Today we spent on the beautiful island of Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos islands. The weater is absolutely perfect – about 29C – and we arrived at 7am to a cloudless sky.

Stuart, Bob and I headed off the ship at about 0830 to get to Grand Turk Divers, who we had arranged to go diving with. They were not far from the ship by cab in a small bungalow just off the beach. We were soon sorted out with paperwork and rental kit and we made our way down to their dory style boats. There were about 6 of us on our boat. Talk about being waited on! Our dive guide did just about everything for us and made it pretty easy to get ourselves wet.

Did two dives along the walls of the island both of them to about 26/27 metres and ending with time spent on top of the wall in around 10m. The corals were absolutely lovely and the walls were thrilling – my favourite. We saw a reef shark more or less as soon as we got on the reef wall, and there were also schooling barracuda, grouper, puffer fish, stingrays, many large barrel sponges…. I enjoyed the diving very much indeed. The water was warm. I was wearing a 3mm shortie suit but I think I could have gone without. Very impressed with the diving here and it’s a place you could imagine spending a lovely couple of weeks exploring by land and sea.

I will have some more photos from Stuart’s camera, which will be better I am sure, but will add them tomorrow so check back again.

And here they are…

Got back to the dock around 130. The beaches here are absolutely white and the sea is the most extraordinary range of blues from lightest aquamarine to the deep blue of the wall. Stunning.

We came back on board and showered off and then got some lunch. We might have gone back to the beach but we were sailing at 430 so we decided instead to relax around the aft pool. It was very peaceful and we had a bit of a nap.

Sailed on time heading back towards Florida on Saturday morning and our cruise of the western Caribbean comes next. I could have spent a lot longer here. It does not have the tropical beauty of the lush green islands but the gardens of coral just under the water more than make up for the flat terrain. It’s a water lovers dream….

Tonight was another gala night on board. The dinner was either lobster tail or beef wellington or at least they were the main two options. I chose the beef wellington and i’m glad I did because the lobster tail was very small. Really the portion sizes are small. God knows how the American passengers are dealing with this LOLOLOL

Take a look at the excellent short dive clips