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Explore Turks and Caicos Islands |
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| Bottle Creek Lodge |
Ross & Madeline
United States
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| July 2006 |
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The Bottle Creek Lodge hosts, Jay and Sandy are a very affable couple with 3 charming
children. The BCL cottages look out over a marine eco-system in the Caribbean. The
flats of Bottle Creek that this little lodge is seated on is one of the most amazing Bone
fish eco systems around, not by my limited experience, by the experience of other guests,
I had the opportunity to get an education about these elusive sport fish from them and
their 5 or so years of stalking them. As it turns out, in Bottle Creek they are not all that
elusive if you have decent fly casting skills, mine are marginal and it showed, no regrets
though. I believe this lodge is miss-marketed, this is a fishing lodge as you can fish from
the dock for throw back reef fish and an occasional small keeper unless you opt for night
shark fishing from the dock, that may be very exciting. The shore line bank is coral 3
feet above the water line as far as you can see, so walking away to fish along the shore is
possible. You can kayak 30 to 40 minutes to a flat that the other guests went to and have
a full day catching Bone fish, they did. Or you can have Jay take you 3 miles to the flat
and save yourself some time for $40.00 each way. Or have Jay take you 3 miles to the
reef and anchor as we did and fish for $300.00. The BCL also offers deep sea fishing,
rates are a little less than the rates on Provo, the BCL boat is quite a bit smaller than the
Provo big boys boats, so the comfort level would be a bit different as well, if you split the
charter, Jay could handle about 4 at a time while the Provo big boys could handle 6 to 8
in a group at a time with ease. The difference between the Provo boats and the BCL 30
footer is huge; the Provo boats are about 100 ft in length, it would take more than 8 foot
swells to make an uncomfortable ride, but good weather/seas may be on your side.
Kayaking to any of the amazing places that are within 5 miles of the BCL as the kayak
is paddled is truly a work out and if there is any wind like we ran into the first day, 10 to
15 mile an hour winds with gusts to 20, well it will make for a good nights sleep. You
can opt for a drop off taxi from Jay; this will save you 5 miles of work each way or about
2 hours of time, which there is a lot of with nothing to do but fish. You will not see any
one else while you are there except the occasional local or possibly one of the other
guests, a tranquilizing experience. The only boats we saw were the locals that net the
bone fish regularly from the local estuaries.
Snorkeling on the reef that we were shown is a bit more than any beginner would feel
comfortable splashing into, particularly children. Any one not skilled at swimming with
2 to 3 foot swells and tidal currents could very easily get washed into the coral heads that
abound in this amazingly beautiful place. This is the place for seasoned snorkeling as Jay
will show you how to find lobster here and spear fish the area, for a price. When we
went on a charter fishing adventure and stopped at this place I thought we would not
catch any fish of much size, I couldn’t have been more wrong, I caught a 20 inch Grouper
and a 36 inch Barracuda and had a 48 inch or so Barracuda break off in the corals after it
took 6 to 8 pounds of the fish we were trying to get in the boat, we finally got the head in
the boat after feeding the barracuda, what an appetite they have. You can catch
Barracuda, Grouper, Yellow Tail, Snapper and many other types of fish, Jay thought he
saw a shark circling the boat when we first arrived so we started to cast bait for him, no
luck though.
If you think this is the place for a family get-a-way vacation think again, there is
nothing to do here on this 150 ft wide by 500 ft deep section of land. There are no
beaches to go to without an hour of driving or a workout, bring food and water. There is
nothing else to do but sit in the sun or the shade of the boat house and drink, there are no
waves to listen to as there is no beach, there is a 30 x 50 ft sand box to walk on. If you
have children that can stand around for hours at a time and do nothing this is the place.
There is always television in the restaurant. If you think the expression “the garden
island” used by the government web-site and the BCL is real, wakeup, this island is
covered in scrub trees and brush that only gets 20 feet high and thick as grass, there’s no
exploring. There are a few birds to watch, about six varieties in all, mostly doves in
numbers.
