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Free & BrEasy - Bats and Black Sand



A week on and we are still in Grenada. We have been here so long that we are considering applying for Grenadian Nationality! We now happily catch the minibuses all over the island without a thought for the cramped conditions or our safety due to the manic driving. The small minibuses are, incredibly, designed to hold maximum of 18 passengers, a driver and a shoe-horner. The shoe-horner takes the money, signals to the driver to stop when new victims appear on the roadside and shoehorns them into the seats, trying to exceed the maximum number of passengers! It is a very fast, cheap and environmentally friendly form of mass transport and you never wait more than a few minutes for the next minibus!

The new standing rigging now stands proud in its shiny stainless steeliness but alas, the water maker of old, is a story full of woe! Roger has received very poor service from the local distributors and the manufacturer. He has threatened to dump the lot at sea and start with a new manufacturer! To say he has at times been white hot with fury at the confused information he receives, is to reveal the mild mannered, Clark Kent, side of his character. We plan on leaving Grenada in a few days time without the watermaker being fixed despite first alerting the manufacturers over two months ago!

Michael has at last achieved his dream of playing his guitar on a beach. Although a nice romantic idea, achieving this in an idyllic South Pacific anchorage is fraught with risks of salt water immersion or sand papering the guitar, during transfer from boat to beach. Port Louis Marina solved this problem by providing a delightfully secluded beach only a few 100 metres from the pontoons. Along with other like-minded idyllicists from other boats, the sun has been set down over the sea to the enchanting chords of gypsy music. At night the shooting stars, smiling moon on its back and waving anchor lights from the distance anchorage, lend atmosphere to the folk dirges and 12 bar blues! What more is there to life?

Emboldened with successfully conquering the summit of Mount Qua Qua, an attempt at a 4 hour jungle walk from Mount Qua Qua to the sea, was made. This was rated “very difficult” on the wikiloc web site and with good reason! The track is rarely used and in parts difficult to negotiate due to fallen trees and strangling vegetation. On top of that we experienced torrential rain which made the steep ups and downs treacherous and wading through muddy pools or streams, just part of being drenched. A fall into the stream we criss-crossed was a useful way of washing the mud off! There was a magic moment when we suddenly realised we were surrounded by colourful humming birds hovering within a few feet. Maybe they thought the purple and red rain coats were exotic flowers full of nectar! After three hours we arrived at a wonderful waterfall which few tourists will have seen. Even the locals we met further down seemed impressed that we had made it through the jungle! We sat eating soggy sandwiches wondering if there was more water coming down in the torrential rain than under the pounding water fall. Further down most of the bridges had been swept away so we increased our soggy status, if possible, by wading in up above the knees! Unfortunately we were a bit unpopular on the minibus back due to the squelchy sogginess of our attire!

Another walk, this time in the sun, took us to a homely cave full of bats. Our heads brushed against the sleeping nocturnals hanging from the roof, forcing them to flutter back and forward. The cave was lovely and dry and you could almost imagine sharing the accommodation with the bats for a few nights! The path then disintegrated and we clambered through the thorny trees and bushes down towards the sea eventually reaching a mangrove forest, with the sea crashing nearby. When we had almost given up trying to reach the sea, we stumbled on a path which eventually took us to a beach of black sand. What an amazing site; the black beach fringed with the white foam from the rolling waves of the blue sea, all surrounded by green coconut trees. Time to stop for a break and let the mental camera digitise and store the scene.

That night we entertained the crew of Adela who are vegetarians. We rose to the challenge by cooking rice stir-fry, bean salad and egg torte. However, not being used to cooking for more than three and not wanting to run out of food we slightly misjudged the amount of rice and beans. Conservatively, we probably over prepared the quantities by ten times! We enjoyed a lovely evening with Adela and are now happily consuming the left overs for breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, lunch………

The only blots on the Grenadian paradise landscape are those made by our squashed mosquito friends. Dengue Fever is active on the island and every night we catch half a dozen mosquitoes, some that have dined off our blood! Hopefully we will not be infected but it is a bit worrying. There are still many more walks to be done, not all difficult. One ramble gently climbed up a wooded valley past small farming communities with tethered goats, yapping dogs and wide-eyed children. Further on we past luxurious villas built of concrete stilts with fantastic views over the rocky coast. At the end of the walk we climbed into a minibus back to the Marina for mosquito feeding time! Bats, black sand, torrential rain forest and hungry mosquitoes – all now part of normal Grenadian life!


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