Gringos in the TCI Photo Blog

[Gringo]

Is it a dangerous place? I don't get that feeling, but then I spent a lot of time in truly dangerous places for comparison. Actual violence is very rare. Oh, there's crime, of course. Mostly the crime-of-opportunity snatch-and-grab off the beach blanket or the rental car type of stuff. And crime increases with population, but I feel safer here than many places. The Haitians are a problem, true. But we also have friends who are Haitians. We have picked up Haitians and given them rides. We have good friends who are from DR. Oh, it's not perfect. But what place is, really, once you add humans to the mix?

Surprisingly to me, we have found out that living on a tropical island, in a developing nation is not for everybody. We know of several families who moved here, and lasted maybe six months. You gotta be okay with heat, bugs, and you have to be comfortable in a multi-racial environment. But if you are the type that loves a place like this, and can fit in, its great. It means you are surrounded by people similar to yourself in that regard. Day to day long term is different from a week in a resort. We think about where we would go on a vacation, and we would rather stay here. We are considering taking some cruising friends we met up on their offer to fly to meet them somewhere and spend a week or so on their 50 ft. St, Francis sailing catamaran. I think I would like to go back to New Zealand someday, as a tourist this time, maybe we will meet up with them there. They are circumnavigating the world. I met them on a sailing forum, surprisingly enough. And we got together when they came through here.

Here are a few photos from Middle Caicos, a little sailboat regatta. Its every year around Valentines Day;








And for variety, some photos from a day on the reef. The local kid with the spear is our friend Evan. He's now working to become the first factory-certified Yamaha mechanic in the TCI. Great kid, with an interesting story. I told part of it in the blog, and will probably get around to it here if people like words with their photos.






This is one of my own sons, who came down for a visit. This is his first time breathing compressed air, he was pretty relaxed. This is a perfect place to introduce people to diving.
I was adding and subtracting lead pellets to get him neutral, snapped a few photos.


Had him perfectly neutral, makes it a whole lot easier when you don't have to fight to stay down, or to stay off the bottom;


Wife and I went on a trip touring the inside passage in Alaska, and flew my son down to watch the house and dog for a week and a half. Well, we introduced him to Evan, as they are the same age. After we got back, I started hearing some tales of the parts of Provo Evan showed my son. It would have curled my hair (if I had any). But over time, I came to realize that he fit in very well with the local youths. Scary looking characters, some of them. Now, when they see me in the store or on the street they ask me about how he's doing, and when he's coming back to visit. He's safer here than he is on the streets of Falmouth Massachusetts, from what I can tell.

[Admin]

I feel as if im on vacation man, I can see you becoming a very popular poster around here. Thanks for showing us some of your world.

Capt John Eppehimer

[Ravens16]

Hey Gringo
Welcome!
I love T & C
Was there 2 years ago with a friend who brought his boat down there for a month of good times!
Looking at your pic's looks like I missed some sweet spots
Fishing is real sweet down there. People are awesome too
Looking forward to more of your pic's

Here's a few of my pic's
Not trying to hijack the thread, just thought you might recognize a few places




OUR BOAT









LITTLE FELLA'S TUCKERED OUT






,Me with a cheer to your great pic's thanks



KEEP ON POSTING THEM UP GRINGO, NICE WORK

[Gringo]

I feel as if im on vacation man, I can see you becoming a very popular poster around here. Thanks for showing us some of your world.

Capt John Eppehimer

Thanks, that's kinda what I hoped it would do. I remember New England winters...and times in my cubicle where I would have welcomed some fresh tropical photos.

I also very much would have appreciated having someone to talk to about packing it up in the US and moving to a tropical, foreign, island nation three years ago when we first started seriously planning it. It could have saved us a lot of the learning curve part. Its not an easy thing to do, overcoming inertia. Making major life changes. I think a lot of people entertain the tropical island dream from time to time. At least, most boating people. I could be wrong.

We met a new friend today at the marina. Started when the dog pooped next to their new fuel pump. (that's all I am going to say about THAT episode).
But anyhow, this is Leon. Really nice guy. He likes the dog. I think he saw the fuel pump incident as an overt act of rebellion. I did not have the heart to tell him it was probaby just some bad dog food. Jack Russells are not really all that political, in my experience.

I told him I liked his Rastafarian t-shirt...between that and the dog, it broke the ice.

[Gringo]

For the first time in the almost three years that we have been boating, fishing, and diving here, we got to meet up with the police at sea.

