The cruisers have a connection with a local tour operator that runs an around island tour. I signed Sandy and her friend Kathy and myself up for a tour and left the captain back at the boat to get our water maker up and running. Every year Sir Anthony Water Maker the Third is temperamental and usually it takes some fine tuning and a few new plumbing parts to get him up and running smoothly. Since the forward pull man has to be taken apart and the mattress and Freddy the foam be placed in the salon it is rather chaotic, thus the captain's desire to have the last mate off of the boat. It took little convincing and since Rob has done the tour it seemed like a good thing to do.
Grenada is about 120 square miles and since it is a volcanic island it has some mountainous areas. We climbed and climbed up through the rainforest into some very pretty valleys and hills. The views were great of St. George's and the western side of the island.
Grenada is known as the spice island and in particular nutmeg. Our driver Justin made a stop at a little garden and shop that sold spices. He showed us all of the different plants and vegetables that are grown on the island and explained the various uses. I bought some ginger (both ground and fresh) to try in a drink mix. It is supposed to be good for digestion and motion sickness. We hope not to need too much sea sickness medicine this year but it is always best to be prepared.
Up at 1,950 feet is Grand Etang National Park where we were able to view crater lake. Justin told us that there were 52 rivers on the island and those rivers were a god send after hurricane Ivan. Some areas of the island were without electricity for many months and the people living in those communities had to collect water and use the fresh water rivers for bathing. Listening to him talk about the hurricane was very sobering; although at the same time he talked about how everyone joined together to help each other which was very positive.
We stopped at Annandale Waterfall which is a cascade of water 10 m high in a very pretty garden setting. Naturally I took the opportunity to go for a dip in fresh water. It was quite wonderful to cool off and experience a waterfall. The locals jump off of the cliff in hopes of tips from the tourists.
Justin honked his horn and grunted calls for the Mona monkeys in the park. They have learned that when they hear the calls there are bananas to be had....and the heads of tourists to sit on!?!? Not the least bit afraid of people these monkeys were brought to Grenada from African in the days of the slave trade. Their numbers are down after the hurricane and it now rarer to see them.
From Grand Etang we visited a Nutmeg Factory in Grenville, the second largest city to St. George's and located on the east coast. Back before Ivan Grenada was the top producer of nutmegs in the world with Indonesia as the other competitor. After two consecutive hurricanes the nutmeg production is only 50 per cent of what it was before Ivan. Nutmeg trees take upwards to 10 years to be productive so the recovery is slow. The processing plant that we visited used to be a bee hive of activity but now there is only one factory out of 3 doing actual production. The whole nutmeg is used for something...the outer soft fruit is used to make jams, jellies and syrups...the red scale lace over the inner seed is the spice mace and the inner seed is the nutmeg itself which is used as flavouring for baking and beverages.
Grenada is also famous for growing cocoa beans and making a wonderful organic chocolate. I had no idea how labour intensive making cocoa was until we toured The Belmont Estate where they grow and process cocoa beans. The white sticky beans out of the shell take many weeks of drying and fermenting before they begin to smell like cocoa. They need to be dried in the sun and turned over every hour on the hour. The women used to shuffle in the beans called "walking the beans" to keep them aerated. The ladies on the tour had a chance to try out the process. They now use long rakes to move the beans but it still has to be done on a continuous basis. After the tour we had a chance to try both the chocolate and the cocoa....both equally delicious. A chocolate bar has now gone in to Celebrian's sin bin....a place to go looking for comfort food.
We had lunch in Grenville at a local restaurant where I picked up a vegetable roti for Rob for dinner. I must say I really quite like rotis....a dish made of flatbread that is stuffed with a mixture of curried vegetables, fish, chicken or goat. It is tasty and very filling and a by product of the East Indian influence.
A visit to Grenada would not be complete without a tour of a rum distillery. We visited The River Antoine Rum Distillery which was constructed in 1785and has been running continuously since that time. The machinery and the processes of rum production employed by the estate go back to the 18th century to a period of colonial rule and to a time of slavery. The huge waterwheel, some 8 m high, is powered by water channelled from the river along an aqueduct and over large wooden paddles. The wheel in turn drives the machinery, which includes a huge crusher used to extract cane juice.
The cane juice is filtered through wicker mats and then ladled by hand along a succession of enormous copper bowls which are heated by fire below. This is where the cane develops its sugar concentration. Once this has happened, the juice is channeled into large tanks where fermentation takes place and finally after about a week it is superheated and distilled in these large tanks with ovens underneath. The bottling is a very manual process. The rum is decanted into large plastic drink coolers and then hand- poured into bottles. They produce about 80,000 bottles a year!?!?
Of course we had to have a rum tasting...straight at 150 proof and in a rum punch form. Gratefully there was a water
chaser available!!! This rum was definitely not a sipping variety at 75 per cent alchol. Evidently the airlines won't let you fly with anything 70 per alcohol or more so The River Antoine includes a 69 per cent rum as well. I think you could pour this rum directly into the airline tanks if necessary?!?
It had been quite a day....monkeys on my head, walking the beans, swimming in a water falls, eating chocolate and drinking rum if you can call it that!?!?
The good news is that when I returned to Celebrian the captain was all smiles and Sir Anthony was ready to turn salt water into drinking water once again....our own on board distillery.
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