Day Three! Wow...the sun is Hot!!

December 2nd

This morning we were up at the wee hours of about 3:45 am Calgary time...5:45 here. We had an early breakfast just as we sailed into Grand Turk. Turks and Caicos includes eight main islands and about forty small low – lying cays.....Apparently discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492. This area has lots of history including African slaves who worked on salt ponds and cotton plantations. In 1834 slavery here was abolished. We really only visited a tiny part of this area and didn’t really spend much time on land. We arrived at about 7:30 am Grand Turk Time and headed out on a diving boat. We went to a couple of areas one with a drop off of about 7000 feet and another around 10 feet or so. The fish were awesome to see....The difference in coral to the drop off was really cool. As you just put your head under water you can hear the sand, rocks, coral falling, it sounds like crackling in your ears. Then just below the surface there were also tiny jelly fish, in which Mike was sure he developed a rash from swimming through. We only saw fish, however, some people saw a couple of tiny sharks, a sting ray, and an eel....where were we??? Needless to say....we missed those. We were only snorkelling so we didn’t go down too far, however Julia managed to go pretty far down, she was very comfortable with the whole diving thing and went off on her own...we had to keep finding her. Very cool...we then headed out to bake in the sun, swim, and see all of the damage Hurricane Ike did a couple of months ago. Trees were uprooted, roofs blown off, shingles about, fences ripped out , even some vehicle on their sides still. Mike and I walked the beach and found shells and rocks....apparently this is in our blood to do collect rocks/shells and so Mike filled his pockets. Mike found a huge shell that he carried through security and wasn’t stopped by anyone! It is shiny on the inside, and yes, you can hear the ocean. The sun didn’t come out until we were done diving....which apparently Turks has sunshine 350 days of the year. I was beginning to wonder if we hit one of the 15, when finally the sun came out and immediately warmed us up....pretty much instantly. Love the heat.
It appeared the Cruise Ships have bought a portion of land specifically for themselves....shopping, beach area and docking the ship....Some of the locals sell their crafts in there, however there are alot of other stores....apparently people love jewellery here as there are multitudes of stores with shiny objects that they all seem to flock to.

After a light lunch a swim, and a sauna, Jules and Randy have done what Randy does best in the afternoons.....yes nap. We are now at sea until tomorrow around noon...Apparently we have about 450 miles to go and are travelling at about 20 knots.