After getting up at 6:00 and having a room service breakfast, we were ready for our first visit to a Caribbean island. Some resting we're doing. But we were excited to get started and it was a beautiful sunny day.
We were off the ship by 8:00 and met by a blast of heat that we hadn't felt in a long time. I was dripping with perspiration by the time we got to the Welcome to Grand Turk sign at the end of the pier. Right after the welcome sign was the duty free Cruise Port shopping area. Lots of gift shops but not a single grocery / convenience type store. Just tourist stuff, not a bag of potato chips to be found anywhere. But there were lots of duty free diamond stores if you're into that sort of shopping. We had gotten a big diamond sales pitch on the ship and lots of elderly ladies were falling victim to the pitch and visiting the diamond stores right away.
Later that morning we walked on the beach looking for a place we had found on the web called Jack's Shack that was supposed to be a good hangout with good tropical drinks. It was getting hot. But Jack's Shack is no more. It's now called the Local Village Bar & Grill. We hoped the drinks would still be good but we each had small, expensive and strange tasting margaritas that were not what we were after. Jack's dog is still there, we don't know where Jack is.
The water surrounding Grand Turk is a light turquoise color and is crystal clear. Very warm. The sand is like light brown flour. We were the only cruise ship docked in Grand Turk so the farther we walked, the less people there were to break up the beauty of the place.
We got adventuresome and rented some basic snorkle gear and explored the waters for awhile. We saw a few beautiful fish but not as many as we had hoped for. But it was fun.
After returning to the shopping area, we visited Margaritaville. It was smaller than I had expected and the drinks were expensive so we didn't fall victim to the advertising this time. But it had some very cool painted lounge chairs outside.
That was pretty much the extent of the shopping to be had in the Cruise Port except for a t-shirt that Mike got from Pirana Joe's. After that we took a taxi into Cockburn Town, the only town on Grand Turk. It is a sad, depressed little village. There are a few tourist type shacks but the majority of buildings are in bad need of repair from a devestating bout with Hurricane Ike in 2008. A corrupt local government that keeps all of the tourist money for itself, including a magnificent governor's mansion on the island, isn't helping the people at all. We didn't stay in Cockburn Town very long and soon took another taxi back to the Cruise Center. It was however very interesting visiting Cockburn Town. It gave us a real look at how people live on the island.
We headed out on the beach again looking for seashells. By the end of the walk all we ended up with was a very small handful of very small shells. No conch shells anywhere (as we had read there might be). We had to be back to the ship by 4:00 to prepare for a 5:00 departure.
That evening we had reservations at the Rembrandt for dinner, hoping for a good meal from the main dining room on the ship. I had a horrible combo of jerk chicken and rice. Mike had a mediocre tuna steak. Thinking that surely they would know how to make a good key lime pie that was shown on the dessert menu, we both opted for that to make up for the dinner. Totally flavorless. What a shame.
After dinner we went to the casino to see what shipboard casino was like. Lots of bells going off . Seemed to be a lot of people having a good time. We donated some money to slot machines so somebody else could be a winner.
To make up for dinner, we went up to the Crow's Nest again and had very good Pina Coladas before retiring to the room for the night to get a good sleep before seeing San Juan the next day.
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