Turks and Caicos
 

Staying at Grace Bay Beach Ocean Villas this late spring. We are here to snorkel and do some scuba diving. Wonder if it is necessary to rent a car. I see that the closest grocery store is 2 miles from villa. We are fit seniors but this may pose a problem. Would we be missing out on seeing important sites if we base ourselves from beach villa. We are staying 11 nights. Looks like car rental may be $450 for 11 days. Have driven on England so left side driving is ok with us. I understand there is no bus system. Any advice would be appreciated. Could go with taxi to and from airport. Coming from Colorado.

Kathy

I've only been to T&C once and that was last June. We rented a car for the whole time, if you have already driven in the UK it should not be an issue. I saw some rather strange driving techniques by tourists (stopping completely whilst on a roundabout for instance) which was dangerous but traffic is slow and there aren't many roads to get lost on. It was so convenient having a car and getting to dive operators or going to Smiths reef for snorkelling & other beaches, restaurants in the evening and general sightseeing, shopping etc. The scuba and snorkelling were excellent BTW, we tried 3 operators, 2 were excellent and 1 was not great. We picked up the car from the airport straight after the flight from the UK and kept it the whole time, dropping it back at the airport on they way back. Scuba operators will pick you up/drop you back though.

Good information, thank you. Which scuba diving company do you recommend. Probably only do 1 or 2 dives.

Absolutely get a rental car. Many dark areas for restaurants and taxi will cost more! Plus walking in heat to supermarket is different than walking the beach for Leasure

big Blue is good, my favorite dive company is Flamingo Divers. They’re small and take only small groups out, so contact now as Spring on island is mostly sold out already.

Flamingo Divers were great although their boat broke down so we had to go with another operator for subsequent dives. Their dive operation is on the south of the island so great to have a car to get to their boat although I'm sure they do pick ups from hotels. We just preferred to have our own car. The other good one was Caicos Adventures, their shop is inside another shop in Grace Bay. We almost never book dives before we arrive on an island, we normally visit them and try to suss them out before booking, some operators cater for inexperienced or newly qualified divers and take you out to shallow dives with beginners (we're AOW divers so want something more advanced), dives are dependent on weather etc so most of them can't tell you where they are going on any specific day and sometimes they cancel if there is too much wind, rain or current. Apart from one dive, they were all available as it seems most are booked last minute when people arrive on the island and that is how we find it on all our dive holidays.

Thank you, will research the dive shops you mentioned.