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, Taylor Bay and Taco Tastiness...and it's only Day 2!

Another fun filled day here in Providenciales! We went to Pirate's Cove in the morning and Jade was quite the adventurer scaling the top of the cliff until she found the ladder that led down to this amazing view.

We also saw four sting ray in the super clear water, here is one we managed to take a snap of before it got camera shy.

Sunny was pretty pleased that he could join in the day's excursion...thanks to his new biggest fan - Jay-dee!  She even wanted to take him to dinner with us!

Then we headed to one of my fave beaches on the Island, Taylor Bay, and we were greeted with that super clear aqua water...it never disappoints.  How funny it was to think that only 2 days earlier Jade was  trudging through a snowy New Jersey and now here she was basking in the sunshine and the warm Provo waters!

We played a spot of frisbee in the shallow waters while Sunny topped up his tan.

We were quite amazed that despite being thousands of miles apart we had managed to colour co-ordinate our toe nails perfectly!

We had a late afternoon ice cream snack at Giggles, and bought Sunny a snazzy new snoopy collar that he is showcasing in the pic above.  We were chilling at the marina here whilst Jade was practicing her scuba skills in the pool all ready for her first time dive experience! 

After an action packed day we headed to Somewhere, our fave Mexican restaurant on the beach.  We were loving these brightly coloured tortillas and salsa we had to start, and even better was the cool little lounge chairs we got to chill in on the upper deck of the terrace.

Our fruit punches were pretty impressive too, and Jade and By went for their infamous fish tacos whilst I got the beast of a burrito in the middle of the pic below!

We had the best night feasting down on our tasty food accompanied by some local island tunes that were being played live, all the while sitting under the stars and listening to the waves of the water below.  Day 2 was good to us.

Sun, Sea and Stewed Conch!

We took advantage of a sunny day at the beginning of the week and headed out to Pirate's Cove. 

There was a great view of Bonefish Point in the distance:

After hiking around for a while, I was pretty pleased when I finally found the ladder! I think Mara was beginning to wonder whether I knew where I was going!

Mara went down first to check it out...

and this was the view that we found at the bottom!

The water was amazing!! We headed to Malcolm's Road Beach next, and had planned to get some swimming in but when arrived the waves looked something like this:

and the red flag was up which meant no swimming for us, a bit different to the last time we were there, but we enjoyed some good shell collecting and took the obligatory shot at the little Tiki hut:

After our beach adventures, we tried out this amazing Deli called 'Top of the Cove'.  We had the best 'meatball hoagie' which is basically like a subway and some of the best cookies ever...yes Dad if you're reading this I do 'live to eat', what's wrong with that??!

We had decided even before Mara arrived that if we were going to take her out to eat when she came that we couldn't miss out on taking her to Da Conch Shack so that is where we headed:

Here we are rocking the polka dots, that wasn't even planned, but I'm loving the co-ordination! Mara went for the coconut conch stew and was impressed with her first taste of conch! 

By and I are old conch pro's these days so I went for the cracked conch and By got the conch curry.  There's nothing like a bit of conch accompanied by some Bob Marley, if only mom had been there to join us - she's a big Bob Marley fan you know! When I quizzed her on some of his songs this week she sang 'come woman, come man'...I think it was her version of 'No Woman, No Cry'!!!!

What a tourist! Mara had to pose with the boat full of conch's out the front of the restaurant..

and that night there was a lunar eclipse at 2.30am that we woke up for.  The moon went a pretty crazy shade of red...By sort of captured it, if a little blurry, but 2 minutes later the clouds covered the sky and so we all went back to bed! 

Check back soon for the hundreds of pictures we took over at North and Middle Caicos yesterday! and for more Island adventures in the Sun!