Why Turks and Caicos Will Always Hold a Special Place in My Heart

Back in May, I was messing around on the internet (like any good millennial) and decided that Mike and I should go away for a long weekend in November to celebrate being together for three years.  After searching Kayak and JetSetter, we picked Turks and Caicos.  It wasn't super expensive and not terribly far away, so it looked like the perfect place to escape to.

A few months later, Mike was diagnosed with cancer.  When the doctors finished removing all the cancerous tissue, we knew that this would also be a trip to celebrate overcoming that obstacle.  Needless to say, we were both looking forward to our long weekend away for many reasons.  But Mike had an additional reason that he was keeping from me.

Our first night there we had crummy weather, which I thought was making Mike antsy.  After all, we had been on a plane for the better part of the day.  He was pacing around the room, trying to find any reason to go outside. Once the rain let up, I agreed to go for a walk around the resort.

In the middle of our resort was this very cool pool that had a waterfall and many little bridges that you could walk across.  Mike told me to look for a place for us to sit. While I was looking for a dry chair, I suddenly hear Bruno Mars' "Marry You"  starting to play.  I spin around and see Mike down on one knee, holding out a ring, asking me to marry him.  Needless to say, my answer was yes.  I was so overcome with emotion that it took me a couple minutes to actually take the ring from him.  And as you can see, Mike did a great job picking it out.

As of right now, we don't have much of anything in the way of wedding plans.  It will probably be awhile before we do.  But we want to thank everyone for all your warm wishes. It really means a lot to us.  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I know I did :)

The bridge where he proposed.

A Little Bit About Provo

Our last two days in Turks and Caicos were spent on the beach, which I now miss terribly having landed in Hartford on Tuesday night. We didn't really do anything of note, so I wanted to use this post to talk about the island we were on.

Mike and I were on the island Providenciales, or Provo as most people call it. In talking to the hotel staff, we discovered that a lot of them were originally from Haiti. There were also some people from Jamaica. It was very interesting walking to the Haitians and hearing about life over there. Most of them had not been back in years.

I can understand why they would want to come to Provo. We were able to safely walk on the beach at night, which was so nice. You couldn't do that in Jamaica, and I'm guessing Haiti as well. We also walked down the main road at night and felt completely safe.
Provo is in the process of being developed. They didn't have any cars on the island before 1964.  A lot of nice, new shopping centers have gone in but thanks to what happened in 2008 a lot of the storefronts remain empty.

Since I'm typing on my phone, I'm going to cut this post short. But stay tuned!  I still have one post left that you definitely won't want to miss...

Snorkeling, Diving for Conch, and Hanging with Iguanas

Yesterday Mike and I were handed a brochure for various excursions you can take from our resort.  While we lounged on the beach, we flipped through it and saw one for snorkeling.  We had heard good things about it from multiple people, so we decided to sign up.  This morning at 9 AM, the boat came and got us for our adventure.

To quote Andy Samberg, "I'm on a boat!"

Mike and I, along with three other couples, set off on the incredibly choppy waters of the Atlantic to the reef that lies just beyond the island.  There were a couple moments when the current was getting so rough that I was getting nervous, but arriving at the reef made it all worth it.

Each person was given a pair of flippers and snorkeling goggles and was told to head out.  We set off from the side of the boat and began to explore.  The fish were all sorts of magnificent colors, ranging from white to purple to black and yellow.  I even saw one that was yellow and purple and thought it would be the perfect mascot for the Minnesota Vikings because its colors were exactly the same.  Since the water was so choppy, it pushed the fish in all sorts of directions that they didn't want to head into.  They were trying so hard to eat off of the coral but kept getting swept away.  Even I was getting swept away.  But it was a great time, especially since the last time I went snorkeling I kept getting water in my goggles, making it very hard to see anything.

After our group was done taking a peek at the ocean life, we left the Atlantic and headed towards the Caribbean Sea to go dive for conch.  While the water was much less choppy, the current was very strong.  I managed to find a conch within five minutes, but me being me, I went to pick it up and the seaweed freaked me out so I dropped it like a spaz.  A few minutes later, I found another one that was face up and got really excited, but manged to drop that one too.  After another fifteen minutes of searching, I found one, picked it up, and started to head back to our boat.  I was so proud of myself for finally finding one that I willed my tired legs to get me to the boat.  I arrived, beaming with pride, only to be told that the conch I found was too small and that I had to throw it back.  Needless to say, I was bummed.  And then to add insult to injury, Mike one- (or should I say three-) upped me by coming back to the boat with three conch.  Only one of them was big enough to keep, so we had to throw the rest back.  He was the only person that managed to find one big enough to hold on to, so that was pretty cool.

This is what the conch looked like in the water.

Our next stop was the uninhabited Iguana Island.  The first thing we did at Iguana Island was watch one of the crew members get the conch ready to eat.  First they hammered the shell, and then pulled the conch out of the shell and cut it up so that the meat could be prepared.  Fun fact: the conch spine is an aphrodisiac.  I tried it and I have to say that a.) it tasted like a salty spaghetti noodle and b.) it didn't really work.  Keep that in mind in case anyone ever tries to offer it to you.

A female iguana.

The iguanas on the island were only about a foot long.  One of our tour guides had a bag full of chopped up veggies that he would throw out so that the iguanas would come out.  They weren't really scared of us and they were really fun to watch scurry around.

