The Big Tour

June 16, 2011

Mt. Hartman Bay, Grenada

After sleeping in a little bit today, we met with Patrick “Shade Mon”, and the crews of “Persephone”, “Arita” and “Liahona” for an island tour. Strangely enough, after being here for seven months last year, we had never done an actual island tour! We had people who were interested, so we went with it.

We departed Mt. Hartman Bay at 10:00 am, and didn’t get back until 7:30pm. We took a scenic trip around St. George’s to avoid the worst of the traffic, then headed up the West Coast Road. We stopped at “Mom’s” Rum Shop and were treated to frozen custards. They are frozen in plastic baggies, so to eat them you bite off a corner and squeeze out the contents. Very refreshing and very appreciated!

The first stop was the Concord Waterfalls. A couple of us availed ourselves of the chance to swim in cool fresh water. It was a nice re-visit for Ken and I, as we have been there before.

We continued up the road to the town of Gouyave, “the fishing capital of Grenada”. We have been there a couple of times for the Fish Fridays, the street fest that features seafood and entertainment. This time, though, we were visiting the nutmeg processing plant. This is a cooperative effort by the farmers where they bring in the gathered nutmeg and the outer layer of mace to have it processed and sorted for export. It is a very labour intensive process, but it isn’t easy to mechanize some aspects of it. The processing involves grading the nutmeg, drying it for two months, taking off the outer shell, grading again by “floating” it (first grade floats), redrying it for 48 hours, then bagging for shipping. The mace and nutmeg is shipped internationally.

Next stop, besides for photo ops, was for lunch. Helen had a wonderful buffet-style meal prepared for us, and the only complaints we had were that we didn’t have room for more! Accompanied by fresh local juice and finished by nutmeg ice cream, we were all ready for naps by this time!

After being held up by a funeral procession where the hearse was a large Cadillac SUV with speakers blaring out bad Gospel music, we sped on to Belmont Estate to arrive just before closing time. This is a plantation that specializes in organic chocolate beans and chocolate. We learned that cocoa trees must grow in shade, so they are usually under mango trees, coconuts, and citrus trees. If you look from a distance, it doesn’t look like a cocoa plantation because of the required extra growth. Cocoa is processed by picking the pods, removing the beans with their pulpy exterior and fermenting the pulpy beans for 8 days. This removes the pulpy exterior and allows the beans to mature. They are then left to dry in the sun, with women stirring them up every 30 minutes by hand and wooden rakes to ensure even drying. After grading, they can then be used for the manufacture of chocolate or whatever other use one chooses. The Grenada Chocolate Company makes organic dark chocolate that even a confirmed milk chocolate lover like me can enjoy. We had a good tour guide with Kelly.

After the required chocolate purchases (who couldn’t after sampling such good chocolate?) we took off for the River Antoine Rum Distillery hoping to catch them before they closed. Well, they were sort of closed, but we were allowed to wander around the premises to take a look for ourselves. Unfortunately, Patrick had a difficult time with some of the staff, but we did manage to get a look at a distillery that has been around since the 1780’s! None of us were overly enthusiastic about the 75% rum, though. I have never had my lips tingle after trying rum before!

We drove back south, checking out the original air strip for Grenada. It is now home of drag races and cows. There were a number of bovines along the edge of the tarmac, including one very large bull that just lay on the hard surface, quite unconcerned about the red bus parked next to him and the stupid tourists taking pictures of him. However, we scurried back into the bus when he stood up. Farther down the air strip by the old terminal buildings were the hulks of two Russian built aircraft, left after the Grenada revolution. One was an old Air Cubana plane, and the other was a large Aeroflot BIPLANE! A biplane as a passenger plane….hmmm.

We drove up into the rain forest to the Grand Etang Nature Area to check out the lake. The lake is the main source of drinking water for the island, and is what remains from a volcanic eruption in the early 1800’s. Even after attempted surveys, nobody actually knows how deep it is. It was a little eerie in the rapidly fading daylight with the fog rolling through. With an elevation over 1100 feet, there is a lot of rain and a lot of fog some days!

We finally rolled back down to sea level and back to the marina where the dinghies were parked. It was a long day, and very educational, but it was good to be home!