We spent 10 days exploring the Turks and Caicos Islands with our kids (TCI) in August 2021, and we had a fabulous time! The TCI is a British overseas territory and it includes two island groups: The Turks Islands and the Caicos Islands. There are a total of eight islands, of which 6 are inhabited. Providenciales (part of the Caicos Islands) is home to most of the population and most of the development, including the Providenciales International Airport (PLS). Grand Turk is the second most popular island, and this is where the cruise ships arrive when visiting TCI.
The TCI is an amazing family destination! People are friendly and welcoming of children. TCI has some of the most picture-perfect beaches we’ve ever seen in our travels, including some amazing beaches for kids to safely splash around!
As usual, we self catered our stay in TCI. We personally do not enjoy resort stays and like having our own privacy, which is why we usually book our stays through Airbnb.
Because most people think of the TCI as a resort destination, I thought I’d share some practical information on how to DIY a trip to the islands. Make sure you check the TCI official website for the latest requirements for visiting. Here are our tips on how to visit the Turks and Caicos Islands with kids!
What To Pack
These are some items I suggest you pack for a trip to the TCI:
- Snorkel gear. We bought brand new Cressi snorkel gear for the grown ups, and loved it! For the kids, we opted for the full face snorkel masks from Ocean Reef, and they worked great!
- The islands only allow reef safe sunscreen, so make sure you get the right one. I mean, who uses non-reef safe sunscreen these days anyways, right? We bought a bunch of tubes from Blue Lizard, and really loved it! They have sunscreen for adults and kids and they don’t turn you all pasty white, so that was nice!
- Water shoes. Most of the beaches are sandy, but there’s a couple with some rocks or bits of coral, so it’s a good idea to have water shoes handy in case you end up at one of those beaches.
Lodging
The most popular area to stay is Grace Bay and Bight Beach. These is where the bulk of resorts and restaurants is. Grace Bay is definitely a stunning place to stay, and there’s a lot of conveniences that come with it. You honestly can’t go wrong staying somewhere around Grace Bay. If you are not planning on renting a car, then this is the area for you!
For our stay, we booked a lovely 3-bedroom villa with a pool near the Chalk Sound area in Providenciales. We were about a 20-minute drive from Grace Bay, but walking distance to a fabulous beach, a National Park, a great restaurant, and more. All of it without the crowds that sometimes happen around resorts. If you are thinking about renting a villa in TCI, we definitely recommend the one we stayed at!
For more detailed information on accommodation, visit the TCI official website. In general, their website is full of great resources for planning a trip to the islands. I think it’s the best country website I’ve ever encountered while doing research for a trip!
Food Shopping
There are many grocery stores all over the island. Most tourists shop at Graceway IGA, which is basically the same as any store in the US. We also did some shopping at Sunny Foods and learned this is where the locals shop, and thought it was also a good store. There are also lots of small convenience stores throughout the island where you can get some basic needs as well.
Because we were staying in a self-catering villa, we did a big shopping trip to stock up on breakfast food, snack and some lunch options. We mostly brought our own lunch food to the beach, which worked really well as we didn’t have to leave the beach to grab lunch.
Our boat told us that many people fly to TCI with coolers full of frozen meat. We also read about this on our guide book. Apparently, this is quite common so nobody will hassle you when you enter the country with your frozen goods.
Places To Eat
Restaurant food is quite expensive in the TCI. When it comes to fine dining, the sky is the limit for how much you can spend. In order to keep our budget under control, we did a mix of eating out and cooking at home.
These are some places we tried. The food was good and the prices were somewhat reasonable:
Turk Kebab serves kebab and gyros and is located on the road leading to Grace Bay Beaches.
Somewhere. A pretty good Mexican restaurant right on Coral Gardens.
Hemmingway’s on the Beach. Located next to Sands at Grace Bay resort, they had great cocktails and served mostly American food.
Las Brisas. This was our “neighborhood” restaurant and we really enjoyed dining there! The restaurant has an incredible view of Chalk Sound National Park, especially as sunset. They have a tapas menu as well as a wide variety of other options. Prices were very reasonable and the staff was super friendly! They also do a sunset cruise around the NP so make sure you look into that if you would like to explore this beautiful park!
Bugaloos Conch Crawl. Visit the one on the beach for a seaside meal. This is a great place to try conch as there are several options for dishes made with this island delicacy. They have a Sunday family party with live music too.
Kids are welcomed in restaurants, and you’ll find a kids’ menu at most of them. If you don’t see options for kids, you can ask your server and they are usually happy to accommodate requests for smaller portions and such. It’s mandatory to wear a mask in all restaurants until you are seated.
Getting Around
If you really want to explore the island, you’ll need a car. This is regardless of whether you decided to stay in a resort or not, as there is not public transit system in the islands. We rented a car from Grace Bay Car Rentals, which is located right across the street from the airport. All other car rental companies are outside the airport and you’ll need to take a shuttle to get to them.
Driving is on the left side of the road, so be prepared for that. After living in Malta for 2 months, Joe got a lot of practice driving on the left, so he was totally comfortable driving in TCI. Other than that, drivers were pretty mellow and driving felt easy on the islands.
Getting around Providenciales was pretty easy overall. There are a series of roundabouts and, once you get familiar with them, that’s basically all you’ll need in order to find your way around Providenciales. Sure, you can use GPS, but we just used a paper map (ask for one from the car rental company), and were totally fine.
