Tracking down the 'Pirates of the Caribbean'...

On Saturday we had an awesome day! and managed to tick off 3 of the things on our 'to see' list! be prepared for a picture overload because I want to show you EVERYTHING! 

First, we had a spot of lunch at 'The Patty Place'.  I think Patty's originate from Jamaica and as I mentioned before they are very similar to our pasties.  A friend of ours had told us Patty Place did pretty tasty patties, however we thought Chinson's were far superior and they could definitely learn a thing or two about service with a smile down at Patty's! 

We carried on our journey to the other side of the island.  This is a very remote side of the island and unfortunately in recent months there have been a number of muggings and even a murder where we were headed since it is so secluded! but we didn't let that stop us and made sure we said a prayer before we left, and all was well! Here is the dirt track we drove down for about 30 minutes to reach Pirate's Cove.

This is the scene that awaited us, and it really reminded me of some of the landscape you'd see in Thailand.  We parked the car and set off climbing over the rocks in search of the hole we'd heard about that led down to the actual Pirate's cave.  It was a fairly long walk and in the heat of the day, I was pleased to finally find it:

We began our climb down to see what we could find! 

It was such a pretty view from the mouth of the cave! 

and we were super excited to find this starfish that had been washed up on the shore.

You can get an idea here of what the cave looks like on the inside.  We saw lots of names and words inscribed into the walls (including LDS...I knew our missionaries must have left their mark when they visited!) but we were disappointed not to see any of the ancient pirate inscriptions we had come searching for! 

We thought perhaps there might be more caves so we searched around and found lots more holes, but none of them had caves underneath them! so after a quick rest after all the climbing we headed back to the car! 

and were excited to stumble upon the inscriptions by chance! It turns out they weren't inside the caves but were actually on top of them! 

I can't make this one out...

but this one was obviously inscribed by shipwrecked sailors.  It reads 'Air St. Louis burnt at sea 1842', apparently this ship was travelling from Boston to Old Orleans and was burnt in August of 1842 and subsequently wrecked on the Caicos reef.  It travelled pretty far from Old Orleans to the Caribbean? I guess we'll never know the full story on that one.

The third place I have been wanting to visit for a while is the lovely 'Bonefish Point'.  It consists of the beaches that run alongside Pirate's cove.  You can see in the picture above that there are 3 or so other beaches far in the distance too.  All of these beaches are completely isolated and we didn't see one person the whole day we were there.

Here's our starfish by the water! 

I just wanted you to get an idea of how it was literally just us...and then all these stretches of beaches to ourselves! Byron and I have travelled to quite a few amazing beaches in our time...Mauritius, Thailand, South Africa and Greece just to name a few of some of our favourite beaches we've found but we both think this beach may just become our new number 1!  It was just so peaceful and secluded and having the whole ocean to ourselves was pretty incredible! 

Here's scuba Byron! he was hoping to do a spot of snorkelling but didn't see too much, but here he is showcasing his snorkelling gear that his work bought for him as a leaving present before we left the UK - it was such a thoughtful present as he has used it so much here! 

...but all good days must come to an end! We were sad to be leaving Bonefish point but happy to catch this lovely sunset on the way...

and as we drove across the Island back to where we live the sun set fast and pretty soon the night sky was black but we saw the most amazing orange glow in the sky! It was huge, and we couldn't believe that it was actually the moon! I had never seen such a huge, and such an orange coloured moon ever! Unfortunately by the time we could pull over to take a shot it had got higher in the sky and appeared much smaller than we had first seen and less orange but it still looks quite cool here.