit of the chase and play thing. I am beginning to suspect that their version of it is more like Escape and Evade. But Dooley remembers the grand old time he had tailgating that iguana. And now, every time we pass that spot, we have to let him get off the golf cart and go make sure that yes, the iguana has moved on and does not hang out here just in case some friendly dog should come by and want to race. Poor thing is probably in iguana therapy somewhere.



There's a partial view of our proto-type Dooley Cam mount, too.

We are still in late bird-nesting season here. I think it likely that there are still chicks in some of the nests, and we have no intention of letting Dooley the Destroyer climb the rocks. We're not planning to climb them, either. Our interest today is what's under the water here. I'm not sure we even own the proper footwear for climbing this stuff. I'd really hate to blow out a flip flop on top. I mean, if you blew one out at the bottom you could just turn around and get back to the water with only a modicum of contusions.

At the top.... well this would be a real booger to try to hop down on just the one insulated foot. There are very few shoes more useless than a broken flip flop. They just turn into inefficient flyswatters. Good for scaring small dogs, but as for rock climbing around here they're useless. One approach would be to crawl down on all fours backwards like a double jointed spider with it's belly to the sun. It's more stable, and spreads the pain of that rock/skin interface over a much larger surface area. Makes one look and feel like a bloody fool, though. Literally. No thanks. Never again.



Looking down into the water we saw big schools of small fish swimming around in the lee of the rock. Glossy clear water is great stuff to look through when you're looking straight down. This is a small crowd of a few thousand sardines and their relatives. Or as they call them here, pilchards. I don't mean that relatives are called pilchards. That's another word for sardines. I'll bet there are some other words for relatives, too.

The pilchards are absolutely one of the best native live bait fish we get around here. We have a couple of throw nets specifically for catching these. Maybe we should bring a net out here and do a video. That has the potential for some real laughs.

I didn't tell you guys that La Gringa fell overboard on one of our recent skiff trips. She valiantly restrained from grabbing the new VHF antenna to save herself. Dooley and I maintained a perfect combination of straight, concerned expressions, even after we knew she was all right. But it's my turn, now.

That reminds me, I need to register the boat so we can legally fish from it. I am waiting until July 31, which is when all the fish and boat related licenses here expire. Strangely enough, things like automobile registrations and driver's licenses expire on one's birthday. And it's a real annoying pain to forget until the last minute and then spend a big part of your birthday standing in lines at the Department of Road Stuff.



These were doing that synchronized swimming thing on both sides of the boat. What an excellent place to net bait. Of course this is a seasonal thing.



We eased on up into the protected lee of the rock. There wasn't any wind to speak of on this day, but it's nice to be able to control the boat drift when leaving it on the anchor. And to not let it drift into any rocks while we are off out of sight of it. And there are some submerged rocks here. I'll show you one in a few minutes.

That's an odd phrase for something written, isn't it. It must say something about the concept of time as seen by the writer and the reader. A really fast reader might get there in one minute. A slow one might take a while longer. Someone who reads this a year after it's written will still be only moments away from the submerged rock. And those who only look at the pictures will be there quickest yet, but then they have completely missed the experience of this great sense of anticipation I know you all now have. I'll move on now. My head is starting to throb.

This is the best spot from which to swim into that big cleft that runs between the two main hunks of this rock. We have to swim around that little rock in the foreground.



We just don't mind jumping into this water, at all. It's clear, soothingly warm, shallow enough for wading although we would rather float and not touch anything. Ocean things can bite, sting, and cut. It has big patches of fine, clean sand, some variously colored colonies of coral, and of course, rocks. We decided to hook Dooley up with his video setup and let him swim around the boat, cool off, and then maybe he would calm down and take a nap when we went overboard. Ha.


Music is 'God is Crying' by Joe Satriani

This is where we anchored. We took care not to drop it on that starfish. I never knew they came in Spiderman print.



As we swam away from the skiff toward the rock, I looked back to see how the boat was riding. The bimini we put up to shade Dooley the Dehydratable Brat was catching the slight breezes. With the current, the boat was right where we wanted it to be. I also always check the anchor on the first dive, to be sure it's stuck well enough to hold the boat. But Dooley the Determined doesn't look like he is going to settle for being on anchor watch for very long, does he?



