Grenada

Unfortunately, we have no pictures of Grenada or Trinidad as our camera was stolen in Trinidad. More on that in the Trinidad section.

We arrived at Port Louis Marina (right outside St. George, the nation's capital) on 5/17 and did some boat cleaning before welcoming Ralph's brother, Bob, and his wife, Abby (from St. Croix), on 5/21. Since driving in Grenada is on the left, as it is in St. Croix, Bob offered to drive around the island and we were glad to accept. So, on 5/22, we rented a car and started our tour. Bob quickly discovered one big difference between St. Croix and Grenada is that the steering wheel in Grenada is on the right side of the car (in St. Croix it is on the left of the vehicle like on U.S. cars) so he was looking down the center line while driving on very narrow roads that had ditches where the shoulder should be! Ralph was sitting in the front passenger seat so he let Bob know if it looked as if he was about to drive into the ditch. It was pretty exciting to park near the congested spice/produce morning market in St. George and then to take the "scenic" drive to Gouyave, a fishing village and the nutmeg capital of Grenada. Gouyave is on the northwest side of the island (and the scenic drives takes you on a very narrow, hilly, windy road with some beautiful scenic vistas). Actually, all of Grenada is made up of narrow hills and valleys one right after another - very dramatically pretty and very green except where recovery from Hurricane Ivan (2007) was on-going. On our route, we stopped at Annandale Falls and Grand Etang Crater Lake where we took some great pictures! We had hoped to snorkel at the Molinere Sculpture Garden, but it is not accessible by land and there were no commercial boats on the little beach where we ended up. So we drove back to the Marina area and cocktails were enjoyed at Morne Rouge Bay Beach which is just south of the famous Grand Anse Beach. Local cuisine was enjoyed at Nutmeg Restaurant, on the Carenage at St. George, that evening.

The next day, Bob again braved another treacherous route through Grenada to the Belmont Estate (dating from the 17th century) on the northeast side of the island. Belmont Estate is now the home of the Grenada organic cocoa plantation. It also has a very nice restaurant that serves goat cheese (wonderful!) that is made on-site as well as vegetables from its own gardens. Luckily, we were there on a Sunday when they offer a buffet lunch of Grenadian favorites. We had callaloo soup, goat cheese, papaya salad, creole mahi mahi, curried chicken, plantation beef, provisions (starch vegetables such as breadfruit, bananas and plantain). Homemade cinnamon and nutmeg (we are on the "spice island") ice cream were the desserts. They were delicious and refreshing. We noticed a lack of chocolate on the menu and that they did not have any chocolate candy bars for sale. In response to our inquiry, we were informed that they only sell balls of unsweetened cocoa for baking and making hot chocolate.


We then went to the River Antoine Rum Factory where we could drive through the beautiful grounds and see the magnificent old windmill and factory, but it was closed so we could not sample the product. Our shortcut route home was not as exciting as most of our driving from the day before. Either the roads were better or we were getting used to the Grenadan roads!