LaMarche family : Turks & Caicos 2025-2026 (Dec 28-Jan 5)

Turks & Caicos 2025-2026 - Trip pics and daily activities

Chalk Sound - Turks & Caicos

Getting to our destination this year was quite adventurous. The initial plan was to leave from Cedar Rapids on Sat morning early and fly from Miami to Turks. We were prepared to get to the airport around 6 am - but all that changed when we got texts about our flights canceling the night before. We got on the phone with American Airlines immediately and spent the next two hours figuring out how we were supposed to get from here to there. The agents could not find 7 seats on any other flights, and similar flight paths got canceled. We found out the whole midwest was covered in fog, which was affecting flights. We eventually settled on grabbing 5 direct flights from Chicago to Turks and hoped we could grab two more on standby. There was no other option.

To make a very long story short...we drove from Cedar Falls to Chicago at Midnight, found a parking spot for our van on SpotHero on the way, Dave and Calvin drove - we got to our parking spot at 5:30 am, caught a shuttle to the airport, hung out in the Admirals Lounge and got breakfast there, and 5 of us were able to get on the flight around 7:30am. David and I split up and he went first with Violet, Drew, Calvin and Eli to figure out the rental car situation when he got there. Vanessa and I almost got on the flight standby, but a person showed up last minute and claimed their booked seat. Vanessa had a great attitude about it! I was upset for awhile but was able to process the changes. She and I figured out our flight path to Turks, and it looked like this: We got on a standby flight from Chicago to Charlotte about 10:30am. We were able to spend most of the evening in Charlotte NC and had a booked flight from Charlotte to Turks about 6am the next morning. The airport was kind enough to get us a free hotel room in Charlotte.

In Charlotte grabbing an Uber to dinner

The Uber driver recommended this place for great BBQ and it was SO good!

Boba

She was lucky enough to get a sunrise view on our way to Turks!

Vanessa and I made the most of our time but checking out a BBQ restaurant, hitting up an outdoor shopping mall area, and had a good night's sleep - finally. We both woke up at 4:15am, got a shuttle to the airport, and were through security and checked into our flights early, so we had a moment to chill in the Centurion Lounge in Charlotte. They had a delicious breakfast area set up and Vanessa was impressed with the iced coffee offerings. :)

I turned on my data as we were landing and Calvin sent me a pic of Violet waving to our airplane from our villa. Unfortunately we were on the left side of the plane but it was so cool to see that!

the yellow circled place called Casa Rosada is where we are, and the red line is our flight path

SO we finally joined our family - Dave picked us up from the airport and we were so glad to be there. Turks & Caicos is a UK territory, english-speaking and uses the US Dollar. So convenient! It feels safe and more developed/organized than other island we've been to.

Day One begins! Sunday Dec 28 (Calvin's 18th Birthday!) I don't know what everyone did Saturday - they had frozen pizzas for dinner and got acclimated to our place. It is incredible. The view is STUNNING. It almost shocks you every time. We face the Chalk Sound - a land locked bay with shallow water and it is so bright blue because of how shallow it is.

I have to use photos to remind me what we did!

Dave made a pitstop on our way from the airport to the villa to pick up Calvin's birthday cake. Dave had found this baker and had communicated a lot to get a Lamborghini-themed cake. It was epic.

Casa Rosada

We ventured out to a couple shops because Violet and Drew wanted to get some funny gifts for Calvin for his birthday. They found him a durag, a bag of gummy worms, and a Monster. This was an "aha" moment why the grocery bill was so high - seeing all the prices was insane. A quart of half and half was $10, jar of peanut butter was $7, a frozen pizza was $7, wowza.

We had ordered some groceries to get us through the first few days. We had all the ingredients for tacos so we made that for Calvin's birthday dinner! We surprised him with the cake and it was a fun moment.

Calvin is 18!

He's still upside down half of his life, perfecting a free-standing pushup handstand.

Don't tell the owners of the villa but we climbed onto the roof to see the sunset!

That's the west-facing sunset view.

We watched the Bears game at 9:20pm (eastern) vs the 49ers.

This is how the exciting game went - neck and neck, but we lost right at the end.

Monday, Dec 29

I woke up to Calvin and Drew making breakfast <3. They are such great people to vacation with! They served up croissant breakfast sandwiches.

We wanted to check out Grace Bay Beach, so we drove there - the driving on the left side of the road certainly

Then we drove down a ways and checked out a nearby reef to snorkel.

Nobody was super excited about going to dinner in sandy wet swimsuits but the drive back was 30 min and we were all hungry so we stopped at this recommended place called Turks Kebabs. It was delicious and worth it!

Settling back at home the girls put on these 4 hour face masks.

We played a round of Yahtzee

Calvin gave me a Sharpie tattoo

this dollar I found in the sand at the beach was the Yahtzee winner's prize.

Tues Dec 30

We opted for breakfast out at a nearby restaurant - we all had things like eggs benedict, breakfast wraps, pancakes, bacon, sausage - it was perfect.

Souvenir shopping!--but first COFFEE at Shay's Coffee

a place for dude to hang out while their ladies shop

Calvin was complaining of ear pain, which is never a good sign. Sudafed was not touching his ear pressure, so we asked the owner at the coffee shop for a recommendation to get Calvin seen at a local doctor. I was pretty sure he had an ear infection. The guy was so helpful - he called his doctor and gave me the phone and I made an appointment 40 min from the phone call. David took him and he did indeed have a middle ear infection. This was an important find because he CANNOT scuba with an ear infection - this could lead to permanent hearing damage. He was bummed to not finish the scuba certification planned for this whole trip. He got some antibiotics right from the doctor, no pharmacy needed.

Drew and Violet did some of their own shopping - Vanessa and Eli and I tried some frozen yogurt.

After visiting quite a few shops and lots of T shirts later, we stopped at Danny Buoy's and got some water and chips and salsa and Dave and Calvin met up with us.

Dave had ordered a catered dinner so we got back go our place in time to freshen up and settle in for the night. Beef kebobs, rice, mac and cheese, salad, and rum cake was sooo yummy!

Violet and Vanessa taught me a tik tok dance...it was actually so hard but so fun. Violet posted it and got some funny comments.

Wed Dec 31, 2025 -- last day of 2025!

Dave had gotten a good recommendation for a snorkel spot from the doctor he visited yesterday with Calvin. The doctor was sympathetic to the fact that this ruined Calvin's chances to finish his scuba certification with Vanessa and Eli. He said sunrise is the best time to visit because larger creatures tend to go deep during the night and come up in the morning. Our crew got up a 5:30am, left the house by 6am, and arrived to Smith's Reef about 18 minutes later. I did not go in but watched everyone else. They said they saw eagle rays, lion fish, lots of coral, a sucker fish that kept sucking itself to Dave and Drew *shudder*, which made me super glad I did not go in. I signaled them to come in at 7:30 so Vanessa and Eli could get to the pool to finish their pool dive lesson before the two open ocean dives scheduled later.

We dropped off Vanessa, Eli and David at the pool location and drove 30 min back to get showered and eat breakfast. Drew made crunch wraps and then I made coffee - and got a text at 9:30 that they were already done in the pool already. The lady teaching the lessons said to come back at Noon! I left the villa at 9:30 to pick them up and got em at 10:10. Drew, Violet and Calvin went kayaking on the sound.