He's one of those crewmen who only follow orders when the Captain is watching, if you know what I mean. And he's never been much of a disciple of delayed gratification.

We circumnavigated the aforementioned rock and flippered into the flooded cleft that roughly bisects the islet. We noticed that the birds had decided we were not the advance forces of a cataclysmic threat after all, and had quietly circled back and landed at their precious little ad hoc aeries. They were keeping an eye on us, but it seemed more one of interest than alarm. I suspect that from their perspective, once we were in the water we were no longer human, if that makes any sense. Upright humans are a threat. Things our size in the tropical oceans don't climb cliffs . I'm just trying to think like a bird brain here. Uh... scratch that. I could have pecked a better metaphor.



This is the view looking back toward the boat. It's on the other side of that rock on the left.



Well, I should have remembered that if I can't see Dooley, then he probably can't see me. This, to him, is an intolerable situation that justifies ignoring previous orders to stay put. He was probably already in the water when I took that photo. He hove into view a few minutes later.

This is looking across to the other, windward side of the rock. From a geological standpoint it's easy to see what happened here. This rock developed into one of those mushroom shapes so common when the ocean erodes the soft limestone and undercuts the side of the rock facing the wind and waves. Eventually, the overhang breaks off and falls into the ocean. This then protects the remaining rock from the wave action until the fallen bit is broken up to the point where it's all underwater again. I suspect this takes quite a while.

See that little bit of exposed rock there in the middle? I got past that by a few feet, face down and snorkeling, when I heard a splashing noise behind me.



This is what was going on to make all the noise:


Music is 'Orbit' by Jesse Cook

And this is the view I had looking at Dooley the Dreadless as he claimed this rock for whatever purposes he came up with. Maybe you can tell from the video, I can't. I'd like to think he was looking for new camera angles, but he refuses to discuss it at all. Typical.



When I watched the video I realized he climbed the rock because it gave him a vantage point where he could keep an eye on both La Gringa and I at the same time. And he does.

Swimming ahead, looking at the rock directly under us this next photo is pretty much what the rock looks like. All kinds of hairy little critters living on it. We try really hard not to touch anything alive. There are plenty of places where there is bare rock, if we needed to stand up for some reason. We prefer to float. It gets deeper off to the right, with numerous little crevices and caves where the sun doesn't shine. I tend to avoid those places.



Now when I saw this one, I thought it would make a cool photo. It's wide enough for me to swim through, and if I had a t-shirt on I would have gone for it. But experience has taught us that even slightly brushing against anything alive on the rocks with bare human shoulder skin is basically a bad idea.



This is what that crack through the rock looks like from the top, above water:



I was using the Olympus Tough 8010 in its underwater housing for these photos. It's got a great feature in that it can be set up for still photos like this but you can push one button and instantly change into video mode. I think all cameras should copy that feature. There were some fish down there in the bottom of this passage:


Music is 'The Storm Sings' by Ottmar Liebert.

I'd mentioned coral, so I thought I would show you at least one photo of some. If I got started on coral photos, we could be here for hours. So I won't.

Oh yeah, there's a fish in this one, too.



Fish are all over the place, of course. I normally don't even bother to take photos of them anymore unless there is something about them that looks interesting. This is just to show you the fish congregating in the deeper water in the shade. It's a crummy photo otherwise.



Here's another crack all the way through the rock to the outside, from just under the surface. And I wouldn't have fit through that one on my skinniest day ever.



La Gringa and Dooley had seen enough sunshine and salt water at this point and they paddled their respective ways back to the boat. I continued on around the seaward side of the rock just to take a look. For the most part it was more of the same. Deeper water, which didn't photo all that well on this day for some reason. I did do a little video of a huge hunk of rock off the face of the islet. It runs up to within a foot of the surface. Man, this could ruin your whole day if you hit it with an outboard at about 30 mph.


Music is 'Never Alone' by Jeff Beck

After I climbed back on board the skiff we were thinking that it was only mid-day, and the weather was so good maybe we shouldn't rush home just yet. I know we've beat the Osprey Rock views over at West Harbour to death on this blog, including photos from every angle and inside the caves. This is probably the best set of those images of Osprey Rock. So I am going going to subject you to a new set of Osprey Rock photos. I'm trying to find new stuff here, ya know. But we did leave Turtle Rock (skipping the nearby Maggot Rock entirely) and went over to cruise that distant shoreline, that ends in Osprey Rock at the end.



