The Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) are located in the North Atlantic Ocean, some 575 miles south-east of Miami, Florida and 90 miles north of the Haiti and the Dominican Republic. An archipelago of 40 islands and cays, only eight of which are inhabited, the TCI forms part of the southern extremity of the Bahamas chain. The total landmass is estimated at some 238 square miles.

Long before Christopher Columbus first set foot on the capital island of Grand Turk during his discovery voyage of the new world in 1492, the islands of the Turks & Caicos were inhabited by Taino and Lucayan Indians.  Even the name of the country comes from these earliest inhabitants.  Turks is a reference to the indigenous Turk’s head cactus and Caicos is from the Lucayan term “caya hico” meaning string of islands.