Grand Turk Kayak Time

Well.. this week has flown by – I’m settling in, getting used to things and have actually found myself with a decent amount of free time- only I lent my internet card to james and he didn’t give it back til just then. I got to do some hosting in princess popstar as well - so hungry for the microphone

Today I was on Grand Turk – the capital of Turks and Caicos, a archipelligo of small islands that are actually under control of the UK. We arrived at 1pm, and I was lucky enough to have got the tour I booked! Kayaking and eco tour!
Basically, staff get free tours- but only if the tour you want is not filled up by passengers (passengers come first, obviously).

I was with a nice group of passengers today – some I had met during ceramics, two ladies who came to the ‘singles and solos get toghether I hosted and quite a few others I had met at various theme nights. I have pictures but the internet on the ship is TOOOO SLOWWW (i'll upload in fort lauderdale on sunday)

En route to our kayaking destination, we were given a quick tour of the island, which is home to 7000 people – 3000 permanent residents and 4000 people from other nations working on turks – mainly in the tourism industry.

Turks’ main claim to fame is that the first manned space flight by an American splashed down less than a kilometre from the island – and they have the actual module the astronaut was in as a statue on the island.

It is a very interesting island – it has no soil (100% sand) so vegetiation is tough and scrubby. What few trees they had were blown over in hurricane Ike two years ago. However, the island used to export salt to the whole Caribbean area – there are many disused salt pans dotted all over the place- and some of them smell pretty bad.

Our kayaks for the tour had clear bottoms, so we could see the floor of the inlet below us. We kayaked around the mangroves for about an hour – where we got to hold amazing “upside down” jelly fish, that eat algae and use them to provide a living, photosynthesising energy store, sea cucumbers (much uglier here than in Australia) an sea urchins.

As I was alone, I had to share a kayak with one of the guides (from the domenican republic). He was about 5ft tall and batshit insane. But it made for a fun trip. Near the coast, we disembarked and went for a nature walk. The island only got cars in the 1980’s – and before then horses and donkeys were used for transportation. Now that cars have arrived, the horses an donkeys now run free and are everywhere. Cute, but watch out for the poo.

We got to taste prickly pear and beach grapes (tasted like lilipilies) and comb the beach for conch shells.

I had a wonderful time – I was 5 minutes late for library duty but DJ dave covered for me, bless his cotton socks.

Tonight is western night and I’m just getting ready to go down to the officer’s mess for dinner- the boots they gave me are way too big… they are pulling up the anchor and as we live at the front of the ship, it is LOUDDD