Exploring Grenada

Surprisingly enough, we continue to find it difficult to find enough internet access to get our blog posts updated and uploaded!  We are currently in Martinique, where we made a stop to get some spare parts that David Farrington of Lagoon so kindly sourced for us and sent to the local Lagoon dealership for us to pick up.  Thank you again, David, for all your help along the way!  Our rough plan is to leave here tomorrow, sail to Guadelope, with possibly a short stop in Dominica, and from there, make our way to the BVIs, via Antigua, and then on to the Turks and Cacios and ultimately on to the Bahamas to hopefully meet up with our friends on "Moby" before they make their final crossing over the Atlantic back to France.  With that being said, let's step back a few weeks in time, with our arrival in Grenada:

Situated within large Clarke’s Court Bay, Grenada, is a very small marina called Whisper Cove. We typically try not to stay in marinas, especially now that our savings are dwindling, but as we approached Grenada, we hailed a few of the marinas on the radio, and Whisper Cove was the only one that responded. We knew that we had to fill up with diesel and re-provision, and that is always so much easier when attached to a dock, as opposed to having to dinghy heavy jerry cans of fuel to and from the shore to the boat, and likewise with precious bags of food!

A roadside establishment in Grenada with some good messages:  "Thoughts become tings, Choose the good ones"

So we made the decision to stay at Whisper Cove Marina for a few nights, to get ourselves reintegrated into society! Now, one might not think that Grenada is a buzzing metropolis, and it is not, but we had not seen so many boats and people congregated in one place since, well, probably since leaving Key West, Florida! The horizon was just a jungle of masts, and we were glad to be able to tie up at Whisper Cove, and not have to fight for a tiny spot of real estate, where we could safely drop our anchor! Whisper Cove is really just one dock, with space for maybe 10 boats, but it was perfect for what we needed, and it had free WiFi! (with payment of dockage fee, of course!). But it was cute, and beautifully landscaped, and had clean ablution facilities, in fact, their showers were pretty awesome: the water was cold, but you really didn’t need warm water in the hot, humid temperatures. The showers were large, wooden buildings, surrounded by foliage, with the slats missing at eye level, so it felt like you were showering outside! We typically shower on the boat, even when we are in marinas, because on the whole, our own showers are usually nicer than any marina showers, and it is so much more convenient, but these showers were just so great, we all took the opportunity to enjoy them as much as we could!! (can you tell…it’s the small things in life, like a good shower, that we, as cruisers, have come to appreciate?!).

Whisper Cove Marina - the brown, wooden structure at the end of the dock are the showers!

First order of business was, of course, to check in to Grenada. There is a Customs and Immigration office around the corner from Whisper Cove, at “True Blue” and Dave was able to take the dinghy over there to check in. Once again, although he arrived during office hours, Immigration was not there, and the customs officer held on to our passports, telling us to return on Monday at 11:00am to collect them! This was getting old… But having no option, he left them there, and we carried on with getting ourselves organized. Dave spoke to the marina manager, and was able to arrange car hire for 2 days, which would allow us to get to the supermarket and petrol/gas station and also to explore the island of Grenada. We set off on Sunday morning, and headed to St. George, the capital. On the way, we scoped out the gas station, and found a lovely, big IGA Supermarket, where we would later do all our provisioning. We went inside to have a look, and the look on the kids’ faces was precious! Every few seconds, they would stop and gasp, their mouths hanging open, or jump up and down in excitement, upon seeing a familiar food!

First sight of Oreos in 2 years!!

The old buildings in the historic waterfront part of St. George called The Carenage

Fort George, the 18th century fort situated on the hilltop above the town of St. George 

We spent the day exploring, and while we enjoyed driving around the island, we found that it wasn’t all that different from Tobago. It had the same, small, windy roads, leading from village to village, the beautiful, rainforest inland, and rugged coastline. We stopped for lunch at the north end of Grenada, at a small hotel called Petite Anse hotel, near the town of Sauteurs, and then made our way back along the east coast, briefly stopping at one of the famous plantations, Belmont Estate, that has turned into a tourist attraction.

