Sapodilla Bay

Everyone goes to Grace Bay, and Grace Bay is genuinely magnificent, but after two days of its perfect three-kilometre crescent and its wall of resorts I needed somewhere quieter. A local at a roadside conch shack pointed us south, across the island to the protected side, and that is how we found Sapodilla Bay — a small, sheltered cove tucked behind a low headland, with none of the polish and all of the calm.

The Calmest Water I Have Swum In

Sapodilla faces south into a bay so protected that the sea simply forgets to make waves. At low tide the water is a sheet of pale turquoise glass, ankle-deep for an absurd distance, warming in the shallows until it is closer to bathwater than sea. You can walk out a hundred metres and still be standing. For anyone travelling with small children this is the dream beach, and on the afternoon we were there a couple of local families had set up exactly as you would imagine — kids belly-down in two inches of water, parents in folding chairs not watching them very hard, because there is nothing here to watch out for.

Lia, who treats the sea as a place to be conquered with long swims, was briefly affronted by water that refused to be deep. Then she gave up, floated on her back in the warm shallows, and announced that this was, in fact, the correct way to be in the Caribbean. I did not argue. I had a beer balanced on my chest and the only sound was the rigging of a few anchored sailboats ticking in the breeze.

Sapodilla Hill and the Sailors’ Stones

The cove takes its name from the low hill above it, and that hill is the bit most people miss. A rough trail climbs through scrubby vegetation to a rocky summit, and scattered across the bare limestone at the top are inscriptions carved by sailors going back to the late 1700s — names, dates, the odd ship, the initials of men who anchored in the bay below while waiting out weather or repairs and left their mark in the soft rock to pass the time.

I crouched over them for a while in the heat, reading dates from the 1840s and earlier, and found it oddly moving — these were bored, homesick men doing the eighteenth-century equivalent of scratching your name into a school desk, and two hundred years later a Frenchman is squinting at them. The view from the top, back down over the impossible blue of the bay and out toward the cays, is the reward for the sweaty climb. Bring water; there is no shade up there at all.

Practicalities

Sapodilla Bay is on the south side of Providenciales near the marina, an easy drive from the Grace Bay strip. There are no facilities to speak of — no loungers for hire, no bar, no shade beyond what the scrub provides — so bring everything you need and an umbrella if you burn. The shallow water heats up at low tide; check the tide if you actually want to swim rather than wade.

When to go: November to April is the dry, calmest season and the most reliable. Time your visit for low tide if you want the full glass-flat effect, or high tide if you actually want enough water to swim in. Late afternoon brings the best light and the sailboats at anchor.