Grace Bay is the postcard. The cays are the day out.
Which snorkel boat actually reaches the coral heads. What a private charter to Half Moon Bay costs. Whether Grand Turk earns the flight for one day. Reviews of every tour you can book in Turks and Caicos.
The reef, a catamaran, the mangrove flats and one day on wheels.
Four bookings a first week on Provo hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first morning4hour Group Half Day Snorkeling Excursion in Grace BayFour hours on the barrier reef out of Grace Bay, two stops, gear handed to you on the boat.
02The day on deck4-Hour Catamaran Sail and Snorkel Tour from Grace BayA catamaran under sail with a swim ladder off the back. The one the rest of the week gets planned around.
03The quiet half dayMangrove & Iguana Clear Kayak TourClear hulls through the mangrove channels and across to the iguanas. Nobody needs to be able to paddle.
04The day on wheelsLove Buggy Island Tour with LunchA buggy convoy round Provo with lunch at the far end. How you see the island without hiring a car.
Provo hands you a barrier reef and a harbour full of boats. Pick your kind of day.
The reef sits about a mile off Grace Bay and the cays start just past it, so almost every good day here is a boat day. Four of them, what it costs to get on board, and which one suits the week you have.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Private Boat Tours to outer islands, snacks drinks- snorkel- cruise!
Reef half-daysTwo stops on the coral heads, gear and a ladder off the back.
Catamaran daysShade, a trampoline deck and lunch somewhere off a beach.
Sunset sailsFizz on deck while the light goes over Grace Bay.
Every boat dayCay runs, sandbar stops and the crossings in between.
All 42 days on the water →
Two islands carry nearly all of it: Provo for the water, Grand Turk for everything else.
Twelve miles of Grace Bay sand with a barrier reef parked a mile offshore, a mangrove nature reserve behind the airport, a cay that belongs to the iguanas, and a colonial capital forty minutes away by air. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Provo: the reef before the wind gets up, the sandbars after.
Everything in Providenciales →
Grace Bay is the address, but the day happens offshore — the Bight Reef thirty metres off the sand, Half Moon Bay on the way out to the cays, the mangrove channels behind the airport. These three carry more travellers than anything else on the island.
Swim off the beach, or take the boat
The Bight Reef is free, buoyed and a short wade from the sand. The boat costs real money and reaches coral heads the shore swim never gets near, with a second stop most people remember longer than the first.
Clear hulls over the mangrove flats
The water behind Provo barely covers your knees and the sand under it is bright white, so a transparent hull turns the paddle into a glass floor. Turtles and small rays pass underneath while you are still working out how to steer.
A boat, a captain and the cays
Priced by the boat rather than by the head, which changes the maths the moment there are four of you. You set the route: Half Moon Bay, the wreck, a sandbar nobody else is standing on, home when you feel like it.
The most booked days out in Turks and Caicos.
Every tour review on the islands →The tours more travellers take than anything else here, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
4hour Group Half Day Snorkeling Excursion in Grace Bay
Spend four hours aboard a spacious double-decker catamaran from Grace Bay, snorkeling the barrier reef, visiting Little Water Cay, and enjoying lunch, drinks, rooftop jumps, and water slides. Guides such as Manny, Sisco, Lamont, and Captain DJ are known for keeping the trip safe, social, and family-friendly.
From · $125
Read our review →
2
4-Hour Catamaran Sail and Snorkel Tour from Grace Bay
from $145
3
Love Buggy Island Tour with Lunch
from $229
4
2 Hour Champagne Sunset Cruise from Grace Bay, Providenciales (Adult Only)
from $121
5
Mangrove Clear Kayak Tour
from $125
6
Drive GDT – Golf Cart Rentals
7
Exclusive Supreme Snorkeling Tour
from $149
8
Parasailing Adventure from Providenciales in Turks and Caicos
from $89
Behind Provo the sea goes knee-deep and stays that way for miles.
The Princess Alexandra reserve is mangrove channel, turtle flat and a cay of rock iguanas, all in water you could stand up in. Clear kayaks and paddleboards do most of it; a boat drops you on the sandbar at Half Moon Bay when the tide is right.
- 1Mangrove Clear Kayak Tourfrom $125
- 23HR Emerald reef snorkeling, iguana island and shipwreck tourfrom $125
- 3Kayak Eco Tourfrom $296
Nothing on these islands is far. Everything is awkward without your own wheels.
There is no bus. Provo is one long highway with sand tracks running off it, and Grand Turk is a grid you can drive end to end in twenty minutes. A jeep, a buggy or a golf cart turns either island into a day you write yourself, and the driving is on the left.
What these islands actually charge for a day out.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. This is not a cheap country, but the cart rentals and the shore snorkels sit a long way under the charters.
