Back when I started covering the islands as contributing editor for the now-defunct Caribbean Travel & Life magazine, Turks & Caicos Islands was typically lumped with the Bahama Islands, more like a sidebar or afterthought than a destination of its own. In the meantime, during the last couple of decades, TCI, as locals shorthand it, quietly kept its natural beauty and treasures something of an inside secret only the intrepid discovered. It developed slowly and thoughtfully to become the exclusive destination it is today.
