Turks and Caicos Explorer

Well... our time in Cozumel had ended for this year. It was 100+ glorious days on the beautiful "Island of the Swallows" with scuba diving galore. I think my final tally was 95 dives making my total dives to date around 303. But Wait... there's more!

For six months we'd been planning to do the Turks and Caicos Explorer, a liveaboard run by Explorer Ventures. Our first experience with this company was two years ago on the Caribbean Explorer II, an excellent scuba trip with an itinerary that had us diving in St. Kitts, Statia (St. Eustatius) and Saba. Could this trip be as enjoyable and perfect as the last one? Read on to find out...

The Turks and Caicos are a small set of islands near the Bahama Island chain. They are a non-sovereign territory of the United Kingdom. Scuba diving is so popular here that on the immigration form there are checkboxes just for scuba as your reason for visiting. In terms of commercialization the island seems moderately built-up but there are no cruise ship visits here that I know of. The island's economy and general appearance reminded me a lot of St. Croix. Food is very expensive here: a simple snack/dinner for two consisting of one appetizer, a glass of wine, a bottle of beer (local, tasted like rusty pipes) and some water came to $50.

Our group consisted of four people: Andrew, Kathleen (whom we'd met on the Caribbean Explorer II trip), Tracey and myself. The passenger list showed there were a total of 15 divers for this trip. The boat has a maximum of 20 passengers.

We arrived a day early, partly to give time to decompress after a day of travel and partly to add assurance that we wouldn't miss our boat departure. Four others on this trip did miss the first day because of weather delays in Minnesota. For our first night we stayed at a lovely hotel near the town of Providenciales called the Miramar Resort. On the day of our embarkment, the T&C Explorer had already arranged our taxi to the dock so we had an easy morning walking around "town" and relaxing until the pickup at 3pm. With the exception of small groups of hotels at beaches and a few retail shops to keep their tourists happy, we didn't see much in the way of a downtown area.

We arrived at the boat mid-afternoon and were greeted warmly by several of the crew. I then spent several hours assembling the digital camera housing. Unlike the Cozumel trip, I was most pleased to discover that not a single thing was left at home. Relief.

On to the business of diving. This boat trip was a 7-day itinerary very similar to Caribbean Explorer II. Five days of diving with up to five dives a day, then a last day with two early morning dives. That's a total of 27 dives you can do in one week!! A daily plan kind of went like this:

7am - Light breakfast

8am - First dive

9:30am - snack

10:30 - Second dive

12noon - Lunch

1:30pm - Third dive

3pm - snack

4:30pm - Fourth dive

6pm - Dinner

8pm - Night dive

Some of the most awesome things we saw on this dive trip:

A wild dolphin played with us! No shit! After 300+ dives this is the first and only time I have seen a dolphin underwater.

Good picture of a Reef Squid at night, showing the mesmerizing galaxy of colours they display under our artificial lights (see pic)

Humpback Whales (two adults and their calf) although they avoided our boat, probably protecting the calf

Tracey found a blennie that wasn't in the books, apparently the Reef folks are just now classifying it. She's excited about the find nonetheless.

For the most part the dive sites had much the same topographical dive profile, same depth profile, and generally the same fish and corals. There were variations in the health of the reef and sizes of fish schools but in truth it was a slight disappointment not to have a bit more variety in the dives. Added to this was the limited visibility, usually about 50-70 feet. However this didn't deter my main activity which was underwater photography. Each site had limitless opportunities at macro and wide-angle, and I made use of both configurations throughout the trip.

For a quick look at (unprocessed) photos from the trip, go here:
My Google/Picasa photo album

I ended the week with 22 dives (total dives to date = 325), approximately 1,100 photos, no sunburn but plenty of smiles. Would I go on this trip again? Probably not, but not because of the boat or the crew. Instead I would choose another destination like maybe Roatan or Caymans. When spending this kind of money on a dive trip I'd like to get a wider range of dive experience. It was great to dive Turks and Caicos once, but I don't feel an urge to return anytime soon.

Did Explorer Ventures live up to their reputation? They sure did! Would I book another liveaboard tour with them in the future? Absolutely.