Gringos in the TCI Photo Blog

[obald]

First post on this board and am happy to say I'm here because I followed Gringo from some other site.

I look forward to continuing my daily fix of life in the Cairbbean and I'll bang the drum for sportfishermen.com down here in New Zealand

[Gringo]

Thanks for the kind words. It's much appreciated. That's history. This is a cool forum. Look around a bit. I'm still learning. But still trying to put up some info on the TCI for those who are interested and haven't seen the blog.

We have been in an exploring mood since we got here. And there's plenty, even for such a small country.

I am messing around with different photo hosting sites, trying to figure out which one works best to post here. I am familiar with ImageShack and Picasa the most. But am trying out the one here, too. So these are experimental uploads to see how it works.

This was taken in February. Valentines Day, to be precise. We were in a little Whaler Montauk, and when sundown came we were mile from where we wanted to be. No lights on that boat. Fortunately, it was a nice day, for mid winter. I think it was in the high 70's. We were sunburnt.


And this one I picked for no particular reason, just another sunset from Pine Cay, but uploaded via ImageShack:

Thats bigger. The TCI gets a huge amount of pretty cool sunrises and sunsets. I guess all places in the tropics must. We have taken so many photos of sunsets in two and a half years it's insane. I am trying to kick the habit, but it's hard. We still marvel at them.

And I am a sucker for violent weather, to an extent. Probably a twisted way to look at it, but I enjoy elements of a good electrical storm every now and then. We go to the shore during tropical storms to watch the sea. The TCI gets lightning storms in mid summer that are so intense it's dangerous to drive in them. The strobe effect of the lightning is blinding, the eyes pupils can't dilate and contract repeatedly that fast for half a minute at a time. People have drowned sitting in stalled cars. On the main road. But what a show.

The dog.....well...he hates thunder. He can hear it 20 miles away. He is getting so bad he panics when he sees thunderclouds on the horizon, just in case they are going to suddenly race over and attack him. If we won't let him cower on our laps, he will retreat to a sturdy beer carton in a corner of the room. Away from electical outlets.

Can you believe this thing is fearless on boats, and bites barracudas?

[Gringo]

As the opportunities come by we try to explore more of the area near where our new home is being built. We have not really spent all that much time on the Caicos Bank, most of our activities like fishing and diving are out on the reef closest to the islands. We find the Banks pretty interesting on a glassy calm day. We can see the sea-bottom as easily as standing on the edge of a clean swimming pool and looking down at the lane marker tiles on the bottom. It is that clear. We see sharks, rays, conch ( of course) shipwrecks, tons of coral heads, zillions of fish...

On this particular day we started out by running next to the shoreline for awhile. One of the first thing we noticed was the huge number of sea-caves in the bluffs and underneath them all along this section of coast. Some of them appear to be pretty deep. It would be a great place to explore by kayak;


While we were cruising along after picking up enough conch for a batch of chili ( we need about a dozen), I kept hearing these little solid sounding 'clunk' noises coming from around the outboard. Of course I was concerned, and would turn around and look at the motor. I couldnt figure it out. Then, while I was looking I saw one of our newly captured conch trying to make an escape attempt. They come way out of the shell when they are turned upside down, and try to hook their single little claw into something. This is one of them trying to flip back right-side up:


Another cave, and this one was pretty interesting to me. But then I like this kind of stuff. It goes way back into the hill, and slants upwards. Its also connected to another cave a few yards to the left:


Steel hulls are not immune to the sea, rocks, and storms here. But they do hang around awhile longer than the wooden ones.


This day's excursion taught us that there are a LOT more wrecks on the Banks side of the islands. These are all relatively newer ones, in the past 10-20 years, but the shallow waters and coral heads have been here a long time, and boats have been sinking here for five hundred years...

I wouldnt want to run into this one in the dark, neither:


Some of the views are pretty neat, at least we think they are. There are small islands all over the place here, enough to keep us in exploring material for quite a while. I almost think this one would make a decent computer background:

Notice, again, the water depth and clarity. It is actually about four feet deep here.

Now thats a pretty cool rock right there:

only a mile out. And I bet we have found ourselves a place to catch mutton snapper.

Can you imagine throwing a party on this one and watching people try to get back to their boats?


We kept crusing from island to island. They all have the basic marine limestone gelology in common, yet they all have distinctly individual characteristics, as well. Of couse we just HAD to drop the anchor and wade over to this one to climb it:

You woulda done the same thing, I bet.

Thats Provo in the background. You can see these little uninhabited cays are not that far away at all. Some dynamite picnic spots. And I am really looking forward to doing some snorkelling on the outside of them. The water is deeper on the side facing south, typically 12-15 ft. from what we saw. Prevailing currents sweep the sand around to the leeward side, just like islands everywhere.


