This blog post is way overdue! but there's been so many pictures to update you all with that these ones slipped to the back of the queue!
This was our amazing day trip to North and Middle Caicos that we took on the 23rd December with Mara. We took the 6.30am ferry to ensure that we could make the most of our day! which meant we had a 5.30am cycle ride in the dark to the ferry port from our house! but we arrived to find this amazing sunrise which made the early start a little more worthwhile!
The 'ferry' was unlike any ferry I've ever been on before, and certainly by European standards didn't look like a ferry - more like a speedboat! and I've certainly never had such a bumpy ride on a ferry before! I wasn't sure if we were even going to make it to see North at one point...the waves we were hitting were huge and making you jump out of your seat!
We arrived in one piece though and picked up our rental car and by 7.15 we had our first stop of the day at Wades Green Plantation. There was still a bit of an early morning chill in the air and we had the whole plantation to ourself, it was a very tranquil spot to visit and was a great start to the day.
We opted not to call ahead and book a guided tour by The National Trust, and so I can't give you all the facts about how long it's been derelict for but from the size of some of those roots that have taken over the buildings I'd say it's been a pretty long time!
Can you believe this is a spider?! at first I thought it was a flower caught in the web, it's such pretty colours!
Everywhere was overgrown and with not a soul in sight it was a little eerie!
These purple flowers were pretty cool
After that we headed to the 'Seaside town of Whitby', that is how it was described on our map. I'm not really sure one hotel, a couple of houses, a restaurant and a stretch of beach qualifies as a 'town' but I guess it does in North Caicos! There are 2500 residents on North and I guess they all know each other well because when ever we drove past people we would get lots of waves!
We picked a great day to go, the sun was shining, the sea was calm (well it was here) and that turquoise hue was showing through.
We came across this crab, which I initially thought was dead, until Byron poked it and it did this...
I think this is attack mode!
We took a stroll down the pier
Mara and I didn't even plan our awesome colour co-ordination!
We saw this shipwreck far off in the distance
and Mar and By made me sit on this bollard for a shot (secretly hoping I'd get hit by a passing wave but luckily the waves were good to me)
Next, we made a stop at Flamingo pond overlook. There are over 1000 Flamingo's here, they were just dotted all over the place! We read in our guide map there is usually someone renting binoculars for a closer look, but as usual there was no-one in sight! so you'll have to make do with these far away shots.
We made our way through Bottle Creek headed towards the causeway that would take us to Middle Caicos. I caught this view as I glanced out the window and had to stop and take a picture!
I was going to make one monster post of the whole trip but there were just too many pictures to include so I'm going to make a separate post about Middle Caicos which is where we headed after this.
On our way back from Middle Caicos at the end of the day, we drove well off the beaten track down this tiny grass track that didn't even seem wide enough for cars to pass through - I'm pretty sure our beaten up rental car got more than a few scratches on the doors! We reached Three Mary Cays (shown above) and the water looked great with the sun beating down on it.
Our last stop before the Marina was Pumpkin Bluff Pond - what a cool name! The sun was setting at this point and making a nice pink tinge in all the clouds, the reflection of the sky in the pond was quite amazing.
When we reached Sandy point Marina to wait for our ferry home, we were greeted by more pink skies - what a way to start and end a great day!
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