Turks and Caicos Islands are great for family adventures

The hotel has seven restaurants and lounges, including a pop-up on the beach that changes themes regularly and a clubby bar that has seating in one of the swimming pools. For offsite dining: our concierge recommended Seven, the fine-dining restaurant at the nearby Seven Stars resort. It served our most sophisticated meal on the island. Just down the road, at Via Veneto Roman expatriates practice The Eternal City’s style of cooking to show islanders why mangia is an international word. Bugaboo’s Conch Crawl along the beach in Five Cays Settlement, provides perhaps the best local food you will find on the island.

Our boat tour of the island was given by Island Vibes Tours, www.islandvibestours.com

Our captain, the avuncular “Marvelous” Marvin Mullings, pilots our boat, the Always Something, away from a squall and toward a quiet beach — quiet, that is until all the other boat captains of Providenciales, the most-visited of the Turks and Caicos Islands, reach the same conclusion and join us, forming a moored flotilla. Marvin is one-part seaman, one-part showman; he encourages us to attend to his safety instructions while gently inebriating us on rum punch. We then snorkel above a school of small, blue and utterly complacent fish, next climb back onboard for our next destination, Half Moon Beach.

Formed in 1960 by the winds and waves of Hurricane Donna, the three-quarter-mile-long sand bar connects to Little Water Cay (pronounced “key”), which, because it is uninhabited, has become the de facto sanctuary for the endangered Turks and Caicos rock iguana — a native species that was seriously depopulated following the introduction of domestic cats and dogs.

We drop anchor and crewman Dondre Taylor, a muscular young man in dreadlocks, jumps into the water, where, waist-deep, he begins cutting up the main ingredient for our snack — conch sushi. On board, Evan Clare keeps tropical fruit punch pouring for the children and, with enough rum to make a Molotov cocktail, spikes each offering to those adults who might have missed his prior ministrations. We wade ashore and come upon a rock iguana, shaded under low vegetation, doing what iguanas do best, which is to stand still, doing a first-rate impression of a tranquilized dinosaur.

Back onboard, the conch sushi, served with vegetables, is surprisingly sophisticated. And it goes perfectly with rum punch. We are lucky today to have with us David Bowen, the island’s former director of culture. David is a tall, erudite man who has that rare ability to make beachwear look chic and the even rarer ability to sound simultaneously both relaxed and literate. He opens the large magician’s bag he has brought with him to display island crafts. Trained in ballet and modern dance, he next demonstrates the simpler pleasures of the distinctive musical style of these islands, known as ripsaw or rake ‘n’ scrape. Bringing forth and explaining a series of instruments, he leads Marvin and his crew in ripsaw song and dance: David on harmonica, Marvin on coconut grater, Dondre on a saw played like a cello with a screwdriver for a bow, and Evan on a frame drum (here called a “rim”). Our 7-year-old, Ryan, makes a guest appearance as supporting percussionist, keeping perfect time on his own improvised instrument: a pumice stone pounded against a crushed plastic punch cup. We sail back to our starting point, the Grace Bay Club, where David is the director of cultural and wellness affairs.

With David are two of his children — his 14-year-old daughter, Satchi, and his younger son, Ishan, who is 9. Ryan has become good friends with Ishan, and with school now in recess, they have plenty of time together to make their presence known throughout the kid-friendly resort — which they accomplish with skill and vigor. When I manage to photograph Ishan as he suddenly jumps off the diving board atop the roof of our boat, I have barely enough time to raise my camera again as Ryan gamely follows. Another boat owned by Marvin anchors to starboard. When a brave few among the American guests on that vessel start to jump tepidly from the diving board on the roof, Dondre swims over and, doing the back flip of an Olympic diver, shows them how best to enter the azure littoral waters of the Turks and Caicos Islands (abbreviated locally as TCI).

Our hotel has three large pools, each of which has a hot-tub tributary. The T-shaped center pool is for adults only, but in the two flanking it, Ryan, Ishan and several other boys put on lively aquatic entertainments, jumping and competing for balls, floats and other flotsam and jetsam of chlorinated waters. In the evening, the hotel has set up a traditional regional dinner, served at tables on the beach. Just as dessert receives our attention, a bare-chested fire eater appears from near the beach chairs, his eyes blazing with confidence, his mouth blazing with unrepentant flame. We can feel the heat as those flames roared from him, as they would have from a fire-breathing dragon. As one, the family feels the same: quite fascinating — and better him than us.

As with the best beach resorts, the Grace Bay Club has a children’s program, with dedicated space, staff, athletics, crafts, and field trips. Ryan goes a couple times, but for the most part, he is inseparable from Ishan. When allowed and sometimes, furtively, when not, the two boys pull out iPads to play Minecraft — one of the realms of which is the appropriately named Friendship Island. With Ryan again on the lamb from Kids Town, as the hotel calls its children’s center, David pulls up in his car, and off we go for an island tour.

You cannot ask for a better home base for family travel than a hotel like the Grace Bay Club: we have a dedicated mobile phone that links us directly to our personal concierge (actually, two, in shifts), who will do everything from arrange a dinner out to getting our order placed at the supermarket, should we want to have a DIY dinner on the suite’s ocean-view terrace, cooked in our private kitchen. Or we could just hire a chef from the hotel, and he will come over and do it for us. But base camp is never the whole story, especially in a place with a long history and a distinctive way of life. As we drive around the island, with David providing his expert commentary, a clearer picture emerges:

Tourism came late to TCI, starting with Club Med in 1984. It thereby avoided the postwar architectural thuggery of waves and beaches walled in by hotel towers. There are now low, luxury hotels, lower and even more luxurious villas and, at least so far, nothing overdone, oversized and overpowering. Unemployment is modest, the crime is low by regional standards, and we have never been treated with more friendliness or generosity at a resort anywhere.

Dinner that night is at Infiniti Restaurant and Raw Bar, the gourmet dining spot at the Grace Bay Club. The chef is Austrian; I am German, so I just have to order what may be the only authentic Wiener Schnitzel offered due south of the Tropic of Cancer. I notice that almost none of the many tables that spill outward toward the beach is under a roof and ask the captain what they do when rain threatens. “We pray,” he said. I learn later that TCI has sunshine 350 days a year.

At Kids Town the next morning, Ryan makes seashell-decorated picture frames. We try out our hands at tennis as a family — with Ryan, who has been in tennis camp, offering able instruction. But every chance he gets, Ryan pals around with Ishan. They rock together along at the pools, but whether on business or vacation, I always head to the fitness center. I like the one here just fine, but the Grace Bay Club, which, like most fine hotels, is in a constant state of renewal, has bigger replacement already under construction.

And so it comes the time to say goodbye. That is never easy to do in a place of such unstoppable hospitality, but is harder still to say goodbye to a friend, which Ryan does with grace and courage. We very much hope that the boys will see each other soon — and that, when it happens, we will all be back on the Turks and Caicos Islands.