“Ring the bell if you see JoJo the dolphin.” We saw that sign nailed up near Hemingway’s on the Beach. It’s a wonderful beach, the big one at Providenciales Island–12 miles long, powdery sand, water clear as the vodka-on-the-rocks at the next table.
All during lunch, the little bell never rang. Our Hemingway’s waitress said she saw JoJo regularly, “sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon.”
Every islander we met said something like that about JoJo, one of the most famous celebrities on and about this string of islands 575 miles southeast of Miami and 48 miles south of the Bahamas.
Celebrity-sighting is one of the minor sports in the Turks & Caicos (kay-kus), because the rich and famous have made their presence known in and around such resorts as Parrot Cay. One day, we toured that vicinity by boat.
“There goes Bruce Willis!” shouted our captain and guide, Lucky Forbes, as he steered a small group of us toward Middle Caicos Island for a day of cave-exploring, swimming, beachcombing and snorkeling.
“Well, that’s his boat, anyway,” Forbes said, as the small white vessel sped out of sight.
We passed by the shallows of Parrot Cay. Forbes slowed our flat-bottomed craft and pointed out homes belonging to Willis, Oprah Winfrey, Donna Karan and Keith Richards. They were sand-colored and unobtrusive, as was the Parrot Cay Resort, another celebrity magnet. We were given to understand that Bill Cosby goes there when he’s working up a scold.
Of course, we saw none of the People magazine crowd, and even if we had, they would have been mere dots on a vast expanse of sand, indistinguishable from the non-celebrity dots.
Where’s JoJo?
No sign of JoJo, either.
My wife, Juju, and I went on a sort of informal JoJo quest after we heard about him. She was amused by their similar names, for one thing. We heard that JoJo is something of a loner who now and then frolics with bathers near the shore.
“Oh, I’ve seen him lots and lots of times, ever since I was knee high,” said Rashad Quelch, now a tall young man who works at the bustling Leeward Marina back at Providenciales–known more familiarly as Provo. Quelch said JoJo doesn’t confine himself to the more populated Provo, where 18,000 Turks residents–called Belongers–live, and where hotels and condos are spreading faster than a Texas oil slick.
“How do you know it’s him?” Juju asked. “I thought all dolphins looked alike.”
“Because of the cuts on his back,” Quelch said. “Yes, he gets too close to the boat propellers. Besides, he’s the only friendly dolphin who will come around and play with you. Oh, you might see some other dolphins around him once in awhile. He has a girlfriend. He has a kid now also.”
But mother and son keep their distance from boats and bathers, while JoJo sidles up to swimmers and waders all over the island group, from South Caicos to North Caicos and, according to Quelch, all over the world if he happens to feel like it.
“He’ll swim around you. Sometimes with ladies, he’ll let them touch him. He usually don’t like much guy attention. He loves pregnant ladies also. He can tell a pregnant lady from a mile away. I believe he has an ultrasound thing going in his head.”
Conch celebrities
So, during our week on Turks & Caicos, we missed JoJo but concluded he was more than some kind of island myth. A disappointment, sure, but we did get to see Sally and Jerry, the performing conchs.
Conch is a major staple in the T&C diet, or so one might guess by studying restaurant menus: conch fritters (conch blended in with fritter dough), conch chowder, conch stew, conch salad, conch tacos. . . . Any minute, somebody’s sure to cook up buffalo conch, too.
We met conchs Sally and Jerry at the Conch Farm, near the eastern tip of Providenciales. Founded in 1984 by Mystic, Conn., entrepreneur Chuck Hesse, it’s said to be the only conch farm in the world, whereas all other conchs are harvested in the wild.
We toured the farm complex, observing tanks of larvae in a long shelter and then wandering past circular tanks on land, where young conchs develop and, turning our attention now out toward the Atlantic, gazing at the big, round pens where young-adult conchs develop free of predators.
“And now you get to meet Sally and Jerry,” our guide, Denver Fortune, announced. At first, the pair looked very much like the empty shells we had seen piled high in the parking lot and on the shelves of the Conch Farm gift shop–that familiar spiky surface atop a pink-and-pearl crevice.
