Summer fun and getting to explore Grenada!

Aug 7

Since Hurricane Beryl passed a little too close for comfort, we have done a little traveling and then started to explore the island that we are currently calling home. We travelled back to the US as Pete was headed back there for a work trip anyway, and spent a week or so re-connecting in person with old friends. We stayed right in the center of Yardley, our old stomping ground in Pennsylvania, and also spent a long weekend at our family happy place, Mountain Creek, in the Appalachian Mountains, where there is a great mountain bike park. Both Oscar and Bethan learnt to ride their first bikes properly there several years ago (see tiny orange Oscar photo) and despite the heat the kids did run after run together then got the gondola back up again. Luckily they avoided momma bear and her babies who went across the track at one point! (she is a black bear, quite used to all the bikers around and had 4 babies this year!!). It was a great trip back to also magically time with the kids besties birthday parties also.

Once we got back to the boat, having marveled at just how far we have sailed from the window of the plane (it is a 4 hour flight just to get from Miami down to Grenada, let along the first part of our adventure from Annapolis at the top of the Chesapeake Bay), Oscar and Bethan have joined a local summer camp that is a fab mixture of local Grenadian kids, as well as about 14 kids from other boats in our anchorage. Annabelle has been volunteering there as a camp counselor which has been fantastic experience for her as well (although exhausting!). It has been the first time for a long time that we don’t feel so transitory, which is arguably the hardest part of boat life given you make friends and a few days later tend to move on. The kids cram into a local bus for a half hour drive into the hills, bus stop pick up is the local rum shop/ corner store called Nimrods, owned by yet another Brit who came here years ago to the island then never left! They return 9 or 10 hours later on the bus sweaty, dirty and tired but they have had a load of fun! They do field trips every week, swim every day and do hikes to explore the gardens that the camp is in.

We have also done a few day trips around the island. Heather did a hike with some friends to a waterfall (Concord) then to the most northern point of the island looking across Kick ‘Em Jenny towards Carriacou to the north. We then did a different waterfall, Annandale Falls, with all the family, followed by a tour of the Jouvay Chocolate factory - seeing the journey around the farm from cocoa tree, tasting the pod, seeing the drying then roasting process, and seeing the machines that grind and mix the loveliest chocolate bars!

Final stop of the day was to the Rivers Rum distillery, which was such an interesting tour to do. We saw the full process from the crushing of the sugar cane in a huge wheel that came from a British ironworks, the sugar can juice fed into a series of huge copper pots to start the fermentation process which lasts 8 days, the crushed sugar cane used to keep the fires running and for the local farmers to use like mulch. We did the obligatory taste test at the end of their 69% and 75% proof rums (you can’t take the 75% rum on a plane as its literally a bomb!). And as always, the part of the day that we enjoyed, almost more than anything, was the drive, experiencing the crazy narrow roads, left hand drivers, and little stalls by the side of the road, differing depending on what each of the 6 parishes of Grenada it is famous for (be it cinnamon, fish, BBQ or ‘Oil Down’ - the Grenadian national dish - https://foreignfork.com/oil-down/ check out this recipe I found - that is absolutely stunning to taste!). The houses are brightly painted and there is massive pride in the country - it was their 50 anniversary in February this year of their independance and the Grenadan colors are painted everywhere - which reflect the colors of their spices.

This week, back to summer camp fun and more boat jobs. The horrors of changing a joker valve (a one way rubber valve that stops water coming back into a toilet bowl from the holding tank) in a boat toilet, then a different toilet on our boat getting properly blocked so having to remove a waste pipe. Unbelievable mess and the genuine stuff of nightmares which Pete had to brave. Then fixed the water maker after the pump blew on it, and scraped the bottom of the boat as the growth is just amazing in these warm (87F) waters even after a few weeks - barnacles galore and the beginnings of a soft coral reef!

But all that is just a week of boat life.……….. :) More fun jobs next time I am sure…..