On the other side of the island, there was a beautiful beach with amazing water where we went for a quick swim.  When we got back to the boat, conch salad was waiting for us.  It was a lot like ceviche, meaning it was absolutely delicious.  Now, the last time I went on a maritime excursion in the Caribbean, it did not end well for me.  So I really had to work on not eating a whole lot to prevent reliving the St. Martin's Boat Trip of '06 nightmare.  It was not easy, but I made it back to the resort without my lunch making a reappearance.  Overall, it was a success.

Conch salad.  Super yummy.

I'm really glad that we decided to go on this trip.  Usually I have reservations about excursions like this, but the guides were a lot of fun, as were the other couples, and I didn't feel like it was super kitschy.  It made for a great day.  Plus, we got to keep the conch shell that Mike found.  In my opinion, it is one of the coolest souvenirs that we have ever gotten.

TCI: First Full Day

We are finally here!  Thank goodness.  Our trip here wasn't too eventful, unless you count the last 45 minutes of our flight that had just enough turbulence to make me feel like I was going to lose my lunch.  It was not fun.  But we arrived in one piece and that's all that really mattered.

Our resort is really awesome.  We have a view of the ocean from our room and were welcomed with complementary rum punch, so it's fair to say that we're pretty happy with the place we picked.

This is where we lounged this morning.

When we arrived it was raining quite a bit, which I gathered is pretty unusual.  Mike and I ended up hanging out at our beachfront restaurant/bar that's at our resort and then went to sleep relatively early last night because there wasn't much to do.  But we made up for our lack of activity today.  We spent a good part of our day hanging out on the beach.  Since our resort is beachfront, we had to walk a grand total of five minutes to get where we were going.  We picked out an umbrella, put our stuff down, and headed out into the water.  An hour and a half later, we decided we needed a change of scenery.  There is also an area that has a couple of hammocks in it that we ended up hanging out in during the afternoon.  Today was a lazy day for sure.

The water here is the bluest I have ever seen.  I don't remember it being this blue in Jamaica, nor do I remember it being this blue in Corsica or St. Martin.  When you first get in it, the water is kind of cold but then your body gets used to it and it's absolutely lovely.  We made it through the day without a sunburn, so that's a plus.

We've been eating pretty well here.  I had conch pizza for lunch today and Mike had conch wantons at a resort close to ours, and last night we had conch fritters.  Sensing a theme here?  Tonight we went to a pretty fancy-pants restaurant down the street and had an amazing meal.  You can tell that the restaurants here are struggling a little because they aren't super full and they are offering all sorts of deals.

Conch pizza.  Complete with rum punch.  Yum!

As far as being in a foreign country goes, there really isn't too much that is different here.  The biggest difference I've seen is that people drive on the other side of the road and speed limits are posted in kilometers.  The cars here aren't consistent with which side the steering wheel is placed on, so sometimes you view them placed on the left and sometimes you see them placed on the right.  The cars are also pretty large.  I remember St. Martin having everything ranging from SmartCars to SUVs, but here I've seen more of the bigger cars.  Another interesting thing that I've noticed here is that the poverty isn't as stark as it was when we were in Jamaica.  Don't get me wrong, it is still present here but nothing like it was when we were on that island.

Our view during lunch.

Tomorrow morning we are getting up early to go on a glass bottom boat/snorkeling tour.  We also get to go to Iguana Island to check out some of the wildlife.  Needless to say, we're both pretty excited.  Stay tuned for my next post on that!

The Good and the Bad: 2012 Edition

I know we still have about a month and a half left in the year, but I'm ready to call 2012 one of the most up-and-down years of my life.  There's been the good: Carnaval in Rio, many beautiful weddings of dear friends, a new, absolutely adorable addition to Mike's family, a trip to Fenway to see the Sox beat the Yankees, my sister graduating and landing a job in a theatre in Florida, IU Basketball being ranked No. 1, and so much more.

But there has also been the bad.  Like the NHL lock-out (seriously guys, get it together), stressful moments at work, the Nats losing in the playoffs, IU Football (but who am I kidding?  They've always sucked), and on a more serious note, the day I found out that my lovely boyfriend had cancer.  Now before you all start freaking out, he's totally fine and has been a rock star through everything.  Two surgeries later, they got everything out and there is no need for chemo or radiation, so we are thanking our lucky stars that we were given the best possible scenario.  I also want to take a second and give a shout-out to our friends and family because all of you were super supportive during all this.  Honestly, I don't think we could have gotten through the past couple months without you guys.  Thank you.

Needless to say, our summer was not the best.  Between surgeries and doctor's appointments, there was not much time for an extended vacation anywhere.  But now that things have temporarily slowed down, Mike and I have decided to get one more stamp in our passports before the year ends.  On Friday we are off to Turks and Caicos to get some much needed relaxation before heading up north to New England for Turkey Day.

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For those of you going "Turks and wha?" the Turks and Caicos islands are an overseas British Territory that is made up of eight main islands.  We are staying on the Providenciales island.  The country is about 620 miles from Miami, which means that the flight isn't super long.  There is supposed to be amazing snorkeling and some of the bluest waters you can imagine.  I'm getting excited to go exploring!  Throughout the trip, I'll be updating every once in awhile to let you in on our island-life experience!