If you opt for the boat ride from Provo to the BLC when you arrive, you will go to the
first port on the west side of North Caicos just north of the Provo northern Cays and then
have a 25 minute truck ride to BCL, you will want to remind Jay to stop at the grocery
store during your ride. We didn’t realize we needed to remind him and we went right on
by all 3 of the stores, there small and indiscrete in appearance. This made us perfect
candidates to try Sandy’s cooking; she is a very good cook, I expected more than 4 oz of
fish in the diner, but the cup and a half of broccoli and cup and a half of rice filled each of
us up just fine. For such an informal setting and presentation I would have not expected
to have spent quite that much, but with that being the only food available, we were
grateful. We arrived on Saturday, all of the grocery stores are closed on Sunday, if we
didn’t bring cereal and boxed milk, granola bars and pop corn we would have been rather
hungry on Sunday. Our hosts didn’t mention or offer an apology for this inconvenience
when conversation opened the door, only a ride to the store at 3:00pm on Monday when
they were heading that way, very accommodating.
During the night we wished we had pulled the mosquito net over our selves. All of
the screens are in very good shape so we thought the mosquito net over the bed might
have been there for ambience. Not the case, the mosquito net is required, probably due to
the screen door that does not fit very well, even with the extra latch engaged to hold the
door closer to the frame. The screened in porch looked sound with good screens in place,
but no one gave thought to the porch floor decking, made from planks with the typical
spaces in between each plank granting mosquito’s access to the cabin. After the first
night we closed off the porch cutting the breeze down to almost nothing, the fan in the
room worked well though. The other crawling bugs that littered the floor are a little
unnerving when you wake in the night and one of them is crawling on your face. (More
than once)
If you like to ride bicycles they have a half dozen or so bicycles to choose from, all are
vintage and have problems with the derailers shifting well, but don’t worry you only have
the road to ride to town on and back again, it’s flat and a kind of boring ride, once will be
enough. If you want to grocery shop by bike as we did on Monday morning, good luck
hanging your groceries on the handle bars and riding back, as none of the bikes have
baskets.
You can rent one of the cars that they have available if you are a little daring, these
cars could not pass a safety lane in any US state. The BCL site advertises the Flamingos
in an estuary, 15 miles away; the birds are ¾ of a mile away or farther from the
observation deck and Jay told us as we drove by this estuary on our initial ride to BCL
that the visit was not worth it, thanks for advertising the attraction on the web site. You
will need the car if you want to see the really amazing beaches, about 20 miles away from
the BCL, worth the time though; we walked for 2 miles one-way and saw no one on these
100 foot wide pristine white coral sand beaches, ever, either direction, except the
construction crews working on the four hotels under construction. The beach umbrella
that was supplied by BCL was broken and about useless so bring SPF 50. This is a much
better place to snorkel for beginners and intermediates as you can find small reefs with
many fish and coral that are not difficult to navigate, as well you can find many areas of
grass flats to stand up on and talk or rest if you desire, as you could easily snorkel out
from shore a ¼ mile and more.
Any of the adventures located on Middle Caicos have a BCL boating fee attached to
them as you will need Jay to taxi you there, add this $120.00 cost to the advertised
adventure price. The ferry that runs on Saturday only; also runs from 8:00am to 2:30pm
only; that will make for a short automobile adventure as you will not want to miss the
schedule.
There are many things that were amazing about this trip, there are many things that I
do not want to experience again about this trip, mostly the being nickel and dimed to
death part. For a $200.00 per day room that is small and furnished with a vintage stove
that requires turning the gas off behind the stove on the incoming gas line or a shower
that only dribbles out water, at least it was warm for 5 minutes, you might think that
drinking water would be included, or if you charter the 4 hour reef fishing adventure that
includes lunch you might expect to get a can of soda to be included with the package
lunch, the two sodas were extra. I was disappointed to see the captain fishing while the
charter guests were without bait on their lines, several times during the “adventure”. As
well when it came time to fillet the catch, Jay wanted to know how much of the Grouper
he would be given for the filleting service, he was serious as when he finished, he asked
again; “how much are you going to give me?”. All of this is just a little worse than being
worked to death to operate the only transportation (kayaking) worth using included in the
rates to see this amazing beautiful eco-system. So bring your wallet or start working out
6 months prior to your departure and you better want to fish, fish, fish.
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