 
|
Check for Turks & Caicos Package Deals
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
Turks & Caicos Hotel, Resort & Villa Reviews
Royal West Indies 05/09/2003
Reviewers Rating:  Great
Trip Report – Royal West Indies (April 4 – 11)
Just recently returned from a fabulous one week stay at RWI on Grace Bay and would like to share our trip report with the board – Enjoy…
(Warning: this is a long one)
Pre-Trip Info
This was the second trip to lovely Grace Bay for my boyfriend and I. And just to give you an idea on our perspective, we are a couple in their late 20’s, with 2 previous trips to the Caribbean under our belts (T&C and Antigua) (Stayed at the Sands last time) – We are from New England so we love WARM, SUN & LOUNGING AROUND.
We are not the type of couple who looks to be very active & touring around – simply give us good sand, turquoise water and some cocktails, and we are the happiest of campers.
The Flight to Providenciales
We had nothing but smooth travels down to the Caribbean via American Airlines. Our flight left Hartford promptly at 6:20a.m. via Miami, and landed in Provo at 12:30 – this was great because we still had almost a full day ahead of us to start enjoying our vacation.
Customs in T&C was extremely easy (last time we went, the lines were LONG and it took quite some time), we were cleared in on our shuttle to the RWI within 30 minutes.
Royal West Indies
We checked-in with ease at the RWI – very friendly staff & courteous. I had to remind myself to slow down to ‘island time’…
We had a garden/botanical view room on the bottom floor (#314). Our room was a beautiful suite, and you can tell that the resort is brand new. Some extras that we enjoyed were the washer/dryer, full size refrigerator, plentiful storage space and all sorts of “homey” items you needed for your stay (Tupperware items, dishes, dishtowels, cutlery, etc). I’ve heard many people on this board report the landscaping is magnificent, and they were 100% correct. If you’ve ever stayed at the Sands, the RWI has a smaller property, and a more cozy feeling. Our room (and all rooms) have a nice porch area right outside (not screened in, not a huge deal, but if I got buggy at night they were a small nuisance). There is still construction going on at RWI, they’ve told us the ETA for completion is June. Once completed, there will be a front office and have a similar setup to the Sands where is the office is in the front of the resort. Housekeeping services I rate as excellent! Whatever we asked for me got, they even did our dishes on the days I could not get to them. Always need and clean and the staff was warm and kind when you spoke to them.
Poolside – The pool at the resort is breathtaking (not as large as other resorts), a good size with plenty of chairs available in and out of the shade.
The Mango Reef restaurant is located right near the pool, so it was easy to hop out and grab a drink when necessary (as with most people, I highly recommend the rum punch at the bar – my boyfriend highly recommends the local Turks Head beer – he loves it!)
Mango Reef Restaurant (at RWI)
We had the pleasure of dining at the resorts restaurant 3 times. The day we arrived we sat at the bar and had a very enjoyable lunch – Eric had the conch fingers and I had the Mango Reef salad (fresh greens, chicken, mango, pineapple and the mango cream vinaigrette)
We ate breakfast and another lunch there as well on other days. All meals, in my opinion, were top notch – we enjoyed them very much.
Other Dining Choices
As everyone knows there are MANY places to dine out in Provo, here’s our list of restaurants we went to while on vacation.
We started with a quick trip on our first night to the local Graceway IGA (this has improved even more than the last time we visited!) The cab fare to the store was ~$12.00 each way (no shuttle offered from RWI, a small negative). We bought fruits, breakfast food, alcohol and snacks.
This worked out well, as we ate breakfast in most morning to save a little cash. Having snacks right in the room was a huge plus as well, it was nice to take a break from the sun, come up to the room and enjoy a nibble while watching the lizards play on our porch.
The other restaurants visited are:
Latitudes (Ports of Call – 10 minute walk from hotel) – casual dining – I had the beef tacos – very yummy!
Calico Jacks (Ports of Call) – more casual dining (very hospitable staff) – attended the all you can eat pasta night – highly recommended
Mango Reef – At RWI resort – more pricey, but many dishes to choose from & very romantic atmosphere (had a chicken dish that was out of this world)
(also on one night did ‘take out’ from Mango Reef – pizza & salad – it was FANTASTIC (and had leftovers for our lunch the next day)
Coco Bistro – we saved this restaurant for our last night of vacation, and it was worth the wait. This restaurant is about a 5 min walk from RWI, and the atmosphere is absolutely breathtaking, hard to explain over email, it’s a must-see! I had a filet and it was out of this world, my boyfriend had the sirloin and could not stop “ooh-ing” and “aah-ing”.
Places we would have liked to try/go back to if more time:
The Caicos Caf頨5 min walk from RWI) extensive menu choices – middle of the road prices
A new Cuban restaurant opened up “Cubavera”, but heard from some folks staying at the resort it was very good!
The Gecko Grille (at OCW) – looked at the menu and looked wonderful
Anacaona (Grace Bay Club) – Walked by at night and the place is beautiful & was very packed (more expensive there too)
The Beach
Grace Bay, and its beautiful turquoise waters, are just as amazing and beautiful as I remember them to be.
The calm waters and perfect temperatures are what made us yearn to return to TCI. We had stayed in Antigua last year, and in my opinion, the waters could not compare to Grace Bay. The fine sugar-fine sands were the same as I remember also….feels so good beneath your feet.
Recent posts regarding choppy waters proved to be untrue (however, I heard it was raining the week before we arrived, so it is possible).
