16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The only mainstream pocket-sized choice, April 8, 2008
This review is from: Frommer's Portable Turks & Caicos (Paperback)
If you look around, you'll discover that there aren't a lot of choices when it comes to travel books on Turks & Caicos. That reflects TCI's lingering status as "Turks and Who?"
Go into a bookstore, and you're more likely to find a book covering the entire Caribbean -- with perhaps 20 pages devoted to TCI. That means spending 20-plus bucks and toting around a lot of extra weight.
Lonely Planet offers a TCI diving book, which has more background information than you might expect, but it doesn't have a tremendous amount of the bed-and-butter stuff on hotels, restaurants, etc.
Amazon has some titles from little-known publishers. These may be perfectly good books. However, if you're like me, you're not inclined to spend money on what might be a crapshoot.
Frommer's Portable Turks & Caicos is a good, safe choice. It appears to have slightly more information than is located in Frommer's Caribbean book, and it's far easier to carry around (very nice when you're walking the beach).
This late 2006 edition is still mostly up to date, with one major exception: The Gecko shuttle service went out of business in February 2008, which means you're left only with rental cars or taxis. The book ought to point out that you really don't need a weekly rental on TCI -- a day or two at most works fine. This is one case where free pickup by tour operators makes a lot of sense.
Most of the hotels, restaurants and attractions touted by the book still exist, but there are some omissions. It doesn't list Grace Bay Rentals, the only truly affordable car choice on the island ($40 for a Corolla). It also could use some refreshing to account for the changing Grace Bay Beach oceanfront, which is getting filled up with timeshares and condos. Other quibbles: The book talks about the lack of rain, but doesn't adequately discuss the impact of wind. We stayed five days, and about half the time, the stiff breezes made water activities quite problematic. It's the equivalent of SoCal winter rain -- stay only a few days, and you may have lousy conditions the whole time.
The book is also bit lavish in its praise of TCI snorkeling. Cozumel/Yucatan ('04), Moorea/Bora Bora ('95) and Oahu's Haunama Bay ('86) were all superior. I also wish they'd been a bit more forthright about the relative lack of attractions on the SE side of the island. We went searching a small "kiddie" bay touted in the book, and it was a long wasted trip.
Also, a more detailed map might have been nice, but since we're dealing with a pocket edition, I can understand why that didn't happen. They might also want to point out that walking Grace Bay Road is a lot faster than walking the beach (though not remotely as beautiful)
Meanwhile, their restaurant recommendations were fairly spot-on (Hemingway's, for example, was a good choice).
Overall, if you're only going to TCI, then the only reason NOT to buy this book would be to wait for the update. Otherwise, it's only $10 or so. Compared to the total cost of the trip, that's peanuts.
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