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Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos Islands, July 10-18, 1999
Salt Raker Inn & BlueWater Divers
Author: Carl Wilson
The Dumpster Divers of the Mountaineer Dive Club of Charleston, WV chose to go to Grand Turk Island of the Turks & Caicos Islands chain this year.
Grand Turk is a small island (6 miles by 1 mile) approximately 90 miles north of the Dominican Republic. Getting There: Our group traveling from Charleston, WV and Myrtle Beach, SC used USAir to Miami. At Miami we took an American Airlines Flight to Provo and from there Turks & Caicos Airline to Grand Turk.
I would recommend flying into Ft. Lauderdale, FL and catching LynxAirlines. Lynx has a direct flight to Grand Turk from Ft. Lauderdale. The Flight does not go or return everyday, so you need to co- ordinate your travel plans with Lynx Air's schedule. The Lynx flight will cut out the stop and layover in Provo and reduce the cost by about $100. We were not able to connect with Lynx air on this trip due to some "management shifts" I understand that was underway .
Turks & Caicos Airlines nailed nearly all of us for another $10.00-$20.00 for "overweight" baggage. LynxAir has a baggage weight limit of 80 lbs. Turks & Caicos Air has a 40 lb. limit for baggage, hardly enough for a weeks clothing and dive gear.
The Resort: The Salt Raker Inn is an old house (150 yrs)and two annex buildings. The buildings are ok on the outside and the rooms on the inside are very nice, quarry tile floors, private bathrooms, TV & Telephone, and an individual air condition in each room along with a ceiling fan. The rooms also have a small refrigerator which makes it nice to keep something for midnight snacks .
Salt Raker Inn has 13 rooms, the last room is a small single room that a single diver can book and not have to pay the supplement for being in a double room alone. Dinning is done under a covered area that also doubles as the bar in the back yard, called the Secret Garden. It reminds you that you are in the tropics from the vast number of plants and flowers around you. The Salt Raker Inn has two or three Bar-B-Q's a week and daily specials for lunch and supper so the menu does not get as stale as one would think seeing it for a week. Several of the specials and the Bar-B-Q nights were extremely tasty. Our group bought the meal plan. The food was excellent--I can not think of anyway else to describe it. I have been to 12 or 14 dive resorts and this place had the best food of any. The menu was complete and the quality of the food was superb. I found the fish dishes to be especially excellent. Quantity of food served was also good, I have been places where the food was ok but the portions so small it was pathetic, not this place, nice full plates and great food!
The Diving: The diving is arranged through Blue Water divers, operated by Mitch Rollings. The dive boat picks you up on the beach in front of the Inn, a distance of about 100 ft. Diving was simple, one sat on the side of the boat and the dive guide would bring your gear to you, after getting everything on one just did a backroll off the side of the boat. When you surfaced, you reached your weight belt to the diveguide and slipped out of the BC and the dive guide would pick it up while you came up the ladder with your fins in your hand. Nitrox is available if for those Nitrox certified. The cost of the nitrox is $15.00 extra per dive or $150.00 for the week to dive nitrox each dive. The dive boat was 24 ft, they also have two 22 ft boats. The boat was never crowded, the most we had on the boat was 9 divers. Most days the dive group took two boats out and our boat had 7 divers . Our group elected to do two morning dives and not do the afternoon dive. This made it very leisurely for us, breakfast started at 7:15 AM and the dive boat picked us up at 9:00 AM. Plenty of time to eat and get ready. Packages of 3 dives and night dives are available. Diving Grand Turk is wall diving. The wall is about 1000-1500 yards offshore and begins in 35-55 ft. Every dive was a wall dive. The corals and soft sponges look great, everything is very pristine, better than some sites I have done on liveaboards away from everyone. With the walls starting as shallow as 35 feet it is possible to do "wall" dives and never go below 50 ft and still see some great scenery. Dive profiles were 80 ft max on the first dive and 60 ft on the second, however if one wished to go deeper and stay within limits this was not a problem. I logged 14 dives for the week and had nearly 14 hours of dive time, most dives lasted for 55 minutes or so. The marine life was great! I was finally able to dive with a MANTA RAY on this trip, about time after 250 ocean dives! We also saw spotted eagle rays flying in tandem over the edge of the wall and into the blue abyss and sharks, dolphins, lobsters, schools and schools of fish. The reef is very healthy and support a very good diversity of fish and invertebrate life. All of the diving is done on the west (leeward) side of the island. Mooring buoys are in place at all the dive sites. The liveaboard vessel, Wave Dancer, spent the entire week on the mooring buoys, diving the same dives that we dived.
Conclusions, Recommendations, and Random Thoughts. As I previously stated this place is the 12th or 14th dive resort trip I have taken. I try not to be jaded, but after seeing the ads and then going on the trips I have learned to take it all with a grain of salt, in some cases a large sack of salt! The Salt Raker Inn & Blue Water divers are on my short list of places I will return to. I have one other place on my short list, Riding Rock Inn at San Salvador Island, Bahamas. The rooms were good, the food was grand and plentiful, the diving was excellent no stress wall diving. The management of the Resort, Jenny Smith and her staff do an excellent job of providing an excellent no pressure, no problem, enjoyable atmosphere for your stay. I would recommend getting the food/meal package due to the fact we all know how super expensive eating on the islands can be. Also, book one of the garden rooms, the cost is less and the ocean view rooms are not worth the extra cost, you can not see the ocean from the first floor ones unless you walk up to the wall and gate that surrounds the property. Part of our group rented motor scooters one day and toured the island. Cost was $44.00 I think, I did not write it down. The scooter rental place will not rent scooters for a half day, so you are stuck with a full day rental. It is easy to tour the island in a few hours and see everything in 3-4 hours at a slow pace.
Blue Water Divers and The Salt Raker Inn