And once we got there, we decided we still had plenty of daylight left, and so we decided to head out into the sound to try to find these shoals we had seen on the charts. This was a perfect day to go looking for shoals. And I am going to take the rest of the images we took on this day and make another post with them. I don't plan to make this a serial cliffhanger type of deal here. Not at all. But I know what having forty or fifty images to download does to some people's computers. And we have quite enough for another post.

So, at least this one time, please tune in next week, for another unexciting footnote in the ongoing micro saga of "where we gonna go to scare ourselves silly out on the ocean again this time, Honey?"

Smith's Reef

I well remember while hoping that you don't that in our last post I said I was going to start making smaller posts more frequently. And it was my intention. But as some wise old Scotsman named Burns once wrote, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, gang aft agley." And that's what happened this time. I can't speak for the mice. We suddenly had to travel off island which shot a week of planning, and, well.. it went agley. But hopefully it's un-agleyed now. Re-agleyed? My Burns is rusty. Along with a lot of other things.(My Burns is rusty? Wow. Sounds like either a medical condition or a thinly veiled pickup line for the literate...)

Hopefully to my credit I had already picked a topic for the next post two weeks ago. This was pre-agley. And although it's a bit later than I intended, finally we have gotten back to it. But first (needing a quick and admittedly transparent change of topic) another sunrise photo for your perusal:



With the sun coming up a little later every morning these days we once again find ourselves usually up before it gets around to our side of the planet. In the  winter we get the sunrises and sunsets right over the ocean. Makes for generally nicer photos.

The main subject of this post is Smith's Reef.  I am hoping this will be of some interest, and possibly even some use, for snorkelers.   Everyone who reads up on the Turks and Caicos Islands will find out that the diving and snorkeling here is just about as good as it ever gets. Anywhere.  This is pretty much undisputed even among serious divers.  But Smith's Reef is not just for serious divers.  That's part of the beauty of it.  Accessibility for everyone.

Visibility of a hundred feet or so is a pretty normal day in my experience and these islands are surrounded by  coral reefs that are practically untouched. If desired,  you could find reef  here that has never before been seen by human eyes underwater.  And lots of it. The water is warm, and getting out to deep water only takes fifteen minutes. And there are a number of boating and excursion companies here that will gladly take the hard core divers out to 'the wall' or to some coral gardens or to the Endymion wreck site. If you have access to a private boat you literally have hundreds of miles of unexplored reefs all to yourself. And they are all spectacular.

But what about those visitors who are not trained SCUBA divers? Or visiting families with children who want to introduce them to snorkeling gradually in a safe spot? Or exceptionally cheap or asocial people like me who don't especially want to spend several hundred dollars to get committed for the day on a charter with dozens of strangers?

Well, Smith's Reef just might be the option you are looking for. It's right off the beach near Turtle Cove here on the north side of Provo. All you need is your bathing suit, faceplate, snorkel and flippers. And it's free.

Located just north of Smith's Reef Road, it's real easy to find:



We went out there yesterday morning to take these photos. We parked in the open lot there at the west end of Coconut Road instead of on Smith's Reef road.  On this recent  sunny Saturday morning, there was only one other vehicle there.



You can see La Gringa walking down the trail to the right and it's easy going. You do need to watch out for the sand spurs in a few places but they are obvious. Those are the little sharp 'stickers' that are basically just well-armed grass with an attitude. Or you could just wear shoes, come to think of it. We rarely do.



When you get to the water just turn right and keep walking. The path is well-travelled, and this is a good thing. It means someone else's kids' feet have already picked up all the sand spurs! Sort of like a Disney version of mine clearance for civilians.


Our visit was at low tide, which was probably a little bit sooner than the ideal time to be there. The best time is on the incoming tide. Clean ocean water is displacing the stirred up water near shore. It's clearer water without all the little bits of sand and particulates that come off the shore line and out of the canals and inlets when the tide is going out.
It was a flat calm day on the ocean Saturday. This is also a good thing. At high tide those rocks are submerged and getting through them barefooted while getting waveslapped around could be a bit much for smaller or clumsy ones. Ask me how I know. (Here's a hint: I am not a smaller one.)



