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Prickly Bay, where
we made our landfall in Grenada |
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Sunset over Hog
Island where we spent a peaceful few days without a house in sight. |
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A reception
committee of pelicans greeted as as we passed this starboard mark on
the way into the Lagoon at St. George's, Grenada's capital. |
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The Carenage at
St. George's |
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The square rigger
Sea Cloud, tied up at the cruiser dock in St. George's |
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An old trading
schooner tied up alongside its more modern cousins. They still use
these boats to ship stuff to and from the outlying islands. |
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This building has
been used as a wood store for nearly 200 years. Note the 'fish
tiled' roof. The story is that boats coming out from England would
bring bricks and tiles like these as ballast before loading up with
spices for the return home. There are still many houses in St.
George's with these lovely roofs. |
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The Seven Falls,
reached after an arduous and muddy trek through the rainforest. You
need those sticks Leonie is holding. We had the place to ourselves
(it was lunch time) so I could go skinny-dipping in the pool -
lovely! |
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Fancy a banana?
They are growing wild by the roadside here, as well as being
cultivated. A gold star if you knew they produced these bizarre
pendulous flowers. |
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These are cocoa
beans. Look carefully and you'll see that they bean actually grows
directly off the trunk and branches, not off the ends of the
branches as you might expect. |
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Huge stands of
bamboo break through the rainforest in clearings. This one must have
been about forty feet high. |
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These are nutmeg
trees. You could almost be in England looking at this scene and
you'd never think these quite demure trees would produce such a
bizarre case of fruit and nut. |
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Here's a nutmeg,
just waiting to drop from its outer shell. Grenada was never an
island of big plantations and many families made (and still make) a
living harvesting nutmeg and cocoa from smallholdings of a few
acres. |
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And this is the
nutmeg itself with its strange exoskeleton of mace. As you drive
along you see trays of mace outside people's houses drying in the
sun. |
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A couple of local
women on their way back from harvesting nutmeg. It is a bit
disconcerting at first when you see people wandering around with
cutlasses (machetes) in their hands, but you soon get used to it.
Mind you, you would not want to mess with these girls. |
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Stunning wild
flowers pop out almost anywhere you go |
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The sheer variety
of different plants is almost as astonishing as their profusion. |
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These begonias
grew alongside the Concorde Falls |
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A typical little
'chattel house'. Often they are smarter than this, sometimes a
little less smart. |
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The view from
Helvallyn, where we had a lovely lunch in the company of a chap
from Ampthill. who restores old English clocks, and his wife. Funny
who you bump into a few thousand miles from home. Nearby is 'Sauters
Leap', a bilingual tautology if ever there was one, where the Caribs
are said to have jumped to their deaths rather than face
enslavement. |
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Amerindian stone
carvings and pottery from a private collection. We were told
contradictory things about whether these were Carib or Arawak (the
warlike Caribs displaced the peaceful Arawaks). Either way they are
lovely artefacts at least 500 and possibly 2000 years old. |
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The Rivers Rum
factory, founded 200 years ago by French plantationers, is now owned
by Grenadians, but makes 70%+ proof rum the same old way. "It makes
more jobs" they told us. |
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This huge overshot
waterwheel drives the machinery which grinds the sugar cane |
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Here is the cane
being crushed. The juice runs out through a trough. The guy with his
back to us has to shovel some of the cane back in for a second go.
Hard work in the heat. They all take turns to do different jobs. |
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Here's the spent
cane being taken away. |
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Some of the spent
cane, when dried, is burnt to heat the vats above |
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Here is the cane
juice being turned into syrup. It moves down a series of vats as it
gets more boiled down, then is ladled into a trough to feed it to
the fermentation tanks. |
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This is the juice
lying in the fermentation tanks, bubbling away for a few days. No
added yeast is necessary - fermentation takes place naturally |
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Then finally the
fermented juice is distilled. At certain times of the year there is
more water in the juice so a second distillation may be needed
before bottling. It is strong stuff - we tried it! |
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After leaving
Grenada we went to Carriacou, an offlying island. We anchored off a
little spit of an island where the Star Clipper came gliding by. |