But when Fortune grabbed them and said “C’mon out,” each conch in turn flopped halfway out of his or her enclosure–big yellowish blobs with eyes on slender stalks, monster-movie style.
“Ewww!” Juju said.
Fortune swore that no live conch could possibly make a public appearance like that without extensive training. He declined to elaborate on the method involved, but he did leave Sally and Jerry a few tender pellets of delicious algae.
Glow, little glow worm
In a week spent mostly on Provo, Juju and I never ran out of things to do. For example, we were just a few days past the full moon, and that meant we could do a trip to see the glow worms. They only glow for a brief period after the moon gets round and sets an example. The reason? Ask JoJo.
At dusk, along with some 20 others, Juju and I boarded a 52-foot catamaran sailboat named Arielle. Capt. Jay Stubbs piloted the boat toward an island called Mangrove Cay, while his passengers drank rum punch from plastic tumblers and crewmembers passed around trays of conch fritters.
The sunset-tinted clouds looked like a fluffy orange blanket fluttering on a windswept clothesline. That sight alone was worth the price of admission ($65 per person). When the darkness brought star showers and the telltale movements of satellites, Stubbs told us what we were about to see.
“They come out, male and female,” he said. “The bright ones are the female, and the dim ones are the male. They intertwine and the male dies. Look over the side.”
The black water suddenly became a mirror image of the sky, only the stars and satellites wiggled and glowed brighter than distant constellations. What had been a sort of sailboat party full of tourist chit-chat became a chorus of “ohhhs” and “ahhhs” and gasps and giggles. The worms did their bright-green and fatal (for the males) mating ritual–thousands of them, all around the boat.
We were witnessing the dance of the marine worm odonitosyllis. Glowing green females wriggle to the surface and release an egg mass. The equally glowing male fertilizes the eggs, momentarily causing an even brighter green flash before he expires. No special training involved.
This spectacle went on for about half an hour and suddenly stopped, as if the worms had been laboring within preordained time constraints. Either that, or they ran out of males. The occasion called for more rum punch and a bit of fresh fruit as the Arielle sailed slowly back to Leeward Marina.
Of course, it would take more time than we had at our disposal to try all the activities available. The Turks & Caicos are among the world’s few ideal bone-fishing locales, for instance. But the closest we got was one afternoon at the Coral Gardens resort dive shop, where we heard a man arranging a fishing trip to a shallows area where they might be biting. “They’re hard to catch,” he said, “and I might be lucky to get two or three in a day. But what a fight! It’s really fun. You throw them back, they’re no good to eat. But bonefish are great sport.”
Speaking of Coral Gardens, Juju and I spent most of our beach time there, because a small parking lot and a public egress allowed easy access to a section of the magnificent Grace Bay beach. The attraction there is Bight Reef, where fish, divers and snorkelers meet in water so clear and buoyant that I could float face down and watch a beauty pageant of fish with yellow stripes, or black fin tips, or luminescent blue scales. There were fat fish, tiny fish, fish shaped like rockets. . . . Well, it was better than that big aquarium behind the registration desk at the Las Vegas Mirage.
Naturally, I kept an eye out for JoJo the dolphin, too, even though I knew by then that he had an aversion to guys. No such luck, of course.
Buildings going up
Even though Providenciales is hardly as exclusive as Parrot Cay, Grace Bay and beyond–wherever there’s a fine-sand beach and turquoise water–have been rapidly sprouting resorts and condominiums clearly designed for the wealthy.
From our own modest digs, a Comfort Suites tucked behind the Ports of Call shopping and restaurant complex (actually more of a mini-mall), we could walk 300 yards on a path leading to a section of virtually deserted beach. But the huge construction project directly west of the path, and going on for at least two city blocks, indicated the beach wouldn’t be virtually deserted for very long.
A complex called Seven Stars was rising as fast as cranes and imported Philippine construction gangs could put it up–ugly, gray concrete hulks now, but soon, according to the advertisements, a collection of seven-story buildings. They’d be surrounded by lawns, palm trees, spas and almost everything one would need to live the good life. The prices? Well, if you have to ask…
Seven Stars isn’t the only one. Banners on vacant lots all along Grace Bay Road and Lower Bight Road near Turtle Cove promised more of the same. Some of the resorts and condos already standing were still shaking off their last bits of construction dust. Belongers of modest means live farther inland.