Even though the beach is fairly well-travelled, there is still a good chance to see pretty shells. This one is clean and unbroken.   We left it there for you, by the way.   Just look over by the rock.



This one is still there, too, I bet.  Maybe because it's  about 25,000 years old and solidly embedded. I saw a number of fellow fossils on this trip.  Both plants and animals. They are there if you stop and look for them.



I didn't notice if there was a sign pointing out where the official kick off point for Smith's Reef is located. There well might be one on the nearest trail through the bush but since we came in from a different direction we wouldn't have seen it. You'll know when you are at the right place when you see this clear sand trail down from the beach through the rocks:



It's pretty obvious.  Just look for the best place to wade barefooted through the rocks. And that's where you want to walk if you are an unshod tenderfoot. Trust me.

My camera was already in its underwater housing, so the photos I took above water are not the greatest. But you can see there were three or four other people out snorkeling over the nearest part of the reefs. Not crowded at all, on this perfect day.   We get a lot of perfect days.

I'm mentioning that they were on the near reef for a couple of reasons. I've read some reviews on Trip Advisor and realized that most visitors here probably never get out beyond the first small reef. The people in that photo are bobbing along on the outside of that first reef which is only about 40 yards or so off the beach. If you are not comfortable floating out several hundred yards then this is probably just fine for you. This is also as far as you need to go with smaller children. You can be looking at pretty coral and fishies within about five minutes. And there are tons of colorful things to see even on the close-in portions of Smith's reef.

You'll immediately know you are in the right place when you start seeing some of the small artificial reef habitats, or "reef balls",  that have been placed along the 'trail'. There is one immediately to the left after you go down that sandy trail through the rocks. They look like this:



You'll need to start swimming just a few yards off the beach but it's an easy swim. And relaxing. The warm salt water here is exceptionally buoyant and you can float face down breathing through your snorkel and move along at your own pace. If you're new at snorkeling or not that strong of a swimmer, we used a noodle technique in Mexico that worked great for a newbie snorkler. And the water is a lot softer here than it is in the Sea of Cortez.   There's some mean stuff in their ocean over there in the Pacific.   Not so much here.

About where those other swimmers are located up in those couple photos above, the close in reef looks like this:



Not too bad for being within fifty yards of the beach, is it?

The further out you swim, the clearer the water starts becoming. You will also start to see the fragile corals that are too tall to survive storms in shallower water.  They need more depth to develop to full size.  They can't do that in constant wave action common in shallow water.



Even though the water is only about 8-12 ft deep, you'll start seeing anemones and other sea life. This one was in about 8 ft. of water:



If you continue out past the first small reef, you'll pass over a section where the water gets a bit deeper. I would guess it's maybe 10-15 ft at most. It looks like you have left the reef behind, and it's a sandy bottom covered with sea grass and not that much else to look at.

Unless you count other free swimming denizens of the deep as worth looking at:



If you just follow that guy you will come to the second section of reef. This is about 75-100 yards off the beach. It's a bigger section of reef with slightly more dramatic relief as it goes from 15 ft. deep up to within six feet of the surface.



This is probably as far from shore as you really need to go. The middle section of Smith's Reef has all the coral you will want to see. Brain coral, fire coral, barrel, stag horn.... it's all there. You could spend a happy hour snorkeling here and still be back at the hotel in time for lunch. .

Now if you are an experienced swimmer, and comfortable in the water, we would recommend you continue outward for about another fifty to a hundred yards to the third and outermost reef here. You will be looking down at more sea grass and the fish that live near it.



And then you'll start seeing larger structures such as this brain coral:



Or this Gringo brain coral...



I am thinking you can tell from these photos how clear the water is a couple hundred yards out.



And there's more good news in that the outer edges of Smith's Reef are not deep, either.



None of these photos were taken in water deeper than about ten feet.



We swam out to a green channel buoy which not visible in the photos I took from the beach. I don't have a good way to measure how far out it is, but would guess something on the order of 250-300 or so yards. There are closer buoys, but this is the one we swam to:



And as you can see, it's not too deep here either.



My  background career in one of my earlier lives  including installing oceanographic moorings. I was interested in how they rigged this up. And from the buoy down they did a good job of it. A swivel, a thimble in the nylon line, an eye splice and all of it secured with cable ties. Just the way I would have done it......



