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"DEAR MR JOHN, WE DECIDED THAT YOU DIDN'T NEED THE BUGGY between now and the morning, so we took it! It's a long way down south, you know."
I found this message attached to my door one morning. I think it sums up the relaxed manner of life on the tiny island of Salt Cay, one of the more remote spots in the Turks & Caicos Islands, themselves a forgotten independent nation outpost in the archipelago made up mainly of the Bahamas.
Salt Cay is only a couple of miles long and it has so few people that you soon get to know everyone, and everyone gets to know you. Transport is normally either by "buggy" golf-cart or bicycle.
"Help yourself" is the approach, and I never came back with the same bicycle I had taken out. It took less than two hours to rattle round the whole island in the buggy.
But what was I doing there? I was to ask myself that question many times.
It all came out of a meeting with Dean Bernal, who had told me about his work with humpback whales at Salt Cay.
It's funny how a chance encounter, a few words of enthusiasm, and the afterglow of a successful trip can give rise to unrestrained optimism.
Sitting there, one year later, surrounded by the sublime luxury of the all-new Turks & Caicos Club in Provo, it was easy to see how I had allowed myself to be misled into thinking that it would be easy. Talk is cheap. However, with scuba-diving, reality hits the moment you touch water.
I had been drawn in by the talk of humpbacks, mothers with their calves, basking in the shallow, sunlit waters of the sandy reef tops of Salt Cay. They were said to do this before setting off for the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean.
I was told that they visited Salt Cay every February, and all I had to do to get good close-up photographs was to don a closed-circuit rebreather and approach them quietly with my camera as they soaked up the tropical heat. I was up for it, but there would be some logistical problems to solve.
I contacted Debbie and Ollie at Salt Cay Divers, who kindly offered me use of their boat. The rebreather was an AP Inspiration. John Garvin at O2 Technical Diving in Providenciales could supply me with oxygen, cylinders and scrubber material. Barefoot Traveller offered Salt Cay as a holiday-package destination. But first I had to get permission from the Turks & Caicos government to scuba dive with the whales.
There is no escaping the fact that Salt Cay is a strange place, inhabited by even stranger people. Of a population of around 70, there are a few "belongers" eking out a hard existence, but most are "incomers". These seem to be British and North American expats, escaping the winter in what must be a less expensive part of the Caribbean, and spending the time building their houses.
Having no Do-It-All down the road gives new meaning to DIY. Most of the expats are retired Woodstock-generation and the others possibly subject to FBI witness-protection schemes! When I asked one lady how she passed her time, she told me that it was taken up entirely with getting provisions. Salt Cay is certainly off the beaten track.
An 18th century family of Bermudan salt-rakers relocated to this tiny flat piece of land and turned it over to making salt through evaporation. Although the industry collapsed more than a century ago, the greater part of the island is occupied by the "salinas" or salt-ponds, with the remains of sluice gates and windmills still evident.
The original owner's house remains and is still owned and visited by a member of the family. Other obvious legacies are the descendants of the donkeys that once pulled the salt-carts. These now-feral animals rush about, noisily clattering their hooves, braying loudly and generally acting like silly asses. They outnumber the human residents and dispose of their body wastes in a less discreet way. The air was often rancid with the smell of donkey doo. I also heard that someone was receiving a regular sum of money from Britain to take care of all the donkeys' well-being. Enterprising bloke!
All the accommodation is run by expats. Michelle, who runs the Blue Mermaid guest-house and restaurant with her partner and at least 101 cats, asked me to carry a note back to Diver's Rico. She knew him when she lived in Britain. Why was I not surprised?
Candy is a fading English beauty who wouldn't be out of place driving around a West London suburb in a BMW X5, but prefers an American pick-up truck and her Pirate's Retreat. Undoubtedly, the best beach is overlooked by the pretty and colourfully painted Windmills Resort. Its construction must have been a labour of love, a capricious idea, if somewhat twee.
Porter ("I was in sales"), an American who runs the Island-Thyme restaurant and bar, is a man with a mission. He gives away free shots of a drink he calls "the Wolf". If you throw up, you have to pay for it. Then there is "the Monkey" and "the Snake". Everyone runs up big bills and may lose diving days to hangovers after Porter's ministrations.
Rumours are easy to generate. Porter told me how his Haitian cook ran past the crowded bar wearing a latex wolf mask one night and the wolf became reality.
Even on Grand Turk, the nearest thing to civilisation, he was later told that a wolf had escaped from a Haitian boat onto Salt Cay and was attacking and eating the local cows!
But what of the diving, and what of the whales?
Salt Cay has a reef wall that runs north to south, the length of the island. The island is positioned perfectly, along with uninhabited Great Sand Cay nearby, in the Columbus Passage, deep water that abuts the shallow Caicos Banks.
Every year, the Arctic population of humpback whales pass by on their way to mate or calve at either the Silver Banks in the Dominican Republic or the Muchoir, or the Navidad Banks, or Somana Bay in Cuba.
Megaptera Novaeangliae means "big wing of New England" and it is the wing-like tail fluke of humpback whales, slapping the water, that often betrays their presence to anyone scanning the horizon. They probably do this to communicate.
