Our Honeymoon: Grand Turk

Our last stop on our Honeymoon Cruise was the islands of Turks & Caicos.  Grand Turk to be exact.  We had scheduled an excursion of swimming with the stingrays here, but after talking to some of the other passengers who had experienced this before, we decided to cancel the excursion and just explore the island on our own.

Well, it turns out that Grand Turk is probably the last island in the Caribbean that you’d want to explore.  I’ll explain in a minute.

 

When we docked, we pulled up right along side the Carnival Pride, one of the ships in the Carnival fleet.  I think our ship looks much bigger and prettier than Carnival’s cruise ship, but maybe I’m just a little biased.

 

Here we are as we exited the ship on a beautiful sunny day in the Caribbean.  Little did we know that the beautiful sunny day wouldn’t last.

 

A little home away from home.  I’ve only ever seen Margaritaville in Nashville, but here it was!  On Grand Turk!  And this Margaritaville was awesome…..minus how crowded it was.  They had a full restaurant, plus a gigantic pool with a swim up bar!  Since both our ship and Carnival’s ship were docked at the same time, that meant that there was barely even swimming room.  Side note: notice the beautiful blue sky above.

So since we canceled our excursion, we decided to rent a car and explore the island.

 

Yep that’s a cow…..and yep….that’s rain on our window.  It was sunny and beautiful not ten minutes earlier.  This was one of many cows, horses, and donkeys that apparently roam the island freely.

 

Some wild horses.

 

We finally found a gorgeous, not-as-crowded beach to hang out at, but five minutes after we arrived, it started pouring again.  So rather than lay out in the rain, we decided to explore some more.

 

On our drive we saw this big fella.  This was seriously the biggest horse on the island, and the only painted one.  All the others were a brownish red color or dark brown.

 

Well hello there!  Aren’t you a handsome boy!  And very happy to see us apparently.  Gross.

 

Don’t mind us.  We’re just sitting in our car staring at you while you eat.

 

This was the only school we saw on the entire island and it was completely deserted and run down.  Looks like the doings of one of the many hurricanes or tropical storms they get probably every year….maybe several times a year.

 

This cute little donkey family was right outside the school.  Daddy (in the front) was not too happy with some other donkeys that kept getting to close to his wife and baby.  He would chase them off while kicking and making that ridiculous honking sound that donkeys make.

 

Oh hi!  It’s you again!

 

That’s right!  Being the horse lover that I am, I got out and pet him.  Luckily he was a very friendly horse, and not skittish like all the others.

 

Nice horsey!  And look how big he is!!

 

Isn’t this little fluffy baby donkey the cutest thing?!  He ran away when I took another step, unfortunately.

 

This beach was on the unpopulated part of the island.  Well, the whole island is not very populated, but this part had no houses nearby, so I would say it’s unpopulated…..for a 7 mile long island.

 

This next beach was along side a little row of shops on the islands “main street”….which could only fit one car at a time.

 

Steve bought this local beer and thought, “What a good opportunity to take a picture of my e-cig in a beautiful setting!”  He said the beer was excellent!  I wouldn’t know.  I don’t like beer.

 

On our way back to the dock we saw this big fella.  You don’t want to hit this guy going 50 mph.  Pretty sure he would just stand still and our rental car would be totaled.

 

I mean look at the size of this guy!  His balls are practically hitting his knees as he walks.  That can’t be comfortable.  Oh, and notice the lovely blue sky that appeared as we were about to leave.  Wonderful timing.

 

We posed for one last picture on the island of Grand Turk before heading back to the ship.  I don’t think we needed to be back for another couple hours but we had pretty much seen all the island had to offer, and Steve wanted to get back to the casino.  Geez.

 

Here’s the view of Grand Turk from the dock.  Of course they have the beautiful touristy beach all beautiful with planted palm trees perfectly manicured and a wonderful shopping center just off the dock.  But don’t let that fool you, folks!  We know the real Grand Turk, and it is not all that pretty.  Yes the water is….but the island itself….not so bueno.

 

I do have to say that the water at Turks & Caicos was the prettiest water we saw on our cruise.  We were still docked in this picture, standing out on our balcony.  Steve bought that sweet necklace at one of the shops, and I got a dress.  We also bought a hand-carved, wooden sculpture of two dolphins dancing.  It was a great experience, but I think once in a lifetime is enough of a visit for this island.