Moorglade's Voyage - Goodbye Grenada and heading North again: Part 1

Goodbye Grenada and heading North again: Part 1

Moorglade's Voyage

Ted Wilson

Sat 2 Apr 2011 23:12

Our position is 12:27.43N 61:29.12W

3 April 2011

When we arrived at Grenada we went to Port Louis marina in the lagoon at St Georges as an easy first option but it was so pleasant and the showers were so impressive that we stayed there for our entire time on the island and explored the rest of the island in different ways. Tuesday we dinghied over to the Yacht Club pontoon to clear into customs. Their offices were very cosy so they expected people to go to the yacht club bar to fill out the forms. This would have been OK - plenty of access to drinks - but only a couple of minutes were enough to bring the realisation that yachties were not the only inhabitants - it felt like the entire mosquito population of Grenada were also there. It was with relief that we scuttled back to the air conditioned sanctuary of the customs office and were given a gilt edged card confirming that we were designated healthy and free to enter their waters.

Having walked down to the tourist information office and received very little information, we thought we might be able to get closer to the main town by dinghy, but there was nowhere to leave it so we set out a second time from the yacht club on foot and soon jumped into a passing bus. It was unclear where the best place to go was so we got off the bus when it seemed to have reached the highest point on its journey and found our way to Fort George (named after George as in Saint [and the dragon] according to a taxi driver later, but I suspect named for a monarch) It was here that a hard-line communist revolution executed the not hard line enough prime minister and half his cabinet in 1983. From the look of the place not much else had happened there since although it claimed to be offering some sort of youth training. There was a cruise ship in so the place was buzzing or perhaps I should say gasping as it was a bit of an uphill trek to get there. I feared some might not live long enough to get down again, but there were plenty of taxi drivers on hand offering to help!

We had a tasty lunch at the little museum. The museum's contents were a little haphazard but I was touched to see the care they had put into repairing the many broken pieces of the Queen's independence present of a tea set! After the obligatory visit to a chandlery we went back to the boat to organise the next couple of days activities.

Wednesday we hired a car and drove round the Southern part of the island. We did stop off at some waterfalls but again the cruise ships were in and the place was overwhelmed, so we didn't stay long and instead drove off to find the bays along the south coast where boats anchor. The day was quite overcast so the views from the high spots, like the Grand Etang crater lake weren't as good as they could have been. The day suffered from the same major problem that hiring a car anywhere else in the Caribbean has - the maps and the roads bear very little relationship to each other. Navigation is a nightmare and the mixed quality of the roads means you can't rely on something not being a road just because it looks a bit rough. However we managed to locate our second choice of lunch restaurant, The Little Dipper, and had an excellent local meal cooked by Joan. When we arrived she was crying with delight because India had just won their cricket semi-final match, although she claimed no Indian heritage. While the cricket was on, everywhere we went people were watching on television, even though the West Indies weren't involved. Then back via Prickly Bay and Grand Anse, although by then Ted had had enough and didn't want to play on the beautiful beach (it was a bit late and all the sun beds had been stacked up!).

Thursday we went on a Clement Baptiste Historical Tour. There was just us and a South African couple who had been living in Namibia for 17 years before they packed up and started living on their boat. Clement had actually been a driver for a government minister at the time of the 1983 revolution and after the executions had spent a night sleeping in a nutmeg tree. When the Americans came in to sort everything out he was arrested and marched down the main street of his village with a gun in his back, but they only wanted to question him about the whereabouts of his ex boss (one of the hard line communists), who escaped to New Zealand apparently and is now a successful lawyer.

He drove us up the West coast stopping off at a nutmeg processing plant and a rum distillery. This was still operating using very traditional methods and equipment. The big disappointment for me arrived at lunchtime as we were supposed to be going to the Belmont Estate, home of the Grenadian chocolate processing plant. However when we arrived they had closed for a family bereavement, so no chocolate for me. Instead we lunched at a little local cafe and ate something called "oil down" which was great but very filling due to containing dumplings, plantains and breadfruit as well as fish and chicken. Then it was back via the same waterfall we had visited the day before but this time we were the only ones there. What a difference. You could actually see the amazing flowers instead of just people's backs.

We had thought of leaving on Friday but the forecast was quite strong winds, which were supposed to be easing on Saturday, so Ted went to Grand Anse to buy Mike's paint and then did boat jobs (!) while I worked. We broke off to grab a sandwich at the marina restaurant, an interlude enlivened by a waitress dropping a very full tray of drinks all over the table she was trying to deliver them too and herself, and then back to the grindstone for me and Ted cleaned the barnacles off the rubber dinghy. For our last meal we went to Patricks, just opposite the marina gate, where we were treated to a wonderful meal with 8 different little dishes for the starter, and 10 for the main course. It almost seemed an anticlimax to have chocolate ripple ice cream with a nutmeg sprinkle for dessert. Each dish was uniquely flavoured and inherently local (without a hint of breadfruit it has to be said). A thoroughly memorable experience.