Until I looked at the bottom. Whoever put this together with the scrap iron anchor did okay until they got to this part. Not only did they not secure the nice stainless steel screw pin shackle but they attached it to a rusted out remnant of chain that is definitely on its last legs. I could probably have twisted this whole thing loose in about five seconds.



Kinda makes one think of the old adage that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, doesn't it? You reckon this buoy will still be here after the next storm?

Oh well. I know I am too critical of this kind of thing. Hard to let it go after all those years of sling links, chain hooks, shackles, torque balanced wire rope, sub surface buoys... never mind. I'm not here to critique the mooring. I'm just here to show you the pretty critters that make up Smith's Reef!



I don't know what any of these animals are. But I sure like to look at them.



It was also a chance to play with the new Olympus Tough camera in underwater photo mode. Some of these were taken with it on "Macro" and....



...some were taken with it on the Wide Angle underwater setting:



This one was with it on another underwater setting, I think it's Underwater Scene or something like that:



We had been in the water for about an hour at this point. We had other things to do or we could have stayed there a big part of the day. We never get tired of looking around on the reefs here.



On the way back to the beach I stopped to try to get a better photo of one of the  reef ball artificial habitats.



I don't know how many of these are in place, but they define a trail out from the beach to the first section of reef, at least. You won't get lost. Especially when the visibility is as good as it is here.

There are plaques on the top of the structures to tell you about the various types of underwater life you will see around them.   And this area is thick with marine life to look at.   I should caution you, if I haven't already, about touching any of it with bare skin. 



The ocean isn't like a lake or river.  Animals in the ocean are a little more serious than the average trout.  The fish are carniverous, of course, but so is just about everything else.  And that which isn't trying to eat something else has gotten very good at defending itself  from those that are actively trying to eat it. In the case of the corals, just about all of them will severely sting unprotected skin.  The fire coral, in particular, will ruin your whole day.    If you don't know what fire coral looks like, there's a photo of some of it out of the water on the shell of a conch in another blog post.    And we've got a photo of a bigger fire coral underwater on the  reef in another one.  It's pretty stuff.  Like coral snakes.  Okay to look, but don't touch. 

If you just keep swimming toward the beach you will find yourself back at the little sand path from dry land down through the rocks..



And if you lift your head up at that point... you'll realize it's time to take the flippers off and walk again.



(I'm not sure, but I believe that path to the left of La Gringa there will take you directly to Smith's Reef road. It's probably a closer walk than the way we usually go.)

Once again, there's the little sandy trail to the right. And I was trying to get a photo of the bouys out where we had just been swimming several hundred yards out but they are not visible in this image. I know it's about two fat thumb widths to the left of the white speck, which is a boat that was cruising around us while we were out there.



Someday I'm going to work our  low level aerial photography issues and get you some nice shots from directly overhead here.    I'm serious.    The helium balloon didn't work out due to the  constant winds here, but I'm thinking a kite might do it.  Use the wind to our advantage instead of fighting it.  What a novel idea. 

Turning back up the beach, you can see about where normal high tide comes up to the top of the band of rocks.



The view across the lower Bight looking toward the Blue Hills portion of Provo where "Da Conch Shack" is located off in the distance:



It had been at least two years since we had been to Smith's Reef. Once we had boats of our own in the water we stopped coming here. And there have been some changes in those two years. One of them is that someone has built some more rental cottages there at the end of Coconut Road. They look quite nice, actually. A block stone exterior, nice porches and hammocks on the ocean side. This one is called the "Ballyhoo". There is another identical one next to it.



Well, that concludes today's tour of Smith's Reef. If anyone is interested in directions or needs any more info, you can email us through the blog and we'll help if we can.

There is another spot on down the beach that we have heard is also a good spot to snorkel from shore, at the Coral Gardens. We will go check that out and take some more photos for another post in the not too distant future. Hopefully.

And because people are often writing us with their interests about various resorts and hotels around the Turks and Caicos, we are planning to post more photos of some of the accomodations available. We can get to the ones on Providenciales fairly easily, North and Middle Caicos takes a little bit of effort. But there is a very nice beach called Malcolm's out by one of the poshier and newer resorts on the island, the Amanyara. We haven't been out that way in a while. We also want to do an update on the changes and improvements at the Meridian Club on Pine Cay.