One thing to keep in mind is that speed limits are posted in kilometers on the road signs, but cars speedometers are on miles. A bit confusing at firsts, but not a biggie once you figure that out!
Beach Access
All the beaches on the Turks and Caicos Islands are open to the public and can be accessed through a series of walkways in between resorts. All the access points have plenty of parking, and the walk to the beach was never longer than a quick 2-5 minutes.
While most resorts have lounge chairs and umbrellas set up for their guests on the beach, you can plop down anywhere you want, even right in front of said umbrellas. Of course, we didn’t do that, but instead we walked about 10 meters or so away from the resorts and had a lot of space just to ourselves. Resort guests seem to hang out just in front of their resort, so there was more than plenty of open beach to be enjoyed without a single person nearby!
In some beaches you will find locals renting umbrellas and chairs (about $40 for 2 chairs and an umbrella for the day). We found this option at Coral Gardens and next to the Sands at Grace Bay resort. It was nice to have that option when we didn’t want to haul around the gear from our Airbnb. Another perk of Coral Gardens and the Sands resort beaches was the nearby restaurants. It was perfect to be able to grab lunch or to-go drinks without having to really pack up and leave the beach.
Best Beaches
The Turks and Caicos Islands have some of the more gorgeous beaches I’ve ever seen. They are picture-perfect beautiful, and you really can’t go wrong with any of them. In case you are looking for suggestions, these were my favorites:
Grace Bay Beaches
One of the most beautiful beaches we visited were in Grace Bay. This is where most of the resorts in Providenciales are located, and with good reason. The beaches on the bay are stunning! Grace Bay consistently makes the list for most beautiful beaches in the world, and it’s easy to see why! The beaches on Grace Bay are part of the Princess Alexandra National Park.This is what beach dreams are made of: Crystal clear blue water and fine white sand made from coral dust. Surprisingly, this long stretch of beach never felt crowded. In fact, we always managed to be by ourselves.
If we were less of the exploring type, we would’ve spent every single day there. Instead, we visited twice and, on our last visit, we saw 3 sting rays swimming right by the shore! We all managed to grab our snorkel gear and were able to admire them underwater for a while until they swam off into the deep.
Taylor Bay Beach
Taylor Bay Beach was just a 5-minute walk from our villa, and it was a big hit with our kids! The water there is very shallow, calm and clear, making it a great place to visit with small kids! I think this beach would be ideal when traveling to TCI with toddlers!
Taylor Bay is on the south coast of Provo, about a 20-minute drive from Grace Bay, which is probably why we hardly saw anyone while we were there. There was no good snorkeling at this beach, but we had the best time paddle boarding on this pool-like beach! It was also a great place to walk to at the end of the day to catch the sunset.
Coral Gardens
This spot is located on the Bight Beach, which is basically the same stretch as Grace Bay. The water was stunning, just like at Grace Bay, but what makes this spot special is that you can snorkel right off the beach, making it a great place for little kids to see some underwater life!
This reef is definitely worth checking out. People are not actually allowed to snorkel right over the reef in order to preserve it, but you can swim all the way around and see a wide variety of fish, especially towards the farthest end of the reef. There is a person guarding the reef, so make sure to respect the barriers or you will be called out.
There is a good Mexican restaurant right on the beach that serves yummy drinks and has super friendly staff. The restaurant only has outdoor seating and a great view of the beach.
Half Moon Bay
This beach is located between the uninhabited islands of Little Water Cay (also known as Iguana Island) and Water Cay, and can only be accessed by boat or by kayak. Like Grace Bay Beach, this beach is also part of Princess Alexandra National Park.
We chartered a private boat for a half day (see below) and this was one of our stops. The boat ride from Provo takes about 20 minutes and is quite scenic. The beach is on the northern side of the bay (the Atlantic side) and features the most unreal turquoise water I’ve ever seen!
Another perk of visiting this island is seeing the endangered Rock Iguana. The iguanas used to be widespread throughout the islands, but now you can only find them here.
Sailrock Point
This beach is located on South Caicos. The beach here was more like a swimming pool than an actual beach! See my South Caicos blog post for more details on visiting this island.
Boat trip
If I were to recommend one thing to do in Turks and Caicos, it’d be to charter a boat. We chartered one from Caicos Dream Tours and had a fabulous experience! You can also join a bigger boat tour, but we opted for the private boat because of the flexibility it gives when traveling with younger kids, and it was certainly worth every penny!
The boat picked us up from outside a resort on Grace Bay (where we picked flippers and vests), and our first stop was the Turks and Caicos barrier reef, which is the third largest in the world. We spent about an hour snorkeling here and it was beautiful! One of the guides went in the water with us and showed us all the cool spots, including an awesome underwater arch he swam through!
After snorkeling, we headed over to the mangrove area for a slow cruise and we saw a handful of turtles and some sting rays going by. It was super cool to see these marine creatures in their natural environment! We then headed over to Half Moon Bay to see the Giant Iguanas, explore the island and swim in the turquoise waters of the pacific while our guides cooked a delicious conch, fish and lobster lunch! Also, they made some amazing rum punches and had soft drinks for the kids. After lunch we headed back to Grace Bay. Everything was so thoughtfully done, it was a perfect trip and we definitely recommend Caicos Dream Tours if you are looking to charter a boat or do a boat tour in the TCI!
Overall we had a wonderful time in Turks and Caicos! We would love to go back one day and explore more of the islands!
To read more about our world travels, visit our places page.
