Turks and Caicos part 2: Horses and Conch Diving

So I've been taking care of two barfing babies this weekend 

and after cleaning up my 5th pool of puke I decided I needed a little escape.  

Nothing like Turks and Caicos pics to take me to my happy place : )

One of the top 5 things to do on the island, according to Tripadvisor, is horseback riding on the beach and in the ocean. All the reviews made it sound amazing so I said, "Let's do it!"

First they took a few minutes to teach us how to steer our horses, slow them down, stop them from grazing, etc... and then we headed off for the beach.

We followed a dirt road and then wound our way through a sandy jungle trail. After a few minutes the trail opened up to a private beach with a breathtaking view of the ocean.  The horses knew exactly where they were and made a straight line for the ocean to cool off their bellies in the water.

It was amazing to ride right into the ocean and glide through the water on our horses. 

One of the guide's dogs followed us to the beach and when we went into the ocean he swam out after us and jumped on the horse with his master. I thought it was pretty funny to see a dog riding a horse in the ocean. ; )

My horse was in heaven in the water. She was born on the island and has been doing beach rides since she was a baby. She spent most of the ride with her nose in the water blowing bubbles so I nicknamed her "Snorkel" : )

We spent almost on hour riding in the ocean. It was so serene and beautiful and relaxing. 

Our guides were great and even took our cameras so we could all get pictures.

This was definitely a bucket list experience and I'm so glad we got to do it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The other excursion we did was a Conch Diving cruise that Taber booked for my birthday.

It was awesome to be able to get on a boat and get some different views of the island.

We saw this crazy shipwreck and a huge ghost town resort that went belly up when the economy tanked.

Our tour guides jumped in the ocean and dove for conch and starfish. They pulled some up to show us what they looked like and then they let us loose to get our own conch shells.

It was tricky to find the conch but we did see a lot of star fish

I found this 7 point beauty and pulled her up for a picture.

It was pretty hard to spot the conch shells on the bottom of the ocean because they camouflaged so well, but after about 30 minutes Taber was able to pull up two gorgeous ones and brought them back to the boat. 

In our tour group of about 20 people, Taber was the only one who found his own shells! Everyone else got the ones the tour guide had pulled up. I think he felt pretty proud of his manly conch hunting skills after that ; )

Once we all had our shells they took us to Iguana island where we gutted them and chopped them up for a salad. The animal thingy inside looked pretty nasty but hunter boy was totally into it and ate part of it after he pulled it out. Blech.

Once the animal thingy was out we had to scrape the seawood off.  Meanwhile our tour guides were using the meat to make a salad.

The salad was tasty, but I kept picturing the slimy conch in my mind and couldn't finish it. Taber was glad. More for him!

We got to explore Iguana island which is literally inhabited by thousands of iguanas. We saw a ton of them and I kept begging Taber to give me his shirt so I could catch one, but he didn't like the idea so this is as close as I got. ; )

After our picnic on the island they took us out to the reef to snorkel one last time. Turks and Caicos has the third largest reef in the world, Australia is number 1 and Belize is number 2. The water was clear and the fish we saw were incredible. It was hands down the coolest thing I have ever done on my birthday.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the way: The WINNER of the goodie care package for guessing the price of our T&C groceries is Rachel Murdock! She guessed $95 and the total price was $92! Isn't that crazy? I'm used to expensive groceries in Boston so I thought it would be close to $50, but when the girl said $92 I almost died! Guess that's the price of living in paradise : )