Loved, loved, loved TCI! We were there over Memorial Week. Very nice vibe. Too bad all the construction. The rural-ness will be all but gone soon. People were very accomodating. Never experienced bad island time. Service was top notch!

Beach. Grace Bay beach is spectacular. You can walk for miles. The water is clear and the bottom sandy.

Snorkeling. We snorkled at Coral Gardens; it was fine albeit crowded. But if you swam to the outer end of the circle/reef, it was less so. We saw two turtles and many interesting fish. We drove to Smith's reef but couldn't find a decent place to get in. The only sandy spot was right were the boats come out from Turtle Cove. Maybe someone can shed some light on the right spot. Never went on an organized trip. Too lazy. Maybe next time.

Hotel. The Ocean Club was very nice. Clean, well run, good food. Highly recommend. The beach is the best I've ever seen. You can walk for miles. Water as clear as gin. During Memorial Day Week the place never seemed crowded.

Restaurants. We didn't eat out too much. Mostly at the Cabana Beach bar at Ocean Club or at the following:
We loved the Iguana ate there twice. Best Mojito on the island! Great steak and pasta. Beautiful place. Great waitstaff.
Carters Cafe was great for mexican. Wonderful Conch Chowder.
Barefoot Cafe. Interesting place. Good food but bad mosquitos!
Chinson's Golden Buddha. Great chinese! Nice atmosphere.
West Indian Roti Place. Good roti. We had take out and both meals cost us $21. Good value!

Rental Car. Highly recommend Avis. Well run, no hassles. Shuttle picks you up straight away from the terminal and 5 minutes later you're at the counter picking up your car. Super!

Airport. No long waits for anything. Got to the airport and through ticketing and security in 10 mins. Although I attribute this to the low number of big planes. As this increases, most certainly will the wait times.

We loved TCI and will be back. They have got it right; no hassles!

Peace, Greenie

Good report, Greenie. Thanks.

If it makes you feel any better, it took us three tries to find the right spot for snorkeling at Smith's Reef.

On the first try, the manager at our hotel gave us incorrect directions. Second try, we were closer but missed the better snorkeling.

On our last day of vacation, we had turned in our rental car and we had a taxi take us to Smith's Reef. He pulled into a sandy path between two fancy houses, we walked straight down to the water, and this time we had great snorkeling.

It's probably best for the coral if this site remains hard to find!

If you walk along the beach, there is one small section, kind of a path, of sand that goes right out between the rocks. The reefs are straight out from there. There is a white bouy, almost straight out from the path.

Greenie, Hi as far as car rental goes do you need a 4x4 to get to some of the out of the way beaches or will a minivan handle what the isle dishes out. Thanks

Hi barginhunter, You'll find no car rental bargains on TCI. A 4x4 will set you back at least $500. We rented a teeny weeny little dihatsu something or other and it got us to several beaches around the Turtle Cove area, all the restaurants we wanted, and the grocery store, but we didn't really venture down too many other side roads. Some roads are much better than others. Some you just might as well park at the paved road and walk to the beaches. The beach near Turtle cove Marina was deserted and beautiful.

Just watch out for the potholes. And on the unpaved roads, try to stay on the high parts. =)

Peace, Greenie

Hi Greenie, Thanks for your help. I feel to get a real taste for the island you need to rent a car to explore the whole place. Any not to be missed snorkeling spots?

The only snorkeling spots we found was coral gardens. Very easy to find, but I can't remember the road you take off the main highway to get there. I know someone on the board will know there's a lot of long time visitors of TCI on here.

But anyway, you take the road off the main highway, I think it's the one before Turtle Cove if your going towards the airport, go down that (it deadends, Beaches resort is on the right) and make a left and make the second right (you'll see the signs for Coral Gardens). Park at the end, walk down the path, and there is a reef roped off that you can swim around. It was nice, albeit crowded. If you go early or late you might miss the crowd. The snorkeling was fun and the beach was great. You can have lunch at the Coral Garden's cafe too if you like.

We tried to find Smith's reef. We found what we though was the reef, but it was really hard to get in out (really rocky) and there were boats coming out of the marina very close to where we tried to get in. Since we didn't have any flags, we decided not to try it. You might have better luck. We did find a very nice beach on down from there that was deserted and swam around a bit.

We didn't do an ocean trip. We will next time. There's some good trips that people have recommended.

Have fun. Peace, Greenie