Cruisin' Home

The last stop on our cruise was...

Grand Turk Island was not on our original itinerary at all, actually. We were supposed to go to Puerto Rico and St. Martin, but after the massive hurricanes last fall, our cruise was re-routed to Nassau and Grand Turk Island.

It was crazy how close to shore the ship could dock!

We didn't have anything planned for this stop, but I again wanted to do something instead of sit around, or sleep, all day. We found an island map and discovered that Grand Turk is very small; 6.9 square miles, to be exact- 7 miles long and 1.5 miles wide. I would've been game to try and walk around the whole thing, but Jason didn't want to risk getting left behind if we were late getting back to the ship. Instead, we tried to hire a car to drive around. I mean, there's only a certain amount of lost that you can get in 6.9 square miles of basically flat island! The hire car booth was very poorly manned, and we didn't want to wait around all day to try and get a car. So we asked a local that was advertising bus tours what they had to offer, and we ended up doing that.

We had to wait a couple of hours for our tour, so we checked out the sights that were right there at the port.

I don't think we ever learned the significance of Mr. Whale.

There was an large informational display on the Mercury Space Program, and how John Glenn and Scott Carpenter were debriefed at the local U.S.A.F. facilities after their splashdown. 

When we finally got to go on our island bus tour, it was informative, but not very leisurely. The driver did stop twice. Once in the Historic Cockburn Town area where there were some local tourist shops and food huts. He also pointed out "The Wall," a massive drop off in the ocean that is a huge attraction for scuba divers. Not too far off the shore, "The Wall" plunges over 6,000 feet straight down. Jason was excited to see the dark blue spot in the ocean where "The Wall" is at, and would've scuba dived if given the chance.

The island was hit by the hurricanes, though not as badly as other places. You could still see the aftermath of missing roofs, blown over trees, shingles in the ocean, and even large pieces of debris lying oddly about the shore and inland. The flowers, and landscape, were still pretty, though!

And the ocean water was so gorgeous! The beautiful blues and turquoise colors were amazing, and so clear and clean!

One claim to fame for Grand Turk is their wild donkeys. Although, they would almost walk right into the bus for food! They were everywhere, and just freely roam the island.

Our second bus stop was at the Historic Lighthouse. It is no longer in operation, but they have a little museum there, I believe. It cost extra money, and we were out of spending money at that point, so we did not see the museum.

There were also a lot of roaming horses on the island. I'm not sure if they were just free-range, or if they belonged to someone.

Beside the lighthouse was the old U.S.A.F. base which has suffered from the weather over the years.

More of the pretty flowers.

These Turks Head cacti are an iconic plant on the island. The red tops are said to look like the Turkish fez hat that used to be worn by the Turkish Army. I believe Jason knew this fact previous to us visiting Grand Turk, and he specifically wanted to get a photo of this cacti.

Most of the places we stopped on our cruise had old cannons (or replicas) positioned artfully around the port.

Another ship waaaaay out there on the ocean.

Our new towel animal from Gede: a dinosaur.

 After we returned to the ship, Jason wanted to nap. Since it was the nicest evening out of the entire trip, I decided to go try and watch the sunset from the top of the ship.

 The sun started setting as we were leaving Grand Turk Island, and while it was beautiful, I feel like there are probably even more amazing sunsets that happen at sea.

There were actually three food carving/art displays, but this is the only one that the photo turned out well.

 We had a full day and two nights of sailing on our return to Miami, Florida. The "How to Make Towel Animals" was one activity that we participated in. I successfully made an elephant.

 And a dog. Not sure if I can recreate them now, though!

Our very last towel animal from Gede: an elephant wearing my sunglasses.

And that concludes the tour of our cruise trip. I hope you enjoyed the photos- I feel like I did not do as good of a job with taking photos, or getting good photos, on this trip as I have in the past. That may be in part to having a new camera and figuring out the settings. (Or the camera isn't as good as our old one; I haven't decided.) Anyways, thanks for joining me on my Cruise post series!