Island tour of Grenada part 1
Chaser 2
Yvonne Chapman
Sun 22 Apr 2007 16:35
|
Before leaving Prickly Bay we decided to take an
Island tour. The cruisers net on VHF channel 68 broadcasts every morning at
0730hrs, and this tour is advertised by Inga. We were picked up in Prickly Bay
Marina by 'Cuddy' our tour guide and driver for the day. He has a 14 seater
minibus and today there was 10 and a child, so not too crowded. We all
introduced ourselves and then drove off away from the coast up the hillside
overlooking St Georges Bay, as you can see from the first photo, we had an
astounding view over the city and port. We drove on through until we overlooked
Grenada's new sports ground built during the past 3 or 4 years and only
recently finished. This was built to house the World Cup Cricket, which
is on now. the Grenadian people are very proud of the achievement. One
because of the limited time scale for a project of this size, but also because
of the damage caused to the stadium and nearly every building in the southern
half of the Island due to Hurricane Ivan.
The damage was immense, 95% of the
house were damaged, and many destroy beyond repair. You can see from the photo
one or the damaged houses, and there are still many like this throughout
the Island. Cuddy, our driver, told me of his ordeal, and although he and
his family had no injuries, the roof of his house was blown off, the
windows blown out and all his furniture and belongings blew away too.I
asked if he has gotten back to normal now, and if he received any help from the
government? He has now rebuilt everything and has a nice home, but he had no
help from the government. He told me the only help was from the cruising people
like ourselves, who were here during the storm. They obviously new him
well because of his taxi rides and tours, and they all came to help. That was
good to hear.
Every now and then Cuddy would pull up alongside
the road, jump out, and pick a herb or spice or something, below you'll see him
tapping the bark of a tree and peeling a layer off. This was Cinnamon, a fresh
beautiful fragrance that only Cinnamon has. You can leave it in the sun to
dry and it curls up it a roll, which how we all see it in the shops.
Have you seen a Cocoa pod, this he picked off
an adjacent tree, gave it a tap a cut it in half. Inside it is full of white
slimy eyeball size beans. I popped one in my mouth, it has the texture of a
Lychee and a little larger than a garlic clove. The taste is sweet and
chocolaty, but the been inside is bitter and not for eating.
We moved on and stopped briefly at some waterfalls,
they weren't too impressive because it is the dry season, so water levels are
low. A few local lads hang around for photo shots, jumping off the top, for a
small voluntary financial contribution of course. The flowers and plants were
stunning, but we didn't stop too long. Time to move on, and as we moved up into
the rain forest we could see Howler Monkies in the trees, sometimes
they'll come down and take a banana, but not today, so I just managed to get a
blurry photo through the trees. Next time perhaps.
On our travels that morning we saw some delightful
and interesting places, Cuddy pointed out a small house, that are called a Janet
House, this one still standing after Ivan was given to a resident after the
last Hurricane strike in1955. They are timber houses, sent over from Venezuela
to house the people after the storm of that year and again after Ivan they sent
some more. They were intended as being a temporary home, but like the prefabs in
England, stayed and housed people for sum year.
We arrived in G-G-Grenville, Grenada's second
largest town in the North of the Island, this was our lunch stop. Cuddy took us
around a back alley up a flight of stairs to a lovely local restaurant that I
swear we would never have found if we were on our own. The choice of food was
good, Yvonne and I had a Lambi meal. This was curried Lambi, Lambi is the meat
from a Conch shell, you know the big shells you listen to the Ocean with. The
curried Lambi was served with rice, plantains, green fig, banana, pumpkin, sweet
potato and callaloo. A lovely dish and typical of the area, they brought us all
some iced water, not quite the coldy we were after, so we asked for
a couple of Caribs (the local brew) Lunch was 48EC$ including the two
beers, about 15€ for the two of us.
After lunch we set off for the Chocolate factory,
but it was closed, closed! can you believe it, apparently a generator has
broken and they are waiting for a part, ( I know how they feel). We continued on
to the rum factory, but, more on that in part two.
|
