My wife and I spent Thanksgiving week on Provo, staying at the Royal West Indies Resort. I dove in the mornings and she either zoned out or did a little exploring and then we spent the rest of the afternoon either walking the beach or actively doing nothing.

Our room at RWI was a small studio with an ocean view (which is not the same as ocean front) on the third floor of the newest block of rooms to go up, close to the reception area. From our balcony we had a pleasing view of Grace Bay as well as the pool area. I can't imagine the ocean view from the second floor has a lot to recommend it. Anyway, we were very pleased with the room and the small kitchen (and washer/dryer combo!). The staff was very pleasant and helpful, particularly in dealing with a bag which was lost in transit.

There's a large IGA supermarket in the middle of the island, on Leeward Highway. We found almost all of the brands we know from the States but, as with everywhere on TCI, prices are high. There are no sales or income taxes on TCI but there are customs duties, typically 33%! TCI was almost as expensive as Grand Cayman.

I dove withDive Provo and cannot say enough good things about this dive operator! The shop staff was friendly, helpful, and meticulous in ensuring everybody had the requested gear. I'd planned to dive with my own gear but it went missing somehwere between PHL, MIA, and PLS so the first day was spent in rental gear (except for my reg and computer which I always carry as carry-on luggage). Although the fins were a little too flippy for my taste, the gear was in good shape and worked as it should.

Dive sites visited included French Cay (a 15 mile run from the south side of Provo), Grace Bay (quick trip from Turtle Cove), and Northwest Point (longer trip from Turtle Cove). Every dive had a wall dive and a shallower reef dive. Unique in my experience, divers could either buddy up and swim on their own ("just be back under the boat in 45 minutes and back on board with at least 500 psi") or follow the divemaster. I opted for the latter but at least two pairs of divers did their own dives.

Again, Dive Provo staff were meticulous in their briefings and in doing roll calls at the start of the trip and after every dive. It was not enough to just "count heads", they called names and expected replies.

The diving around TCI is listed as being among the top ten sites in the world and I can believe it. We had dives that were a mix of the macro (large black coral fans, huge grouper), the micro (net crabs, tiny nudibranchs), the awesome (pairs of eagle rays in formation, large turtles), and the breathtaking (including a pass by a large hammerhead shark).

Provo itself is... there. There are not a lot of sights to see beyond the resorts' facilities. We rented a Suzuki Samurai 4WD from Scooter Bob in Turtle Cove (highly recommended operator) and spent a day driving around the island. We very quickly found that once you left the resorts, you discovered the one thing Provo is really missing. Infrastructure. Other than some roads along Grace Bay, Leeward Highway, and the Downtown area, the roads are little more than scraped strips on top of the islands coral limestone. While we saw "normal" cars drive these roads, this is basically Bigfoot 4WD country and even then it's still forty miles of bad road. Worse, there are very few road signs and the tourist maps we found either were not to scale or otherwise missing useful information. The people are friendly, "t'iefin'" is rare, and we had few qualms about going anywhere on the island but this is just not a place to drive around in. There's just not much to see and the roads are simply not ready for prime time.

Will we go back? It's not out of the question but it's not a place we're chomping at the bit to return to. Do we recommend the resort? Yes! We recommend a room back from the beach because it gives you relief from the one bit of bad news: Club Med is right next door and at night they can get a little loud. We found the other buildings at RWI acted as a sound barrier. What about the diving? My experience with Dive Provo puts the diving as second only to Grand Cayman's West Beach dives and second to none for diver support.