This winter, my husband and I decided to stray from the BVI for the Christmas/New Year season. Jost Van Dyke seems like a second home to us, so we tend to compare every other island to that as our high water mark. Turks & Caicos Islands are lovely and the people equally so, however, our hearts are still in the BVI and Jost remains number one on our list.
That being said, here is our trip report for Provo:
We arrived at PLS dreading the inhumane conditions we were about to endure. I had read nothing but horror stories about the airport. To my utter amazement, we breezed right through C&I in about 5 minutes, and within 20 minutes of deplaning, we were at Avis, picking up our rental car.
Just to keep things interesting, we proceeded to immediately go the wrong direction, and discovered lost is a relative term, as we were less than a mile from where we needed to be. We arrived at our villa (
Villa Diasanadu , which we booked through VRBO), settled our things and headed over to Graceway IGA to stock up on groceries for breakfasts, lunches and much needed alcohol. Not shocked at all by the prices of food, thanks to helpful advice here. Kitchen stocked, we grabbed a cooler full of beer and headed to the beach. After a small incident, as I will call it, we proceeded to enjoy the sunset, retired to our villa, and had a small home-made dinner.
Incidentally (don’t ask how I know this) should you somehow manage to get your rental car stuck in the sand on the beach access road, do not call Avis. They would want to charge you $500, whereas a local tow truck would charge merely $150 cash…all theoretically, of course. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" />
During our week on Provo we checked out Chalk Sound, Taylor Bay, Long Bay Beach, and snorkeled at Smith’s Reef. Our villa was on the Turtle Cove end of Grace Bay, so that’s where we spent the bulk of our beach time. We loved being on this end of the beach, as it was nearly deserted every day, and quite peaceful with no water sports salesmen.
Every one of the beaches was lovely, and the color of the water is truly stunning. It’s not all photo-shopped, as I had so cynically suspected!
Dining out included:
~Mango Reef – by far my favorite with an exquisite deconstructed lobster ravioli, and dining on the beach was so relaxing.
~Le Bouchon – excellent food, very odd experience. An extraneous amount of wait staff on hand, and we were waited on by probably five people. The owner is just downright odd. But again, the steak au poivre was delicious, so I guess he can be as odd as he wants to be.
~Via Veneto – great wait staff, out of this world excellent pasta, and as a bonus, they had *GOOD* beer on hand. We thought we had died and gone to beer heaven when we saw Moretti on the menu!
~Seven – dined here on Christmas, completely unaware that is was a fixed menu, fixed price meal. By far the most expensive meal we’ve ever had, but not the best. The food was good, but for the price, one should rightfully expect something very near perfection, and this was not. Would have preferred to order from their regular menu, but had a lovely experience none the less.
~Coco Bistro – sadly we cancelled this one after eating lunch at Da Conch Shack and getting the worst heartburn ever.
I took advice from the destination experts on TripAdvisor and made dinner reservations due to it being high season. However, each of the restaurants in which we dined was less than half occupied. Several places were taking walk-ins. Maybe an off year?
Lunches were mostly just sandwiches or snacks to accompany our beer, although we did eat at Bugaloo’s and Da Conch Shack, and one late night snack at Tiki Hut. The winner for “best cracked conch” on Provo was Bugaloo’s in my opinion. (But, Daniel’s on Middle beat that by a mile!)
We also dined at Danny Buoy’s on the night of the Maskanoo celebration, around 6:00pm and spent very little time at the festival, returning to our villa by 7:00, as we were leaving the next day and needed to pack up. My husband asked what Maskanoo was all about and I very jokingly said, “It’s so all the tourists are gone from their villas and the bad guys can go rob them”. Come to find out, several villas surrounding ours were actually burglarized during the festival while the guests were out. Guess we were lucky that night! I feel awful for anyone whose vacation was tarnished by thieves.
As expected, we did not care much at all for the Turks Head beer, but we ended up drinking 2 cases of it because we had already bought it. Almost simultaneously, my husband and I both proclaimed that it smelled like a permanent (you know…for your hair). We laughed about it and made a game of finishing it off so we could get to the “good stuff” aka Corona (at home we would drink Corona as a last resort). We drank plenty of good Bambarra Reserve and Bambarra Black Rum. Good times in spite of bad beer.
The one major thing that detracted from our experience was the people who insist on taking their small children into fine dining establishments. When I’m paying $150 - $450 for dinner, I do not want to hear your 4 year old playing a video game, or your baby crying, or your 6 year old singing songs from Frozen. How do parents not understand this?
All in all, we truly loved our week on Provo. The accommodations, the food and the beaches were all wonderful. We made some great memories and count this portion of our trip in the top 5 of our vacations.
Pictures of our week on Provo are here:
My Provo Pix