Oh, we see them all the time in the marinas. In fact their two main patrol boats are docked just a few yards from our slip. They know us, they know the dog. What they did NOT recognize this time was the boat we were in. No problem at all, though, once they realized they knew us, that we are residents, and that we have fishing licenses. And this just happened to be one of those days when we actually had them with us.

Clean living....that's what I attribute it to. Well, or maybe just blind luck.

[SeaBiscuit]

Wonderful pictures and stories Gringo. Thank you. A million questions go through one's mind seeing the paradise you call home.
Problems with ciguatera poisoning with any of the fish?
Work opportunities there or strictly a gringo retirement kind of place?
Sounds like your kids are not there with you. Would you consider raising a young family there?

Thanks for the fantastic post and photos.
Cheers,
SeaBiscuit

[Gringo]

When we decided we were going to move south, we scoured coastal real estate online from Savannah to Brownsville Texas. Spent about six months on it, before deciding why not go for an island. And why not try a foreign country, while we were at it. I spent lots of time in Puerto Rico and the USVI working during my career, and we considered those. Too crowded. We looked hard at the Bahamas, and there are some great land deals, but we had a 12 year old with us and needed access to a decent school and some infrastructure. Nothing against the Bahamas, but if you need to be next to a good school you are going to be living in one of a very few places. And those were too much city for us.

My wife's family has owned property in the TCI for 17 years, and we settled on this place. English is the language, it's only a little over an hour's flight from Miami, US Dollar is the currency, and being part of the BWI, its the British school system. Our 12 year old went into a private school here for one year, and it did wonders for him academically and culturally. (Look up the Ashcroft School). His behavior improved, his grades improved, and his cultural awareness was blown all the way out to the horizons. He went to school every day with locals, Canadians, Brits, Australians, French, etc. He loved it. There is no doubt he is a better, more rounded kid today because of it. It was one of the best things, academically and socially, that we could have done for him although we didnt realize it at the time.

There are employment opportunities here, but some thought has to go into how you go about it. The rules are protective of the local residents first. Some businesses are reserved for "Belongers" which is the term for native born, and naturalized, citizens here. BUT there are other ways. You can buy an existing business and run it. You can be partners with a local. You can be an employee here, but that gets a bit complicated, and is not the best road to take. If you have enough income from elsewhere (dividends, etc) to support yourself here, you can obtain a business license here and start a new business as long as it does not compete with a local owned business. Heck, if you had the funds, you could just buy rental homes here and sit back and operate them as a de facto business bypassing all of it. So, there are ways. A lot of it depends on what kind of employment you have in mind. Hotel management, for example, would be pretty easy. A bricklayer would not.

As for ciguarera, we were curious about it. My wife suffered it some years ago, and she's gunshy. We have found out that it's pretty much a localized thing, in areas where coral has been damaged. The locals here, for example, tell me not to eat reef fish from the South Caicos area. In things fishing related we have learned to listen to the locals. We want ( correction, I want) to try eating some of the barracuda we keep catching. We are still leery, even though we know that we have as good a chance of getting it from Grouper or Snapper, and we eat those without compunction. We have also learned that if you order a grouper sandwich in most restaurants, you might be getting barracuda without knowing it. I have read that this is common in Florida as well. Ever notice that NOBODY ever runs out of grouper on the menu? We keep the cuda we catch now, and give it away to local friends who love it. I lost count, but estimate we have given well in excess of 50 of them away, to probably a half dozen of the same people. They always ask where we caught it. None of them have gotten sick from it in over two years we have been giving it away. And we definitely would have heard if they had.

Of course, eating the pelagics like tuna and dolphin, there's little to no risk. And from what we have learned, little to no risk from the barracuda and grouper if you catch them from the well known safe areas. The safe areas here are almost the entire country. ( my wife got it from grouper in a three star restaurant, btw)

[brandon558]

Wow....some amazing stuff. Thanks for sharing..this makes me wonder off into thoughts of warm weather and summer

Thanks for helping us get through the winter days here on SFC

Brandon

[Mirage36]

Awesome pictures, stories, & advice...this is now my favorite thread!

[Gringo]

Thanks. I considered putting my whole blog on here, but its up over 90 pages I think and it would just be redundant for those who follow the blog to see it posted in two places. So I hope to just start posting new stuff here as we get it. Off to a slow start due to boat complications, but that should be worked out shortly. In fact I just got word an hour ago that it's fixed. We are going to run it up to Pine Cay and back tomorrow for a shakedown.