For an idea where this is, that little hump right smack dab in the middle of this photo is where we are building the house. Its almost due East of here, and as you can see its a pretty straight shot by boat. We will get to watch the sunset over these islands from the house. Pretty cool, eh?

Oh, those cumulous clouds to the left in this photo (above).....thats where we would have been if we had stayed out on the reef today. Good choice to come check out this side..

We tied up at yet another island, and I cleaned the conch. We were getting pretty parched, and it was time to head back to the house. It was so peaceful, the boat in a little cove with a perfect untouched sand beach. There was a neat rock on that island, with a hole going all the way through it, and a great photos....but we didnt take it!! Like I said, we were getting parched. And I made a royal mess of myself and the boat smashing holes in 19 conch shells. Thank goodness we opted for the raw-water washdown. Thats a real good option to have on a boat.

On the way back, we passed over another wreck, this one completely on the bottom. I had to hop over the side to get some photos, and of course, to wash a million little conch bits off of me. (Man, was I popular with all the local fish...)




The wreck is covered with silt, and the debris of the sea in a gentle blanket giving it all a softened look. The wood is rotting away, the iron turning to rust. Coral is starting to grow in various places, and there is sea life making a home here. I saw several anenomes;

(of course, perfect opportunity to mess around with the new little camera...in U/W closeup mode)



The sun shining through the ripples on the surface made these constantly moving waves of light criss crossing the bottom. The visual affect was stunning. I SHOULD have switch the camera to movie mode...it would have been worth posting a link here to show you the patterns. It was absolutely hypnotizing. And even though I am very limited as to which colors I can see, even I could tell that where the little ripples crossed there was a moving prism effect, and thousand of miniature rainbows surrounded me, moving across the sea floor and the old wreck.....I thought maybe I was finally having one of those flashbacks I paid for and never got... or it could have just been the sun...oh well, never mind. I guess you hadda be there.


After my trip over the side to look at this wreck, we had enough for the day and headed back to the slip. I still had conch to "skin" ( the hardest part) and La Gringa needed to get to the supermarket to pick up supplies for her conch chili... Now, as I am posting this, I realize we are getting low on conch in the freezer, and we have three, maybe four, of our five sons coming down next week for the holidays. Might have to make another conch run..

[Gringo]

Hey, I wanted to try to fix the busted link on that last post, but cannot find an Edit function. Any hints?

[La Gringa]

I'm going to quietly sneak in on Gringo's coat tails and introduce myself. I am married to Gringo and live with him in the TCI. I do most of the things that Gringo does and I'm also the resident computer geek - the [woman] behind the curtain you might say!

Gringo mentioned that a lot of the members here are from New Jersey. I lived in Sparta for 15 years prior to moving to the tropics. I have to say that I don't miss the commute to Livingston and back every day. Driving all over the state of New Jersey visiting clients. Nooo, I don't miss shoveling snow. Can't say I miss raking leaves for six months out of the year.

I do miss two things though! I miss mt biking on the rail trails in Sussex County. It's not exactly bike riding friendly here - not for any appreciable distance anyway. And I miss the wildlife. My house was backed up to the woods and we saw deer, turkeys, bears, foxes and all kinds of other critters on a regular basis.

I guess life is just a bunch of tradeoffs!!

[FishBlueWater]

I would take what you have any day over NJ!!
You can always come back and visit to see the wildlife, but where you are is everyones dream!!

[marker150]

Hey, I wanted to try to fix the busted link on that last post, but cannot find an Edit function. Any hints?

I found this:

Can I edit my own posts?
If you have registered, you will be able to edit and delete your posts. Note that the administrator can disable this ability as he desires. Your ability to edit your posts may also be time-limited, depending on how the administrator has set up the forum.

To edit or delete your posts, click the button by the post you want to edit. If your post was the first in the thread, then deleting the post may result in the removal of the entire thread.

After you have made your modifications, a note may appear, which notifies other users that you have edited your post. Administrators and moderators may also edit your messages but this note may not appear when they do so.

[Gringo]

Yep, I think I had an edit button before..if you look at the post with the picture of the dog hiding in the box, I had edited that one. I think something got changed since yesterday.

Oh, and when I posted this one, there WAS an edit button at the bottom. This sentence is an edit....
mysteries...

[Rboats]

Gringo, my dog looks just like yours!
Weird.

[Admin]

Gringo we will have the edit button back to normal in a hour.
Just so you know sometimes around here when interesting topics get posted we close the edit down to a very short time.
Will set it back to a long time today. Something happened last night and I this person wrote something very interesting and I did not want to see them deleted it or edit it.

lol
Capt John