These 30-45 ton animals also leave the water or "breach", using their long white pectoral fins to launch themselves and spinning as they go, in a dramatic display of power and beauty.
Males do this, probably, to warn off competitors and impress females. Females use this display of strength to identify the strongest gene-pool. The mothers feed their calves with around 50 gallons of thick, rich milk which they inject directly into their offspring's mouth. The sea rings musically with whale song.
John Garvin had drawn a blank on getting the O2 shipped the last few miles, and it was stranded on Grand Turk. He kindly flew it over in a private plane, and stayed to dive with me. We joined two other whale-watching friends to patrol daily in Ollie's boat. Ollie is a "belonger", and has a voice like Morgan Freeman's.
It didn't help that I was reading Das Boot. Early chapters of Bucheim's amazing war novel are entitled "Frigging Around:1" and "Frigging Around: 2". We found ourselves frigging around in a big way.
The crew of the submarine U-boat constantly scanned the skies for enemy aircraft. We constantly scanned the seas for the "blows", the great exhalations of whales. After a few days I began to suffer from eye-strain. We saw not one blow.
We dived along the shoulder of the reef, encompassing the range of several normal scuba dive sites in our 90-minute dive times. We looked, we listened. We were covert. We took up position under rocky overhangs, even one in use as a bedroom by a giant turtle which slumbered on undisturbed.
The water was uncharacteristically full of plankton, but no whales were to be heard or seen. I reflected on tales of the Blue Planet team working for years before getting any significant footage. John had to return to Provo - I had a week.
After a few days I became distracted, photographing the occasional octopus or group of blue-striped grunts. I took an 18 mile trip to dive HMS Endymion , and it was in the open ocean between Endymion Reef and Great Sand Cay that I had my sole sighting of a lonely male humpback.
It passed under some of us as we snorkelled at the surface. It sounded, great white pectoral fins outstretched like the inadequate wings on some enormous cargo plane, its head covered in thick bristles and barnacles.
We hung around until it was heading directly for the boat again. Without the rebreather, I was still determined to get a shot, but as I prepared to slip back in, an over-enthusiastic holidaymaker bombed into the water. Game over.
I stayed eight days. I was in the water as often as possible. I saw nurse sharks, I saw octopus, I saw turtles. The whales never showed. There were plenty of jackasses in evidence. I was probably one of them.
Salt Cay Divers offers reduced prices this summer of around £470 per person for seven nights' accommodation (two sharing) and 15 boat dives. BA flies to Providenciales but flights are not included. www.saltcaydivers.tc, or talk to Barefoot Traveller about packages (020 8741 4319, www.barefoot-traveller.com)
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"thar he goes" - a lone male humpback whale in open ocean
Windmill on the salinas that dominate the island of Salt Cay. Here salt used to be made by evaporation.
Looking out for whales from under an overhang as a turtle slumbers peacefully.
An octopus provides a welcomediversion
Great Sand Cay is a spectacular white sandy beach set in clear turquoise sea, but Salt Cay Divers' small motor boat plunged further out, taking the full onslaught of the Atlantic swell. It bucked and plunged as we clung on, soaked in spray.
Endymion Rocks lie about 18 miles south of Salt Cay. It was a relief to swap our roller-coaster ride for the tranquil underwater world where, in gullies between vast rocks, lay the massive anchors and unmistakable shapes of huge cannons, just as we had been promised.
You need no wreck tour to explain what lies here - the artefacts could not be better displayed in a museum. The HMS Endymion site is maritime archaeology in aspic.
In August, 1790, the British warship was sailing from Monte Cristo in good weather. The 983 ton fifth-rate ship of the line was140ft long at the gun deck, with a 38ft beam. She carried 44 guns on two decks and had nearly 300 men aboard.
Despite the presence of a local pilot there was an air of anxiety as Endymion entered the shoal-strewn southern approaches to the Turks Island Passage. About 18 miles south of Salt Cay, the ship struck rocks. She was left wedged among high ridges and filling with water too fast for pumping-out to be effective.
The crew spent two days ferrying provisions over to a nearby sandy cay before abandoning ship. They were picked up and taken back to Grand Turk. The captain and officers were court-marshalled for alleged negligence although, as the rocks were uncharted, all were acquitted.
Today the anchors and chain (pictured), piles of hardware that broke through as the vessel tilted, iron ballast, bronze pins, lead hull sheathing, tacks, musket and pistol shot, cannonballs and cannon - all lie scattered where the ship's bow struck.
Not only that, but Endymion Rocks has claimed another vessel since. You can see the boiler, massive steam engine and crankcase of a ship of a later era which, though unconfirmed, is said by locals to be the remains of an early steam-powered vessel called the ss General Pressure.
The site is very exposed and only about 10m deep, so the weather has to be calm to dive it. The rocks are strewn with gorgonians and guarded by a solitary giant barracuda. Nurse sharks lie in the gullies during daylight hours.
The Endymion is probably the most interesting of all the dives out of Salt Cay - as long as sea conditions at the surface allow you to get there.
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