Diving was the motive for the original tourists of the 1970s, being able to spot native humpback whales, loggerhead turtles, eagle rays, nurse sharks and large schools of fish cocooned by warm, calm seas. From late December through to April, the entire Atlantic herd of 2,500 humpback whales passes through on their annual migration journey providing an underwater concert of whale music for divers in the vicinity.

Despite a Caribbean address, the Turks & Caicos have very little of the rain and humidity associated with Caribbean living. They do indeed have all of the sunshine though, sitting in the 80s Fahrenheit every day, almost without fail.

In the late 18th century a handful of Loyalists arrived from America with hundreds more slaves to engage in the cotton industry. Rich cotton and sisal, said to be amongst the finest in the world, was sold to New York and London but it went into decline within a generation when a mixture of disease and bad weather all but wiped the industry out. So in the early 19th century it was back to the salt industry for some, and subsistence farming and fishing for the rest, much like their Amerindian ancestors.

In 1874 the Islands were annexed to Jamaica, but when Jamaica gained independence from the UK in 1962 the Turks & Caicos became loosely associated with the Bahamas for a decade before reaching their current status as a self-governing British Crown Colony. The official language is English and the local currency, conveniently, the US Dollar.

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