The view from the top of Grenada across to the other islands.  It was so exciting to be able to SEE the next destination with the naked eye!

The old plantation road at Belmont estate.  It was a little rainy at this point

Grenada is known as the “Spice Island” and there are numerous nutmeg processing plants on the island. We tried to stop at a less touristy one in in the village of Gouyave, and encountered the most hideous detour of our lives! We were SO close, but the road was closed and the detour took us on the scariest, narrowest, steepest roads we’ve ever encountered, and when we were spat out at the coast again, I insisted on going left, as I was sure we could get to the nutmeg facility, and Dave wanted to go right, to get away from the town. But being the good person he is, he humored me, and we ended up having to go on the detour AGAIN, so that was that for the Gouyave nutmeg processing plant!!

This abandoned building was on an "off the beaten track" road, with paintings still for sale, but no-one to be found

The reason for the road closure, which we also encountered (to a lesser degree) in other villages, was that there were general elections coming up, and this day had obviously been designated a day for rallies and party gatherings. We came to know the two parties as the “greens” and the “yellows”, as everywhere we went, the supporters donned either green or yellow T-shirts. Our road trip came to a grinding halt when we were caught up in a traffic jam of epic proportions, and it took us hours to make the last few miles home! We came to dislike the “Greens”, as they were the cause of the traffic jam. The “Yellows” seemed more organized, and we saw them gathered at fields on the side of the road, and they drove along in an orderly fashion. The “Greens” seemed to use the road as their rally points, and drove, in truck and car loads at a snail’s pace, cheering and waving, but not giving the opportunity for anyone to overtake (a difficult task on a good day, as the roads are pretty narrow as it is!). Poor Dave had to negotiate this mayhem on the roads, and we returned to the boat eventually, completely exhausted (and with no energy left to do our shopping, which we had planned to do, but did not dare to go out onto the roads again)!!

A cool little place:  the "Epic Bar and Lounge"...we did not go in, but it looked cool!

On Monday morning, we heard on the cruiser’s net (a virtual meeting, of sorts, where a designated channel on the VHF radio is allocated at a certain time each morning, and you can tune in and listen to what’s going in the cruising world in Grenada), that a cruise ship was in port. This was not good news for us, as we had planned to head to one of the waterfalls, and I had read that if a cruise ship is in town, the waterfall becomes overrun with tourists, vendors set up stalls, and it is generally very crowded. Not our scene at all! So we quickly gathered the troops, and our stuff, and made our way to Annandale Waterfall, and arrived in the nick of time! When we got there, we had the place all to ourselves. Not another car, tour bus or person in sight! We enjoyed swimming in the cool pool and standing under the waterfall, letting our shoulders be massaged by the force of the falling water. As we got out, we saw the first people arrive, and by the time we got back to the car, it was mayhem! We barely managed to get out, and made a quick get-away, away from the madding crowd!!

Taking a dip in the cool pool at Annandale Falls

Selfie under the waterfall!

We took one more drive to Etang Lake, a lake in the crater of an extinct volcano, but were once again disappointed when we arrived, to find tons of people there, and you had to pay an entrance fee to go and see the lake. Having come from places where we have just been able to enjoy nature in its most pure form, we were having a hard time with the commercialization of everything, and we decided to turn around. The drive in itself was pretty, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

The road to and from Etang Lake was very green!

After a quick stop to pick up our passports, we had lunch at a place called “The Little Dipper”. We had read about it in the cruising guide, and we were not disappointed. We were the only guests at this tiny place, and the food was delicious. We had “lambi”, which is conch, fresh veggies and rice, all freshly made.

Little Dipper gets a thumbs up from Cool Runnings!

