Beaches in Turks and Caicos

A low archipelago of forty islands and cays on the southern edge of the Bahama Banks, ringed almost entirely by barrier reef, and that reef is why the beaches read as they do: it breaks the Atlantic swell offshore, leaving water that arrives at the sand flat, shallow and pale for a long way out. Providenciales holds the population, the airport and the developed shore, with Grace Bay along its northern edge; the outer cays are reached only by boat and several are uninhabited. Grand Turk, the seat of government, is a small island of salt ponds and colonial-era streets on the far side of a deep-water channel, and the wall a few hundred metres off it drops to two thousand metres, which is why the diving there is what it is. Humpback whales pass through the Turks Island Passage between January and April. Salt raked from ponds on Grand Turk and Salt Cay was the islands' only industry for three centuries, and the abandoned works and windmills are still standing. Practically: all beaches are public to the high-water mark, hire cars drive on the left, and prices on Providenciales are high by any Caribbean standard. Hurricane season runs June to November and sargassum affects the south and east coasts through the summer, while the reef-protected north stays largely clear.