Grace Bay Beach

Stuck in paradise.

In late March 2020, my wife and I travelled to a resort run by our favourite hotel chain, Club Med, in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Turks and Caicos is a British Overseas Territory in the West Indies—the Caribbean, in other words.

The Club Med resort’s location deserves a post of its own: it sits on the famous Grace Bay Beach on Providenciales. For years, this beach has been named the world’s best by all kinds of rankings, including Tripadvisor and the World Travel Awards’ World’s Leading Beach Destination title.

I have already written about the activities at Club Med. We also knew that several members of staff we had met before were working at this particular resort at the time. So our first few days flew by: sports, evening shows, discos, friendly banter and so on.

Then COVID suddenly struck. Countries began closing their borders and flights were cancelled—the apocalypse was approaching.

Club Med management decided to evacuate everyone they could as quickly as possible. The other hotels did the same. The island emptied almost overnight.

A couple of days later, my wife and I were the only guests left at the resort, along with about fifteen members of staff.

At the time, there was only one Europe-bound flight a week: a British Airways service to London. We were told that British Airways always kept flying, so all we had to do was wait another week and a half for our flight.

Naturally, there were no shows during that week and a half, and the buffet was reduced to three or four dishes. There was no one to catch COVID from because the island was empty. And we still had every modern convenience we needed: food, drinks, electricity, water, Wi-Fi and so on.

On top of that, my wife and I had the world’s best beach entirely to ourselves!!!

What more could anyone want? It was a fantastic week and a half. We were Robinson Crusoes, but with every modern convenience.

Unfortunately, British Airways arrived right on schedule. We flew home along with some of the European members of staff.

Six employees were “lucky” enough to remain stuck on Grace Bay until August. Their countries, including Brazil, had closed completely and were accepting no flights, so they simply could not leave.

My wife and I still look back fondly on the time when the two of us walked along the world’s best beach with no one else in sight, swam in turquoise water and basked in the gentle sun.

Sunshine, fresh air, perfect sand, astonishing water—and the person you love beside you! Pure paradise!

P.S. I sped the video up four times, because probably not many people would want to spend 44 seconds watching an empty beach.