If anyone has an interest in any other specific hotels or all inclusives here, please drop us an email and we will put it on the list. Sometimes it's nice to see photos of places that were not taken years ago by companies printing travel brochures.

Now, back to more mundane aspects of living here. I'll try to keep it brief.

I know the plants and trees in North America are largely shut down for winter now. Well, one of the aspects of life in the tropics is that the plants never do shut down. Never. We have plants around the house blooming even now, in October. La Gringa took a few photos just last week. Here's a shot of 'springtime' for any gardeners reading this.







What would one of these posts be without a little DIY thrown in at the end? (wait....don't answer that...)

Anyhow, along with the upsides of living in the tropics we also are never far from some of the downsides. We had closed up several of the hurricane shutters over some of our sliding glass doors a couple months ago at the beginning of hurricane season. This week we decided to open them up again, now that September is well behind us and the season is almost over.

Can you believe that this was a chromed aluminum door latch just three years ago?



When I went to brush off some of the aluminum oxide, the top portion of that piece broke off in my hand. Chrome plated something or other.  Whatever it is (was) it couldn't handle this environment.  Shouldn't one be able to expect sliding glass doors to be designed for a beach environment? Sigh. Something else to fix.

Another aspect of life here that we want to  keep in mind is that we don't live on this hilltop alone. While I was whining and blubbering about the corroded up door hardware, La Gringa told me I should stop snivelling and be careful where I was standing. Oh..... yeah. Right. Forgot about those guys....



We've been told that the scorpion stings here are not much worse than a bee sting. Well, that's nice to hear. I think.   But the wasp stings I've had here are the worst I've had anywhere.   I don't want to alarm people with the scorpion photos so I should tell you that the reason we see them is because we totally disrupted their hillside by digging it up for a house.  I would bet that you will never see a scorpion staying in one of the resorts on Grace Bay, for example.     They can't afford the bar tab.

Did you know scorpions glow under ultraviolet light? No kidding.  I read that online, and we tested it for ourselves.   Check this out.

And messing around with the hurricane shutters got me into another situation that needed addressing. These things lock with sliding aluminum rods that are held in place with some simple stainless bolts. The manufacturer ships them like this:


Hard to tell that one is nearly frozen in place by corrosion, isn't it? But it was. I managed to get it loose with pliers, but decided that to put it back weakened and bent would be a mistake. Easy, but wrong.
So I came up with the idea of replacing it with some threaded 1/4-20 stainless rod. I went to two of the local stores that carry stuff like that. Ha. No stainless quarter-twenty rod to be found. So I rummaged through my increasing stash of salvaged hardware, and came up with some stainless bolts with the right thread. But the bolts were wrong. The bent thumbscrew thingy in the top of this photo is the part I am looking to replace.

I could have just cut the threaded part of those bolts off but I really didn't want to ruin all three of them. And I needed to temporarily replace three of the thumbscrews until I can find the right hardware.
So I took a die and made my own threaded rod.



Voila! LOTS of threads:



Then I cut that up into three pieces, and used the nuts off the u-bolts in the other photos to come up with a slightly new way of holding these vertical aluminum locking rods in place:



I went back and put flat washers under the nuts, but basically what's changed is that instead of the end of the thumbscrew now being what holds the rod, it's the nut that holds it. And now if the threaded portion of the stainless gets jammed into the aluminum due to corrosion....it won't matter as much. I can loosen the nut easily with a wrench, and no longer have to worry about twisting the soft stainless thumscrew off. I'll keep an eye on the ones I just converted for a while and if it looks like a solution, I'll convert the rest of the 24 thumbscrews to the new method.

(Yeah, right. Like I've replaced the 22 outside lights damaged two years ago in Hurricane Hanna....but that's another story).

On other fronts.... I am now deep into learning what I need to learn to replace broken PVC irrigation system fittings that were glued in place instead of being taped and threaded in place by some (former) landscapers of ours....



We had that slab poured specifically for the landscaping people to install the valves and plumbing for the irrigation system. I don't know why they glued the valves in place and buried them in the dirt. Don't even get me started on that one. Maybe I'll take a break and go try to figure out what's making the funny noises in the Land Rover's drivetrain instead.

But don't worry 'bout the old Gringo. I'll get it done. I have a plumber's hat around here somewhere. If it hasn't rotted away yet.

You just enjoy the sunset.