SO THE REASON BLOGGING HAS BEEN LIGHTER OVER THE LONG WEEKEND is that I’ve been in Turks and Caicos, where I went scuba diving with the folks from Caicos Adventures and saw lots of friendly marine life. Also saw a tiger shark, but didn’t get a picture of that one, along with the usual assortment of turtles, moray eels, rays, etc. The visibility was roughly comparable to Cayman — perhaps a bit less, but they’d just come off some rough weather that left things stirred up. The Caicos Adventures folks, recommended to me by Cayman dive guide Liz Parkinson, run a good operation. We went 18 miles offshore to French Key and the boat ride, over glass-smooth water that left the bottom looking three feet down instead of 30, was delightful.
Turks and Caicos is recovering from Hurricane Ike, which did some pretty major damage, and which found the government unprepared. (If they were regular InstaPundit readers, they’d have spent more time and money on disaster-prep.) They’re still recovering, physically and financially.
They’ve also been hit pretty hard by the financial collapse. With real estate and tourism their main industries, things are, I’m told, a lot different here than they were in 2007. There are whole mothballed hotel-and-condo projects that were partially completed in 2008, just waiting for the economy to recover to be finished. Tourism is down, and the locals we spoke with seemed quite grateful for what remains. We came because we got a terrific deal (found online by the Insta-Daughter) and our long weekend here was very pleasant. We’ll probably be back. The weather was excellent, and the water is some of the most beautiful I’ve seen in the Caribbean, which is saying something. We stayed at Grace Bay, which is reminiscent of Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach, only less builtup. The whole atmosphere here reminds me of Cayman ten or fifteen years ago before the last big wave of development hit.
On the other hand, there have been big problems with government corruption, producing some political turmoil that has brought outside supervision from Britain. We’ll see how that works out.
I have neither the means nor the inclination to be an overseas real estate investor, but prices are way down. There’s some sign that the TCI government is trying to follow Cayman by building up an offshore banking sector. I don’t know how that will work out, but since — unlike Cayman these days — they don’t have tax treaties with anyone, they may manage to pull it off.
Places that depend on tourism are hurting; if your income is reasonably secure, this is a good time to take advantage of the deals, and to help out folks who can use the business. Plus, well, you get to spend a nice long weekend somewhere warm . . . .