The next resort in line is Club Med – Saw some topless women there. I had read posts in the past of people asking if naked sunbathing was allowed, and most people responded NO – well, this is not the case. I remember one morning when a young girl jogged by our resort topless and in a thong – my boyfriend was pretty happy about that….we looked at each other and both said “Club Med girl”..
On the subject of naked sunbathing, we did stumble upon a nude beach – yep, no lie…however, never anyone there. Here’s how to find this beach…walk right out of RWI, keep walking down past Club Med, then past Ocean Club (OC is the last resort on this end of Grace Bay) keep walking by limestone rock for another 10 minutes, and you will finally see the sign “Caution, nude beach, pass at your own risk” J
You do have to somewhat have to play the “put-two-beach-towels-on-your-chairs-by-the-water-or-not-have-a-seat-game” – Strange, some days in front of the resort were deserted and only a few other couples and other days during that week, you had to save some seats no later than 10:00a.m.
The beach chairs I found were more comfortable than those we saw walking by other resorts (RWI’s are padded!)
We packed two rafts and blew them up when we got there. We got this hint from a traveler a couple of years back, and it’s well worth the $3.00 spent at Target. The resort had the foam noodles to use as well for your floating needs.
Excursions
I’ll stress the fact that the two of us are big ‘beach loungers’, and we didn’t have intentions of doing many activities. We used J&B Tours to do an excursion we had 2 years ago. The “Island Getaway” was a wonderful and amazing way to spend the day. A shuttle picks you up in the morning and takes you to Leeward Marina. From there, you are whisked off by boat to a secluded island (cay) of your choice for the day (this trip is $195.00/couple). The tour company provides a beach umbrella, cooler filled with food/water/wine/beer and snorkel gear. I highly suggest bringing your own snorkel gear if you plan on doing a lot of it. The snorkel equipment they provide is not that great, lots of leaks, etc.
We were dropped off at 10:30a.m. and when asked what time did we want to be picked up, we responded “the latest you can do” (which was 4:00pm – but they were kind and came at 4:30 and gave us an extra ½ hour).
If you had not seen us up close, one would have mistaken us for 2 kids, we played in the sand all day, explored our island and lied around naked for a short time too ;-)
We did the ‘Beach Cruise’ 2 years back (1/2 day cruise to Little Water Cay to see iguana’s, snorkeling and shelling on Fort George Cay) – Not done this time around, but highly recommended…shelling was our favorite part.
We had all good intentions of renting a 4-wheel drive vehicle to tour around and go to Malcolm’s Beach, but that never happened. We basically got too lazy and just enjoyed tooling around the beach every day.
A recommended excursion we came up with on our own is the “Walk to Snorkel” day trip! We threw together a backpack including our snorkel gear, cold water, snacks & beach cover ups and headed down via foot on the beach towards the Coral Gardens Resort. Previously we had snorkeled at the White House Reef, and were planning on doing so again. I spoke to Annie at the tour desk (at RWI) and mentioned this to her, and she had a better idea which proved to be just as much fun (without all the people). We did walk down the way of Coral Gardens, but we stopped a short ways before in front of Treasure Beach Villas (no sign, but you can see small villas set back a distance with the tiki huts on the beach in the shade). Here is where Annie suggested we drop our stuff and snorkel here – what a great suggestion!
We had the whole area to ourselves and saw some amazing sea life.
The reason we made a day of this is because the walk from RWI down to this area is a good roughly 3 miles+
It’s very enjoyable if you’re up for it, you can see what all the other resorts look like that you hear mentioned on the board so often.
On our journey back to RWI, we stopped at Hemingway’s for lunch – the food and resort were as awesome as we remembered (you gotta love eating right on the beach).
Bring tons of sunscreen (not that you don’t know this already) – we had a super large bottle of spf 15 and another bottle of spf 45 and used both up within days. Definitely got cooked, but came home with a very nice tans (this was much needed especially since Connecticut’s total snowfall for this winter season was 73 inches!!)
JO-JO The Resident Dolphin
On our trip report from 2 yrs back, we had to sadly report that we never caught a glimpse of the resident dolphin named Jo-Jo.
Well, I’m happy to report we saw him 3 times on this trip!!
The first occurrence was directly in front of RWI believe it or not. The gentleman sitting next to me said “I just saw Jo-Jo jump out of the water”. I thought he maybe had one too man rum punches, but he was right. A group of us turned around and I was immediately nervous the first time I saw him jump out of the water. The first impression is ‘wow, that kind of looks like a shark’. He fiddled around and then made his way down the beach and we lost sight of him. Same thing happened on the morning of our departure, but he was closer this time, and we took a walk along down the beach and followed him all the way to almost the Allegro, then he swam out deep.
What a treat that was!!
We also heard from a couple of locals that Jo-Jo warns the residents when rain is coming by swimming up and the down the channel where the boats travel. He was spotted there many times at the end of March, and sure enough it poured for days right before we arrived (they had not seen rain since August, but warned us days of rain in a row are very rare).
Time to Go Home…
The week was a dream come true and I cherish all the new memories Eric & I made there. I was very sad the day we had to leave, but the wonderful thing was our flight to go home was not until 4:00, so we were able to get up early and spend from 8:00a.m. till past noon on the beach!
We took advantage of late check out (2:00pm check-out for $40.00 only if no-one is checking into your room that day – well worth the money!)
The beach was a dream, the sunsets were absolutely breathtaking, the water was perfect – I wish I could be back there right now as I type this report from my desk at work.
I hope you enjoyed the trip report, and if you go to TCI, I hope you enjoy your time spent there as much as we did!
Jenn & Eric
Jennifer Drezek
Read more Caribbean Travel reviews at TripAdvisor
|
 |
|
