A Few Days in Paradise

We wanted a reason to get out of the country for election day, so we used Justin’s birthday as an excuse. (Before I get any complaints about shirking our civic duties, I should mention that we both absentee voted before leaving the States.) We escaped to the Caribbean – to the island nation of Turks and Caicos – or as we called it, Paradise.

We stayed on the island of Providenciales, or Provo, as the locals call it. We spent our first couple of days just relaxing and walking along the beach in Grace Bay.

Our second day there was election day back home and we watched the coverage on the news, courtesy of our resort’s satelite stations. As the polls closed on the East Coast in the U.S., we took a sunset swim in the sea.

The next day was Justin’s birthday, so we had to do something special. One phone call later and mission accomplished – we had an evening of horseback riding booked with Provo Ponies.

Now, Justin grew up riding horses, so to him, this was old hat. But I had never ridden a horse, aside from a few pony rides at petting zoos as a kid (which, let’s face it, don’t count). So I was pretty nervous. And it didn’t help the matter that Justin prepped me for the experience by giving me a speech about everything that could possibly go wrong… You know, the horse could try to buck you off, it could decide to lay down and roll over with you still in the saddle, or it could decide to just gallop away with you along for the ride. He assured me that “that probably won’t happen”, but I wasn’t convinced. So when they asked if I wanted a riding helmet, I said, “Yes please!”

But I had nothing to worry about. These horses were so well trained that even a complete beginning rider like me couldn’t screw up.

If horseback riding on the beach sounds fun to you, take my word, horseback riding in the ocean is better! Here’s Justin on Thor and me on Diamond in the waters of the Caribbean Sea.

We had planned to spend our final day sailing and snorkeling, but the captain of the ship canceled the tour at the last minute. It was too late in the day to book anything else, so we decided to drown our sorrows in rum punch at Da Conch Shack. This little beach bar is the perfect place to forget about the real world…

While sipping our rum punch, we were joined by a potcake. She happily posed for a photo in exchange for some pets.

Although it was our Plan B, it was a pretty good way to spend an afternoon. We had front row seats to watch the tide roll in and all the rum punch we could drink. And of course, we couldn’t come to Da Conch Shack without trying some conch! We had conch chowder, conch salad and conch fritters followed by beer from the Turk’s Head Brewery.