Grenada

Treasure chest
Originally uploaded by rosailither.

We are now about to leave Grenada again after three wonderful weeks here.
Hazel’s parents came out for a week and with them we did a couple of island tours. Everywhere we drove was surrounded by amazing greenery – we saw nutmeg trees, cocoa trees full of hanging cocoa pods, waterfalls, exotic colourful flowers such as the ginger lily, lots of coconut palms and a variety of trees, most of which were covered in vines and creepers.
The high part of the island was rainforest but the damage from Hurricane Ivan was very visible – huge chunks of the forest were destroyed.
Hurricane damage was most visible in the towns, where 75% of houses lost their roof. Most roofs have now been replaced (still with corrugated steel) or in extreme cases a whole new house has been built, concrete now replacing the old wooden houses.
All the big churches and cathedrals in the main town of St George’s are still lacking a roof.
We visited (and sampled) the Grenada Chocolate Factory – no bigger than a house but producing organic dark chocolate with 71% cocoa solids, all powered by solar panels. Also the Rivers Antoine rum factory where the sugar cane is still ground by water mill (on a 17th century British made water wheel!) and the end product is a lethal 73% proof and tastes like firewater but we still bought a bottle!
We also visited a nutmeg factory where technology hasn’t yet arrived - thirty-odd workers sort through the sackfuls of nutmeg by hand, although a ‘cracking’ machine now saves them having to crack the shell of each nut with a hammer.
The saddest part of the trip was ‘Carib’s Leap’, where the last of the native (and cannibalistic) Caribs were rounded up into one end of the island and rather than being captured, they all jumped over the cliffs to their deaths.
With Hazel’s parents we also motored up to Carriacou. There we met up with a friend from England who had recently brought a fishing boat out here from the Exeter Shipping Canal. His family gave us a warm welcome - his uncle gave us a tour around the island, his mother cooked us a delicious meal and along with her husband showed us around their home and garden where they grew everything – coconuts, bananas, oranges, limes, sweet potatoes, peppers, pigeon peas, even a cotton plant.
Junior himself took us to one of the best swimming and snorkelling spots, Sandy Island, where the sea is a stunning turquoise colour. Sadly this too got hit by the hurricane. Most of the coral reef got destroyed, huge piles of broken bits lay along the windward side of the island and tiny palm trees had been planted in the sand to try and replace what was blown away.
After our visitors returned to colder climates we set to work turning our Trinidad-bought teak into deck storage boxes. We have made these in the shape of treasure chests and are just waiting for Dave’s brother to visit again so he can bring us out vinyl lettering to label each box GOLD and SILVER.

Trinidad

hummingbird
Originally uploaded by rosailither.

We’ve had a good taste of Trinidad from our two weeks here, especially arriving at Carnival time. The whole country seems to grind to a halt for four days (only KFC stays open) while hundreds of thousands of party-goers take to the streets in brightly coloured bikinis laced with tassels. It’s certainly a spectacular sight, not least for the dancing, the local move known as ‘wining’ is aptly described by our friend as ‘sex with clothes on’. The noise is pretty spectacular too, forty-foot trucks loaded right up with speakers accompany the parade blasting out ‘soca’ music and as they pass, your whole body pulses with the thumping bass.
During the run-up to the big day, various competitions take place. Pan bands play steel drums made from 45-gallon oil drums, with a surprising versatility of sounds. Calypso singers sound off about local political and moral issues and 'ex-tempo' singers ad-lib songs on a given theme with only a moment's notice.
People dress up in highly elaborate costumes to compete for the title of King and Queen of Carnival. Some of these creations are so enormous they have to be supported on a wheeled framework, they take months to make and can cost several thousand pounds. The King and Queen finals were a truly awesome sight.

Otherwise, we’ve been catching up on work on the boat. We are anchored in a place called Chaguaramas Bay, which has the third biggest collection of boats in the world (after Fort Lauderdale in Florida and Gibraltar). The whole area has been designed for the boating industry – there is a choice of five or six boatyards, all with private marinas and dry storage the size of football fields. You can buy almost any marine item or service and get most things repaired. Trinidad is about the only safe island of the Caribbean during hurricane season (July to November) so thousands of boats come here to be craned out of the water.
Despite this, the anchorage is in a lovely spot, surrounded by wooded islands in a corner of the Gulf of Paria. The water is pea green, apparently from the outflow of the nutrient-rich river Orinoko. Growth appears within no time on the bottom of the boat and the water seems to ‘crackle’ with the noise of marine life feeding on these microscopic nutrients.
Away from the city (Port of Spain), Trinidad is a lovely island, with three mountain ranges and a lush green and fertile countryside. We took a trip to a nature reserve and watched hummingbirds feeding from a distance of less then two feet away. On a boat trip through the mangrove swamps, we saw tree snakes, caymans (small alligators) and flocks of thousands of egret and scarlet ibis coming in to roost. It was a wonderful sight seeing the pure white of the egrets and the almost fluorescent bright red of the scarlet ibis against the green mangroves.
We will be pulling up the anchor again on Tuesday night and by Wednesday we should be in another new country.