Where are we?

We arrived in Providenciales at 8:30 at night. Our rental car that was included in our hotel reservation was waiting at the airport. We quickly make adjustments because the steering wheel is on the right and they drive on the left side of the road - it's a British Territory - never mind that they use the U.S. dollar for currency - but anyhow, I am not going to be driving here. Instead I will just grip my seat and suck in my breath real hard every time Ben turns a corner, while navigating mostly unmarked roads and chastising him for going over the 20 mile an hour speed limit. By day two or three I will back off of that realizing that 20 mph is really really slow. I will also be riding in the back.

I flip on Ben's phone to see if we have service and the date registered is January 6, 1980. It just might be that we have gone back in time.

It's a Saturday night and people are walking the streets, which makes the driving situation that more precarious. We turn off onto a dirt road in the middle of nowhere and I ask for the fourth time that night "where are we?" because really I'm not sure. I'm not sure that anyone knows where Turks and Caicos is*, at least from what I read about it before I came. Some guide books classify it as the Carribean which it is not, it looks as though it might be part of the Bahamian chain but it's not. It's in the Atlantic ocean but the water is warm. People native to the island are called 'Belongers' which I think is a strange name and I often find my mind pondering alternative names for them. The islands closest neighbors besides the Bahamas are Haiti and the Dominican Republic - which did you know is one island separated by a large river? They seem so dissimilar to me - mostly I'm thinking in appearance and language because really I know little else about the country/ies. Cuba is close too.

We get to our resort and it is dark. Partly because we are out in the middle of nowhere and partly because no one is there. The office is closed and it is just dark. The stars are awesome however. Finally we see a flashlight bobbing up the path and we are checked in by the hotel staff. They have upgraded us to an ocean view condo which is nice but it doesn't make much of a difference to me b/c I don't plan on spending much time in the room. We drive over to where we will be staying and as we are walking to our room, admiring the surroundings, a guy comes out and says "oh, I didn't know we had any guests right now". And he then informs us that he has to drain the pool the next day. Which is not the best news except that we are surrounded by water so it's no big deal to me. Ben disagrees. But then it sets in that we are the only ones at the resort minus the staff and a couple permanent condo dwellers. This fact, plus the ocean breeze makes me all giggly and I wonder this time not where are we but "what is this place"? (Did I mention that we also did not bring our children.) So we explore the beach we have to ourselves, the soon to be drained pool that we have to ourselves, the hot tub that will not be drained that we have to ourselves under a bright starry sky on an island that seems to be deserted.

Since our internal clocks are still on West Coast time (TCI is on EST) we head into town to see what goes on in the islands on a Saturday night. We do so with a warning from the houskeeper to watch out for the Belongers walking on the sides of the road since, well, the night is dark as are they. On our way into town at 10pm we pass churches and beauty shops still open with people congregating all over town. It looks like some are playing games and others just walking and chatting. We hear some recorded voodoo type chanting out of one house and we eventually made our way to the main drag in town - where the big resorts are, opposite the part of the island we ended up on - we have nachos at the most happening bar on the island, which is not exactly hopping and then make our trek back to our private villa with it's hammocks and hot tub and the promise of not having to wake up to an alarm clock (which is probably more of a welcome relief for Ben than it is me) and even though I am still not sure where we are I can't wait to see it in the daylight.

* Apparently it is appropriately classified as the British West Indies.