I still haven't finished capturing all our memories on Grand Turk. Our second to last stop on our tour was to the island's lighthouse. I love visiting lighthouses not so much because I find any real fascination with them, but my dad does and every time I see them, I am reminded of him.
Grand Turk had donkey's everywhere. The local driving our taxi said that collectively the islanders stopped feeding the animals so the government stepped in and provided food for the critters. They also put laws in place protecting them. It sounds like the islanders don't like the darn things, but on the contrary, I found their jesting talk of them to be filled with nostalgia and love like you'd talk about an old family uncle. Those donkey were everywhere...and I might add they were handsome donkey. Even Binyam who is not a fan, said they were really nice looking Donkey's! Ezra was totally enthralled with them. The locals said the donkey's don't like kids but in our whole time there the Donkey's didn't show an iota of stress toward the kids. When we sat at one point waiting for the taxi, two donkey parked their behinds almost on top of us. So close that Ezra repeatedly rubbed his face on theirs over and and over again....
This is the view off over the cliffs of the island. So beautiful, like a dream. I love my camera but even the camera doesn't do it an ounce of justice. You can see the line where the green suddenly goes to blue that is one of the top five barrier reefs in the world. Amazing.
This on the other hand was so beautiful. We missed our taxi back and a ten minute stop ended up taking 45 minutes. It was a little frustrating and not so sure the campers were happy with me who felt a bit responsible for the miss....After sitting and staring at the place for quite a while I finally got up to go look at this teen tiny house. It was no bigger than one very small room. It was the lighthouse guard's room and it was from the 1600's. I was in love with it. It had a lock on it and I noticed that it wasn't actually locked so I opened it up and let Ella in for a picture or two.
This was our last stop in Grand Turk, the salt flats. on this tiny island they flooded the land in salt pans like you see here. The water would evaporate in the tropical heat and leave salt. Around the turn of the century the Caicos were a huge exporter of salt. When electricity came into play the demand receeded and they stopped, the salt pan I photoed was made my Carnival cruise line who is the only cruise to dock at Grand Turk so they wanted to revive the history for tourism purposes. It was neat, I loved the bits of history!!!!!!!! The one little piece of history they are very famous for but didn't talk an iota about was the splashdown of John Glenn in 1962 from the Friendship 7 flight to space. I did see a monument erected to the event but no one breathed a word about it and they didn't drop us there for photo opts. Curious....I would have loved a photo with the monument since I use to be a lover of all things space.
so this was our time in Grand Turk. Loved it. I think in retrospect this being our first island we should have just hunkered down on the shore and swam, but it was an issue of the curiosity that killed the cat. I just had to know what was on that island. Now I know. I wouldn't trade it for anything. We had a great time and learned a lot and saw someplace we've never seen before.
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