One morning, Juju and I pulled into the Turks & Caicos Islands Tourist Board office in Stubbs Diamond Plaza, a building that houses offices and the Providenciales Police.
Lloyd (Skipper) Stubbs is the quality control officer for the tourist board and part of a family with interests in a variety of enterprises. He informed us that money is talking loud right now, almost drowning out the surf. (The U.S. dollar is the accepted currency on the islands.)
After we mentioned how we noticed the absence of mega-hotels in the Cancun mode, Stubbs said, “We’re not interested in the mass tourism market.” He indicated that condos and various forms of time-shares will predominate.
“I was just at a travel conference in Toronto,” Stubbs recalled, “and one person said, `Oh, you guys, it seems arrogant to only go after the high-end market.’
“I said, `Yes, but it’s cheaper.’
“If everybody else is spending all their dollars to promote mass tourism, how much more would we have to spend to catch up with them?”
Learning tourism
Mass-market islands, like Jamaica and the Bahamas, have so much hotel inventory, that they could easily undercut any bargains that the Turks & Caicos might offer. Besides, when the masses show up, the people with Oprah Winfrey bank accounts tend to pack up and leave for the next exclusive retreat. And judging by the number of imported workers here already, there evidently aren’t enough Belongers to fill all the jobs.
“We’re relatively new to tourism at that,” Stubbs said. “Most people come on cruises to Grand Turk, and even that’s fairly recent.”
Besides diving and fishing, speculation ranks as a favorite recreation. “Real estate is the new stock market,” Stubbs declared.
He pointed out that some houses valued at $60,000 18 years ago, now go for $1 million or more. Around the time of the Turks & Caicos Film Festival last October, developers were just putting the finishing touches on the Grace Bay Club. “Their penthouses started at $1.5 million. One penthouse–even before completion–changed hands four times and ended up selling for $4 million, because one investor bought it from another investor and another investor made a profit on it [selling to] another investor!”
Grand Turk, the cruise ship port, is one of the T&C islands Juju and I missed this time around. We were told Grand Turk has some charming old buildings and an excellent museum for those who want to delve into stories of exploration and piracy.
There they also might learn that Turks refers to the fez-shaped turks-head cactus that grows in some places and Caicos means “string of islands” in the Lucayan language. It’s believed Grand Turk was among the first islands–if not the first–that Christopher Columbus mistook for the Asian subcontinent, or “Indies.”
In February of 1962, after orbiting the earth, John Glenn splashed down close to Grand Turk. Scott Carpenter landed in the same area a month later.
Going for the luxe
That, naturally, was long before tourism and real estate arrived in a big way. To see an example of ne plus ultra accommodations on Providenciales, Juju and I drove to the brand-new Amanyara resort on the northwest corner of the island.
Landscapes out there are a mix of desert and marsh with a few houses and some nascent resort sites still in the billboard stage. Soon after we passed the charmless Providenciales “downtown” (a mixture of utilitarian offices and stores in scattershot locations), the roads lost their pavement. They were some of the pot-holed and gravelly worst I’ve encountered since a trip to Tanzania several years ago.
After a 45-minute drive covering the 25 miles from Grace Bay, we came upon Amanyara at last, minimalist luxury in the Aman Resorts tradition. Hotel executive Kevin Brooke led us past reflecting pools and an open-air reception area toward an infinity swimming pool blending perfectly with the ocean.
With its plush divans on the adjoining terrace, it looked like the sort of place where Victoria’s Secret might stage a photo shoot–which explained the presence of lights, tripods, models, a garment rack and improvised changing tent beside the sunken circular bar in the main building.
The 40 hotel units are more like scattered cabins, modernist cabins with floor to ceiling glass walls, flat-screen TVs, polished tropical wood and ocean views. Everything first-class, of course, as one might expect for $1,300 a night.
Brooke also showed us one of the 33 villas–most of them still under construction. It looked like an extended version of the hotel unit, only with a vast living room. Butler, cook and maid services are included in the price: $8 to $11 million. “I have a bid in for one,” Brooke said. His grin and wink, however, said “NOT!”
