I wake just after 5 am which does not impress me at all. At least the torrential rain during the night has washed most of the salt off the boat which has saved me the job of doing it.
The buses leave for the island tour heading north. Leaving St George, we head north, pausing on the hill to look back at the capital.
Our first stop is a nutmeg tourist shop. Well, not just nutmeg but cocoa products, soap, rum and candles, the usual sort. Quite a bit of shopping gets done but Mike and I are conscious of not adding to huge pile of stuff we have to get off the boat next month and leave with nothing.
The island is very lush and there are flowers everywhere. Our driver and guide, Mandoo, is an environmentalist and does lots of voluntary work in schools teaching children to look after their island, pick up rubbish when they see it and be friendly to the tourists as they are the island’s lifeblood. It seems to be working. Grenada is one of the friendliest of the Caribbean islands. As the bus passes through little villages, people turn and wave with genuine smiles on their faces. Coming from Brazil where you couldn’t get a smile from anyone you smiled at on the street, it’s a welcome change. The roadsides are not littered with rubbish and if the local men would just stop walking around with machetes, it would be near perfect.
Sunday is church and laundry day, with brightly coloured washing hanging from lines at nearly every house. If the houses are on stilts, the washing is hung underneath so protect it from the downpours.
The roadsides are littered with conch shells, attractively arranged on husks of nutmeg to keep the weeds down. Some people have even used egg shells to decorate the plants in their gardens
We visit a rum distillery. The first part is not used any more but is where the sugar cane used to be crushed and the juice, extracted then the remaining fibres taken away on a little train to be used as mulch. It’s like a snapshot of a former industrial life.
Of course nowadays the process is much more refined but we don’t get to see that. However, as we leave the old part of the distillery, the smell of molasses becomes overwhelmingly strong – a smell so beautifully thick and sweet you can almost taste it. In the next building we see the molasses pouring into a huge tank, whilst in the adjacent tanks the fermentation is already taking place and huge, foamy bubbles are forming on the surface. It smells like treacle. Mmmm.
Next stop is lunch. This is a buffet affair of local food in a lovely plantation setting. However, the owners are Seventh Day Adventists and the only wine on the menu is non-alcoholic. It tastes more like apple juice gone wrong than anything else – there are several disappointed faces around the table and I am glad that I stick to the free guava juice!
Of course, like everywhere you stop on these tours, there’s an opportunity to buy. Here it’s the usual tourist tat and a chocolate shop – homemade local chocolate. The crews are like bees around a honey pot, including my husband.
There are a few more stops to make on the way back, but the guide has promised to get us back by 3.30 to 4 pm. As the clock keeps ticking, poor Charlie sitting next to me gets more and more anxious. She has a flight back to the UK to catch tonight and it begins to looks as though she won’t make it. We stop by the side of the road as there are some monkeys hanging around there. Once I’ve taken some photos I’m happy to go but people seem to want to stay for ages. I think Charlie is ready to shoot the monkey just so we can get a move on.
We eventually get back to the marina and Charlie shoots off to catch her flight leaving the rest of us to wander sedately back to our boats. Mike has developed a headache and needs to lie down before the evening’s celebrations but I go down to Chessie to have a drink with Jochem as today is his birthday.
I have a couple of glasses of bubbly and a piece of delicious chocolate cake that Annie has made for the day, then go back to Jeannius to get ready for the evening. Walking past Basia on the way, I can see close up the damage that has been done. The fact that she was able to keep motoring for a further 1200 miles after the collision is a testimony to the shipbuilders, Alliaura, and to the crew themselves.
In the evening it’s the prizegiving. The marina put on a great spread and the rum punch is lethal. There is a poignant speech from Anna on Basia, thanking ourselves, Eowyn and Tucanon and Jim from Ocean Jasper stands up with a speech of thanks from the rest of the rally too. It’s a good evening. Apart from the one rum punch, I stay away from any alcohol as we have to be up early in the morning to get to the boatyard.
I wonder why Suzanna looks so tall this evening until she reveals her killer heels. With the rest of us wearing variations of flip flops, she’s towering over us. While us girls admire the shoes, the male contingent admire her rather beautiful legs.
As the evening starts to wind down, Mike and I head off for bed. He is muttering something about setting the alarm for 5.15 am. I try my hardest not to listen.
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