After lunch, we dropped the kids off at the boat, and went to do our chores. We headed to the supermarket and started filling up our shopping cart. We were surprised at how much food we bought, having been convinced that I had bought enough in South Africa to last us all the way home! When we exited the supermarket, it was pouring with rain, and I mean absolutely pouring, and it didn’t show signs of stopping anytime soon! After getting thoroughly soaked after loading our groceries in the car, we headed to the gas station to fill up our 9 jerry cans with diesel. The roads were starting to flood and the water ran in rivers down the sidewalks. We navigated to the gas station and were able to fill our jerry cans with diesel. We started our drive back to the marina, which, on a normal day, would have taken us 10 minutes at the most. We expected a slow drive back, but we were once again crawling along at a snail’s pace, at times not moving at all. Within a stone’s throw of the turnoff to the marina, we started noticing cars doing U-turns. We recognized a guy from the marina who drove past us, so we quickly asked him what was happening. Turns out the road was completely flooded and no-one could get through!! We had to turn around and drive all the way back to St. George, and then back to the marina along another road. What should have taken 10 minutes, ended up taking more than 2 hours! Poor Benjamin and Gaby thought we had abandoned them, as we didn’t have any way of communicating our predicament to them. They, in turn, had troubles of their own. The rain was so strong that it started flooding our dinghy, and they had to bail out water in the pouring rain, in order to stop it from sinking!!

A view of St. George and St. George's Bay from Quarantine Point 

We were glad to give the car back at the end of the 2 days, as our experience on Grenadian roads had not been a pleasant one! Looks like we were more comfortable on the water! We left Whisper Cove, but spent a few more days in Grenada at anchor, one day we went to the underwater sculpture park, which was a little disappointing, but interesting nonetheless. There are numerous sculptures placed underwater, and you can snorkel or dive to see them. We snorkeled, but they were quite deep and quite difficult to find. The visibility was also not very good that day, so that added to the disappointment. However, we came back to anchor outside the harbor in St. George, next to our friends on “Shuti”! We had last seen them in St. Helena, where we had gone our separate ways: they went to Brazil, and then from there on to Tobago and now Grenada, and we had gone to Ascension, Tobago and now Grenada. We celebrated that evening with them, as they had now “crossed their wake”, and were therefore officially circumnavigators!!

One of the underwater sculptures

The following morning we pulled up anchor and sailed to Carriacou, the next island along, that also belongs to Grenada. It was only 30 miles, but one of the toughest day passages we have ever done! We had to beat into the strong wind, tacking multiple times, and it took us 8 hours to get to Tyrell Bay, where we had to find a spot amongst the many, many other boats in the bay. This Caribbean experience was something we were going to have to get used to!! Still disappointed at not having found our turquoise waters, and eager to escape the crowd in Tyrell Bay, we left early the next morning and headed just around the corner to Hamilton, stopping at a small islet along the way, aptly named “Sandy Island”! As it is a marine park area, we had to pick up a mooring buoy, as anchoring was not allowed. We did so, and tried to tighten our lines. We kept reversing, testing the hold on the mooring line, and trying to get our lines to tighten up. It never happened…we kept going further and further away from the island, further and further out to sea! The mooring was completely loose, not attached to anything, or else, its hold was so poor, that it couldn’t hold our weight, and dragged the whole way! We had to abandon that mooring buoy, and went to pick up another one. Understandably, we were a little nervous, so after tying up, Dave dove down to check the mooring. This one, he said, looked good!

Sandy Island:  turquoise water at last!

We spent a few hours swimming and snorkeling and walking along the small beach, but when the wind started picking up, I was nervous of leaving Cool Runnings on the mooring buoy, so we headed back, and went to anchor in Hamilton Bay, where the holding was so poor, that it took us about 3 tries before we felt we had a good hold on the anchor! I didn’t sleep that well that night, with the memory of the broken mooring buoy and the poor holding in the bay, coupled with the wind coming in tremendous gusts down over the mountains and into the bay.

The next morning we went to Customs and Immigration to check out of Grenada. We were on the move north, in search of our turquoise water, and with a rendezvous in Union Island, which belongs to St. Vincent and the Grenadines with Dave’s mom Rosemary and niece Kayla, who were coming to visit and would be spending 2 weeks with us in the Grenadines.