Juju and I decided we wouldn’t play the real estate stock market either. The hot Turks & Caicos sunshine had burned us enough.
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bcross@tribune.com
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IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
The most convenient option from Chicago is American Airlines to Miami and a change of planes for Providenciales. Fares for an arbitrary Feb. 14 departure and Feb. 20 return were in the $600 range. GETTING AROUND
Taxis are plentiful for that occasional jaunt to an off-resort restaurant or shop. The Gecko shuttle bus makes the rounds in Providenciales for $4 a ride or $11 daily.
We rented a car for the flexibility. A basic Toyota cost $320 for six days. Insurance is extra. Driving is on the left, but most vehicles steer from the left-hand side, U.S. style.
SLEEPING THERE
Club Med Turkoise (Grace Bay, Providenciales; 800-258-2633; www.clubmed.com) got the tourism boom swinging when it opened in 1984. It remains boisterous and all-inclusive after all these years. Their deals and specials pop up frequently. One I spotted for February came to about $200 a night, again, all-inclusive.
Juju and I stayed at the Comfort Suites (Grace Bay, Providenciales; 888-678-3483; www.comfortsuitestci.com), a relatively low-priced but more than adequate hotel tucked behind the Ports of Call shopping mall. Its two three-story buildings flanked a handsome swimming pool. Basic rate was $114.71. Taxes and a service charge (add-ons charged all over the Turks) added another $26.
EATING THERE
On our first night in Grace Bay, we caught a quick bite at what we thought was the Barefoot Cafe, an informal bar/restaurant in the Ports of Call mini-mall. But the menu cover said “Jimmy’s Dive Bar” and the prices printed on the inside were crossed out and lower prices written in. The sign above the door remained “Barefoot Cafe.” A few days later, owner Jimmy Ardavany explained he’d just bought the place, thought the original prices were unconscionable and would soon change the name on the sign.
Would that some other places chose to follow Ardavany’s lead. But no. Prices are high all over the Turks. The good news is that sometimes the tabs are justified.
At Anacaona in the Grace Bay Club (649-946-5050; www.gracebayclub.com/dining.html), you live out your tropical fantasy on a torchlit terrace overlooking the ocean. My filet of red snapper came with shaved fennel, a beignet of sweet potato and a tapenade sauce. Entrees from $28, appetizers $11-$16. The restaurant name refers to a Caribbean queen. You can look it up.
Almost in the same class–terrace, view, terrific eats–was the Magnolia Wine Bar & Restaurant at the Miramar Resort (Turtle Cove, Providenciales; 649-941-5108; www.miramarresort.tc). The signature dish: cracked pepper and sesame seed-crusted rare seared tuna with soy ginger sauce, jasmine rice, seasoned vegetables, $29.
ACTIVITIES
The restaurants mentioned above all were on Providenciales. That’s because Juju and I had only one meal elsewhere–the deli lunch included in an all-day excursion arranged by Silver Deep (Leeward Marina, 649-946-5612; www.silverdeep.com).
Our group of 10 ate near the rough surf on beautiful Mudjadin Beach, Middle Caicos, after exploring the iguana population at Little Water Cay and the big Middle Caicos cave (Caribbean’s largest) near the village of Conch Bar. After that, we took a long boat ride to another beach, gathered shells and finally snorkeled on a reef. The cost: $169 per person, including snorkeling gear, guides and lunch.
That company and a few others fix people up with almost any sort of water sport, tour (eco-tours are big) or fishing trip they desire. Provo Golf & Country Club is pricey–$150 greens fee–but an excellent test. Our Conch Farm tour, by the way, cost $6 each.
INFORMATION
The Turks & Caicos Tourist Board, Room 2817, 60 E. 42nd St. New York, NY 10165-0015; 800-241-0824; www.turksandcaicostourism.com.
Or visit/call the offices on the islands:
Providenciales: At Stubbs Diamond Plaza; 649-946-4970 or 649-941-5494.
Grand Turk: On Front Street; 649-946-2321.
–Robert Cross
