Turks and Caicos Christmas 2021 - Day 8: da Conch Shack, return home

After breakfast, we filled out our COVID attestation forms on the veranda. These turned out to be useless, as JetBlue now requires passengers to use their online form, instead; this apparently changed during the last week.

 

We got to enjoy one last beautiful morning overlooking the ocean, before packing up and leaving around 11:30. Our flight wasn't until 5:45 PM, so we had a few hours left on Providenciales.

First, we went back to the Grace Bay area and wandered the shops in the Salt Mills area. The sun was hot, but I couldn't resist a coffee and a custom-built donut.

A few blocks from the Salt Mills, there are a few restaurants/bars with a bit more character than the high-end shopping district. 

On the drive out of the Grace Bay area, we encountered a tour group on ATVs and three-wheel scooter things.

On the way back towards the middle of the island, we took a detour down the scenic road to the end of Turtle Tail.

At the end of the road, there's a small area with a view over half of the island, which doesn't require much elevation since everything here is so flat.

Having completed our shopping and sightseeing before 1 PM, we decided to spend our last afternoon at da Conch Shack. We had dinner here, almost 4 years ago... it hasn't changed much; the white fence is new, and the bushes are bigger.

It wasn't crowded, so we nearly had the beach to ourselves for a light lunch (and a few drinks).

One of the activities that we saw advertised was horseback riding at the beach, offered in several different areas of the island. I'm guessing this one was Unique tours and rentals. We happened to have front row seats to their afternoon tour, today.

I guess da Conch Shack is the end of the tour, because the tour guide gave a brief talk about the place, then they turned around in the water and headed back down the beach.

The weather was perfect, and we were only about five minutes from the airport, so we stayed for almost 2 hours.

On the way to returning the rental car to Avis, I stopped to fill up on $6/gallon gas. We got a very short shuttle ride over to the airport, where there was absolutely no line for security.

Other than the aforementioned need to fill out the online attestation form for JetBlue, we breezed through to the single-terminal departure area, which has maybe 4 or 5 gates.

Having maybe 45 minutes to kill, we perused the gift shops, and headed to the upstairs waiting area to watch the sunset one last time.

The upstairs section was literally empty, with a handful of people having drinks at the (very loud) outdoor bar area.

We weren't scheduled to land until 9:30 PM; I was looking forward to eating two slices of leftover pizza during the flight. I checked to make sure they hadn't been damaged beyond repair, during transit, in case I had to make do with something from the "cafe" instead.

Just as dusk approached, we went outside to board the plane. The flight home was even more empty than our arrival. I forgot to ask how many passengers there were, but I'd guess maybe 40.

By the time we landed, waited for our gate to be available, cleared immigration/customs (not terrible, for once), dropped Lauren off, and got to Jeanne and Rudy's house, it was 11 PM.

It had just started raining, and we drove through some very heavy storms on the drive back to PA, getting home around midnight.

Time to start planning for next year, now. It's going to be hard to top Turks and Caicos for Christmas, though.