Amanyara Review: The Aman on the Reef

Amanyara is on the northwestern coast of Providenciales — not on Grace Bay’s famous beach, which is on the island’s northeastern side and which the Beaches resort and the more commercial properties of the Grace Bay strip occupy, but on the wilder Atlantic-facing coast above the Caicos Banks reef wall that begins in shallow water fifty metres from the resort’s shore and drops to significant depth within a short swim. This positioning is the resort’s defining characteristic and the reason the Aman chose this site over the more famous Grace Bay address: the reef is the point, and the reef is here.

The Caicos Banks is among the healthiest reef systems in the Caribbean. The specific combination of the Turks and Caicos’s low development density, the relative absence of agricultural runoff that elsewhere compromises Caribbean reefs with nutrient loading, and the reef wall’s position on the uninhabited northwestern coast of Providenciales has preserved a coral ecosystem of such biological diversity that the Amanyara’s dive centre documentation — the species count, the coral coverage, the fish biomass assessments that the resident marine biologists conduct annually — reads like a description of a reef that time and tourism haven’t yet reached, which in relevant respects it has not. The staghorn coral that European and Caribbean divers knew from their childhoods but have not seen intact for twenty years is growing here in the formations that the photographs show.

A stunning aerial view of a tropical beach with white sand and clear turquoise water, perfect for relaxation. — Grace Bay

The Pavilions

Forty pavilions on the limestone above the reef, their dark wood construction against the Providenciales scrubland producing an aesthetic that the Aman brand’s design philosophy — buildings that grow from their landscape rather than competing with it — achieves most completely in the Caribbean at this property. The pavilion is large, the private pool faces the Atlantic, and the specific quality of a space in which the horizon is the primary view and the reef below the horizon is the reason for being here is present in every room that faces the water. The resort feels less like a hotel and more like a private compound whose occupants happen to share a dive programme — which is the Aman brand’s intended effect and which Amanyara produces more convincingly than several of the brand’s properties whose natural settings are less powerful than this one.

The interiors are the Aman minimalist standard: the dark wood, the natural stone, the specific absence of the superfluous that the brand treats as a design philosophy and that the guest either appreciates as the correct approach to luxury or finds initially surprising before the appreciation follows. The key detail in the guest experience is the outdoor living space: the pavilion’s covered terrace and the private pool produce a space whose primary purpose is the sunset, and the northwestern coast’s orientation delivers the Atlantic horizon at exactly the angle that maximises the Pacific-equivalent sunset that no other Caribbean coast faces at this direction.

The Diving

The Amanyara dive centre operates the finest reef diving programme in the Turks and Caicos and one of the finest in the Caribbean — a function of the reef’s quality, the instructors’ knowledge of the specific sites, and the specific advantage of diving from a resort where the staff-to-guest ratio is sufficient for the dive guide to spend the dive focused on the specific guest rather than managing a group of twelve. The Northwest Point Marine National Park, whose boundary begins at the reef wall below the resort, contains the dive sites that Amanyara guests access without the boat journey that reaching the national park from Grace Bay requires.

The specific dives: the Black Coral Forest at forty metres where the black coral colonies have grown over centuries to the height of a two-storey building; the Spanish Anchor dive where the sixteenth-century anchor of a ship whose identity the historians debate is embedded in the reef at twenty-two metres; and the eagle ray cleaning station at the tip of the northwest point where the rays arrive in multiples on the incoming tide and hang in the current above the cleaning station coral while the wrasse work their surfaces. These are specific dive experiences in a specific place, and they are here because the reef is here and the resort is beside it.

The Food

The Amanyara restaurant above the reef serves the Caribbean’s most specifically marine-focused menu of any Aman property — a function of the cook’s access to the Caicos Banks’ fishing grounds, whose conch, spiny lobster, grouper, and mahi-mahi arrive at the kitchen from boats whose origin and catch method the chef knows. The conch ceviche is the dish that most guests cite from the first dinner as the dish whose specific flavour — the conch’s particular sweetness, the Scotch bonnet’s specific heat, the lime’s response to the seafood’s iodine character — told them they were in the Caribbean rather than in a luxury hotel whose kitchen happened to be in the Caribbean. This is the distinction the food at Amanyara consistently makes and that is worth noting.

Amanyara vs Beaches Turks and Caicos

The two finest resorts in the Turks and Caicos serve such completely different guests that the comparison is more useful as a clarification than as a competition. Beaches is the finest family all-inclusive in the Caribbean, on Grace Bay’s magnificent beach, with Aquaventure-scale water facilities and Sesame Street characters at breakfast. Amanyara is the finest diving resort in the Caribbean, above the Caicos Banks reef wall, adults-oriented and expensive in the specific way that a property of twenty-five square metres per person per night is expensive. The guest who is choosing between them has not understood what either of them is. The guest who knows which of these descriptions applies to their holiday has their answer.

Practical Details

40 pavilions and villas. Room-only. Rates from approximately $1,500-$2,500 per night. Providenciales International Airport approximately 20 minutes. Direct flights from Miami, New York, Toronto, London, and several Caribbean hubs. The northwest coast location means the property is not on Grace Bay and Grace Bay is not visible or accessible on foot — transfers to the other side of the island are available but the resort’s location is the Atlantic coast, not the Caribbean side.