Steak, Starfish, Scuba, Shakes and Sunset S'mores!

It's been a busy few days! and the boys have been growing tired with my constant need to photograph EVERYthing! so instead of a nice posed shot of Steak Night at Tiki Hut on Friday you have one of them attacking each other with their knives instead! What can I say...I tried! 

I stuck to a burger instead, being the non steak lover I am...but I think the steak was pretty well received all round.  Why is 'Steak Night' so special? well we found out once we got there you get a free bottle of wine with your steak! so we indulged in some fruit punch instead!

On Saturday we headed to Pirate's Cove, and stopped at By's fave spot on the beach to skim stones! The water was amazingly calm...perfect skimming condition!

We have decided to rename Bonefish Point 'Starfish Point', we saw at least 15 different starfish while we were there, and they were all pretty big ones like in the picture above!

After that we headed to Turtle Cove where Cam and Kevin took to the pool to undergo their scuba training! Here they are getting suited up! 

It took a little getting used to at first but afterwards they were swimming underwater like pro's ready for their day out at sea.

We made a quick stop at JoJo's on the way home, the thoughts of freshly baked cookies and shakes worked in my favour and the boys were actually willing to pose for a shot!

By got a chocolate shake, made with chocolate unlike last time! Check out the awesome glass sided pool behind him...you can watch people as they swim by but somehow their heads above water don't link up with their bodies underneath the surface - it's a weird optical illusion! Unfortunately with it being a bit breezy none of us were up for a swim which By was greatly disappointed about! 

On Sunday we headed to Emerald Beach for a BBQ (or Braai as the South Africans would say) i

Sausages and steaks all round, and the conch shells on the beach made handy holders for our grill!

We got to watch a pretty cool sunset, although it was slightly hidden by some humungous clouds!

and then the boys started up the bonfire.

Then it was time to enjoy some s'mores, it was Cam and Kevin's first time trying them and they got thumbs up all round! Who knows the next time we will all find ourselves toasting s'mores on the beach, so we made the most of it!

A shot where, for once, I'm on the other side of the camera!

By got arty with the reflecting flames in Cam's shades!

This morning Cam and Kevin got to put their skills in to practice and went out on a dive excursion with the company By has been working for.  

By also got to dive with them, and managed to take lots of awesome shots down under!

Here's Cam as he starts to explore around...

and an awesome shot of the air bubbles

Everyone gathered around to take a closer look at...

two sharks swimming right past each other! As By snapped this he was told to turn around where he caught this shark headed straight for him! 

Here's Kevin happily posing for Byron! 

 They saw alot of cool stuff today including this Southern Sting Ray....

and a ton of yellow tail snappers, these were the ones hitting By in the face last time around!

Check out the electric blue on that Striped Grunt! 

and just to prove Byron was under there too! Today was his 16th dive, and after doing two more at the end of this week he will have completed his advanced open water certification...just in time to head back to the U.K, and believe it or not Bangor Uni even has a diving club which he can join when we head there in September.

and what do hungry divers in the Turks and Caicos eat for dinner?

Conch of course...at Da Conch Shack

The wind was blowing like crazy again this evening, so we actually ate inside 'the shack' for once! and I thought this little window was cute with the palm leaves blowing outside.

We also took the opportunity to buy some amazing conch shells from the sellers on the beach right outside.  From Left to Right: Regular conch, Queen conch, King Conch, Baby conch.  These are going to make great little souvenirs back in England!

Loaded plates! didn't stay loaded for long! and for once I was actually asked to take this photo...to document the conch fest!

I can't believe we only have 4 days left with By's family, the time has flown by! By only has 6 more days on the Island and I only have 10! The countdown is on!

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.