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Free & BrEasy - Green Grenada



Our arrival in Grenada a week ago was smooth and joyous. The green tree covered hills welcomed us as the sun rose and, after refuelling, we were efficiently guided into our marina berth where Suzana and Nicky from World ARC were on the pontoon to welcome us with the customary rum cocktail. How does Nicky keep the ice from melting? We then ‘pressed the flesh’ of all our fellow circumnavigators and caught up with the news on the other boats. In other words we had a fine pontoon gossip!

We have been living in luxury in Port Louis Marina, St George’s Town, Grenada. The Marina is the Hilton of Marinas with large spacious showers, a poolside restaurant, scenic location amongst the Grenadian hills and all the services and pontoons work. Even Customs and Immigration officials were on site. There is even a bakery nearby which supplies fresh baked croissants every morning. What a place to carry out boat repairs! Roger has been busy masterminding the repairs to the water maker and renewing the standing rigging. There might have been a few frustrating glitches with these endeavours but after one week he confidently expects these repairs to be completed before we leave early next week. Roger has also attended to a host of repairs such as fixing the stainless steel rail that was bent in St Helena when the boat was thought to be in danger of running onto the rocks and many more things. Free and BrEasy will come out of Grenada ready for action.

The Marina is situated about 30 minutes walk from the centre of St Georges Town. In town the main harbour is very attractive with the houses and boats painted in differing colours with the Grenadian colours of yellow, red and green, predominating. The town is separated by a hill and a steep climb takes you from the harbour up, over and down to the market, although the Sendall tunnel was built in the 19th century to help the poor donkeys that were used to pull carts up the hill. Today the tunnel is used by cars. Pedestrians put their lives at risk if they wish to avoid the hill climb. The market is a delightful collection of small fixed stalls selling fresh produce and spices. There is a small area for refreshments where the best coffee in Grenada can be purchase very cheaply and in the same area, a number of small restaurants provide local take away food. This is the place to come if you just want to sit and watch the Grenadians’ in their natural environment. There are a large number of Rastafarians wearing their hair in dreadlocks. One guy smiled at us and asked “Hey whiteman, where you from”? We answered “Scotland”. It turned out he had a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the recent independence referendum. No ganja addled brain there! We were later informed that the Rastafarian community is a very important part of Grenadian economic and cultural life.

Above St Georges Town, Fort George serves as a reminder of the turbulent past when European powers fought tooth and nail over the Caribbean islands. Today, Grenada is a popular stop for cruise ships and a modern terminal leads the thousands of passengers in to the market area to ensure efficient exchange of tourist dollars for Grenadian goods. We are in the Spice Islands so wonderful smelling spices and jewellery are found everywhere. High above the town there is a prison which is overlooked by Fort Frederick, built by the British to prevent reoccurrence of the embarrassing surrender to the French who landed troops in a bay north of St George’s and took Fort George from the landward side while the British were looking out to sea! Fort Frederick can be reached on foot but only after a long walk up winding roads past an assorted collection of houses, some being expensive looking villas and others just wooden shacks. Everywhere there are trees and the houses appear to only have a temporary lease of the land from the jungle!

One mile south of the Marina is one of Grenada’s many beaches. Two miles of unbroken sand stretch to the runner’s horizon making Grand Anse Beach a bit of challenge. Behind the Marina a hill which provides a training circuit for the jogging circumnavigators, intent on regaining fitness after weeks at sea. There was another reason for all this exercise. Grenada has a very active Hash House Harriers community who meet every week. We were lucky enough to partake in a ‘Hash’ and for one and half delightful hours, we slithered are way up and fell down muddy slopes on a fiendish route that took us up through the jungle into the hills, then down to the sea and back up again! This took place in the north of the island not far from Leapers Hill where the indigenous tribesmen, the Caribs, committed suicide by throwing themselves off a cliff, rather than being captured by the French. Today Carib is the name of the local beer and the end of the ‘Hash’ was celebrated with a Carib. Sleep came easily that night.

There have been plenty of events to keep us entertained. St Patrick’s Day was celebrated with Irish music and songs, the Grenadian Yacht Club hosted a wonderful evening reception overlooking the harbour and we were given an excellent talk about cruising the Grenadines from here to St Lucia. Finally we enjoyed a sumptuous World ARC prize giving with excellent food and entertaining prizes where everyone was a winner including Free & BrEasy for being Free & BrEasy! The prize giving was conducted on the edge of the swimming pool and there were repeated requests to take one step backwards when photographs were taken!

With all the hills in the island it was inevitable that we would find our way to the top of one of them. Mount Qua Qua provided a great walk up through the Grand Etang Forest Reserve. We took one of the local buses which are aggressively driven mini-buses, squashed full of passengers, up to the start of the walk and were very fortunate with good weather. The next few days it rained almost nonstop and the paths would have been dangerously slippy and muddy had we delayed our walk. Also not good for drying washing; our clothes hung out on the life lines, have been on a three day continuous rinse dry cycle!

World ARC also arranged a bus tour of the island stopping at the Concord Waterfall, a spice factory and a rum distillery. We thought we had learnt all there was to know about rum making but were not prepared for the oldest water wheel in the Caribbean which drove the sugar cane crushing mill. Within seconds of the water being diverted from a stream to the wheel, the 30ft metal wheel started turning at a surprisingly fast rate, all due to the power of water and gravity!

We now understand the secret to Grenada’s greenness – water! We are in the middle of the ‘dry’ season yet had torrential rain! The only response possible is to adopt the Grenadians’ philosophy and watch the rain while drinking Carib or rum and feeling very green!




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