Grenada - 20 January

Dearloves
Fri 20 Jan 2006 17:26
Prickly Bay is very beautiful:
 
View from our boat
 
Yesterday we took a tour of Grenada with a driver called Cat Eye and his very yellow (inside and out) mini bus.  The children loved the vehicle.
 
Our mini-bus
 
We drove through St George's, the island's principal town.  It is a very beautiful place but there is still plenty of evidence of the destruction reaped by hurricanes Ivan and Emily.  For example, most of the island's churches have lost their roof - one can be seen along the crest of the hill, slightly to the left in the picture below, and this was a common sight.  Many of the houses were ruins and we were told that only around 20% of people had insurance against hurricanes.
 
St George's
 
The island is very verdant, but we could see how many of the trees had had their leaves stripped from the branches by the hurricane and the Australians we were with said the jagged sky line looked like trees after a bush fire.  Most of the island's nutmeg trees were ruined, which had been an important part of Grenada's trade.
 
New Hampshire
 
We swam in Annandale Falls.  Here are Charlie and Pip, who had swum behind the waterfall.  The water was beautifully cool and clean.
 
 
We visited an airfield where there were two planes, one Cuban and one Russian, which had been there since 1983 when the US arrived on the island to help rid it of its then leader, Maurice Bishop, a great follower of Fidel Castro.  The planes were captured and disabled.  Cat Eye drove the bus along the runway and the children insisted on us all flapping our arms out of the windows to try to get the bus off the ground.  Sadly, it wasn't quite aerodynamic enough to achieve take-off, but Cat Eye's hat did.
 
 
We stopped at a rum shop and bought some rum punch.  Through the door is Cat Eye, whose clothes and sun glasses are as yellow as his bus.
 
The rum shop
 
The sign outside the rum shop "Nuff Respect"!
 
Bananas growing by the roadside
 
Lastly we visited the Grenada Chocolate Factory, where they make the most fantastic dark chocolate.  It is very pure, without additives, and tastes amazing.  Here are the children with Cat Eye and our guide from the chocolate factory.  We bought quite a few bars of chocolate.
 
 
On the way back we experienced torrential rain - it is currently dry season and Cat Eye said he had never seen rain like it at this time of year.  The roads were submerged in many places and we were lucky not to have to drive through any river beds.