Turks and Caicos

In August we will be married for 10 years!! To celebrate, we used SarahLynn's time off during spring break to enjoy a week in the Caribbean! Many thanks to MomR and DadR for watching the boys at our house while we were gone. We enjoyed the Providenciales Island of Turks and Caicos. We stayed in a condo that was inland, and used a rental car to explore every corner of the island. Here are some pictures of our adventures!

We went on a boat tour that included snorkeling, conch harvesting, iguana island, and eating the conch that was caught for us! Conch is the national dish here, and we ate it almost every day. Conch fritters, conch ceviche, conch salad, conch burgers! This shell is one that was caught that day, we ate the conch and then took the shell home with us. It's 10-15 years old, which we thought was fitting for our anniversary.

This is Jeremy cleaning out the conch shell. He used the claw from the conch as a tool to scrape off all the coral and moss.

Can you see all the iguanas?

We had fun at the island's weekly Fish Fry! We had the yummiest cooper fish ever!

Everyday, we enjoyed two or three different beaches. 

It was so much fun driving a stick shift again!!

And really fun driving on the left side of the road.

It was hard finding shade at the beaches, there aren't a whole lot of trees here. Jeremy used google earth to find beaches with shade, but even then we came up unlucky sometimes. So one day, SarahLynn built Jeremy a tent! 

She's willing to do a lot to keep Jeremy from getting sunburned. We used a think scarf to keep his arm protected while driving. We did really well keeping him from getting red! 

We went to the world's only Conch Farm, and we learned so much!

When the conchs are big enough, they are put in the ocean water, 60 acres of netted "farmland" in the ocean water, naturally shallow and protected from storms, just behind us here.

We found some shade at this beach, and explored a deserted home.

At every beach, we enjoyed reading, journal-ling and relaxing. We also had time to get lots of emails, lessons plans, and projects for work done in our condo and on the beach, which helped us be even more relaxed. It was nice to know that we were not getting behind with work while on our trip, in fact we stayed totally on top of things!! I think that's what allowed me to totally relax at our couples massage.

We tried to buy food from the grocery store. The prices were pretty outrageous! $30 for a Hormel party tray!!

But we found a cheaper grocery store and were able to make 3 dinners on our own. 

We took a four-wheeling path with our tiny rental car to this beach. We were excited to find a patio just for us!! At another beach we snorkel through beautiful coral reefs. We saw octopus, two turtles and a ton of fish that followed us because we fed them granola. We also spent a day scuba diving, where we saw lobster, eel, and a lion fish, among many other awesome things. According to some sources, Turks and Caicos has the 3rd largest reef system in the world! 

One of our favorite parts of the trips was all the delicious restaurants. We ate mostly local food, but also ate some other cuisines that we don't have in Austin. At this place, we ate Indian food, where SarahLynn fell in love with the idea of CURRY crab cakes, YUM!

We kept noticing macaroni pie on the menus, so we asked the server if that was a local dish or an American dish. He brought us the most delicious macaroni and cheese casserole that we've ever had. We decided to google all about it, and learned a lot of history with macaroni and cheese and how Caribbeans have made it their own by making it more pie-like consistency and adding peppers, onions, and amazing seasonings!

We enjoyed a tour of an old cotton plantation that was established after the American Revolution by colonists that were loyal to King of England. They came down to islands like this one to start their own plantations. This wall was built by slaves.

And this was the master's house, which was mostly standing until Hurricane Ike came along several years ago. We learned a lot at this place, really glad we took the time to see it.

This was our last beach that we enjoyed before heading home. It was such a fabulous week!! The only bad part of the trip was that we came home to the middle of a horrible blizzard.