Cart and scooter rentals, the tram round Cockburn Town, transfers and the shorter swims.
The island standard: reef half-days, clear-kayak mornings, catamaran sails and the buggy runs with lunch.
Private charters out to the cays, fishing days, jet-ski safaris and the boats you take over for an afternoon.
- 1Love Buggy Island Tour with Lunchfrom $229
- 2Full Day Beach BBQ Lunch & Snorkeling Excursion in Grace Bayfrom $250
- 3Kayak Eco Tourfrom $296
Grand Turk is seven miles of salt town, loose donkeys and a wall that drops forever.
Forty minutes from Provo by air and a different century on landing. Cockburn Town is two streets of Bermudian shopfronts, the donkeys and horses wander where they like, and a few hundred metres offshore the shelf falls away into the Columbus Passage.
All of Grand Turk →
Three things that only happen in Turks and Caicos.
Warm water and white sand run the length of the Caribbean. A transparent boat over a protected flat, two thousand iguanas that live nowhere else, and a Soviet freighter parked on a reef do not.
The Clear Kayaks
The flats behind Provo are a protected reserve, the water over them rarely more than waist deep, and the sand underneath is white enough to read by. Somebody worked out that a transparent hull over that turns a paddle into a glass floor, and the whole island took it up. Turtles, small rays and the occasional nurse shark pass underneath while you are still working out how to steer.
- 1Mangrove Clear Kayak Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 794 reviews
- 2Clear Kayak Photoshoot in Turks and Caicos Islands Providenciales★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 221 reviews
- 3Clear Bottom Kayaks Mangrove Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 217 reviews
The Rock Iguanas
Turks and Caicos rock iguanas live on a handful of protected cays and nowhere else on the planet. Little Water Cay holds a couple of thousand of them, plus a boardwalk that keeps feet off the burrows and a warden who takes the small reserve fee. They come to the path because boats have been arriving for years; feeding them is the one thing you are asked not to do.
- 1Mangrove & Iguana Clear Kayak Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 507 reviews
- 23HR Emerald reef snorkeling, iguana island and shipwreck tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 247 reviews
- 33HR Clear Kayak Mangrove and iguana island Tour in Leeward★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 110 reviews
The La Famille Express
A Soviet-era freighter ran aground off Provo in a hurricane and was left where it stopped. It sits upright in bright shallow water a mile offshore, close enough to swim around, with fish schooling in the shade under the hull. Boats pull in on the way out to the cays, and it is the one wreck here you do not need a tank for.
- 13HR Emerald reef snorkeling, iguana island and shipwreck tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 247 reviews
- 2Shipwreck Adventure in Providenciales★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 233 reviews
- 3Abandoned Shipwreck Jet Ski Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 190 reviews
Four things here you cannot leave until the morning of.
Most of a week here can be arranged over breakfast the day before. These four run on boat schedules, a small fleet and a cruise-ship calendar that takes no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Morning Half Day Cruise from Providenciales with Snorkeling and Iguana IslandThe cay is a protected reserve reached only by boat, and the operators run set departures. Turn up without one and there is no way across.
- 022 Hour Champagne Sunset Cruise from Grace Bay, Providenciales (Adult Only)One sailing a day, and it leaves whether or not you are on it. In season the catamarans are gone a week out.
- 03Drive GDT – Golf Cart RentalsGrand Turk runs a small fleet against a ship that empties two thousand people onto the dock. The carts go before the last tender lands.
- 04Half Day Private Boat Charter at Grace Bay, ProvidencialesA private charter is one boat and one crew for the day. There is no second sailing if somebody else booked yours.
Grace Bay does nothing except be the best beach you have stood on.
Twelve miles of it, no vendors working the sand, and a barrier reef a mile out holding the swell off so the water never really moves. The Bight Reef comes close enough to snorkel from a towel. Everything with an engine launches from the far end, at Leeward.
- 14hour Group Half Day Snorkeling Excursion in Grace Bayfrom $125
- 24-Hour Catamaran Sail and Snorkel Tour from Grace Bayfrom $145
- 32 Hour Champagne Sunset Cruise from Grace Bay, Providenciales (Adult Only)from $121
The wind that made Long Bay famous is the wind that cancels your boat.
From December into April the trades come in hard off the Atlantic. Kiteboarders move to Long Bay and the north-shore boats get bumpy, or get called off at eight in the morning by text. The answer is the same every time: put the day on land, or put it in the flats behind the island where the wind has nothing to lift.
By island — Provo, Grand Turk and the cays
By kind of day — boat, board, buggy or reef
Grace Bay, the reef, the mangroves, the cays, then Grand Turk: the week almost everybody does first.
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