June, 2010

Move into a marina, getting acquainted with Grenada.

After only a couple of days at anchor, it became apparent to me that my overhauled shoulder joint was not up to the rigors of life at anchor. It’s not all that much work, but does require the lugging and lifting of all fuel, water, groceries, laundry, and so on from deck level into the dinghy at sea level, or from the dinghy up onto the deck at about shoulder level. It just plain hurt. I decided to make the best of an indefinitely long stay in Grenada by staying in a marina. We agreed to a price at Clark’s Court Bay Marina, at the head of the bay of the same name. Our slip location is at 12˚ 00.644’ N by 061˚ 44.334’ W, for anyone who wants to find it on Google Earth. It’s a very nice marina, built to withstand all but direct hurricane strikes. It’s nestled into a National Wildlife Refuge, the purpose of which is to provide habitat for the critically endangered Grenada Dove. It is thought that there are less than one hundred of these doves left on Earth. Across the head of the bay is the small settlement of Woburn. If we take our dinghy across, this is where we can catch a bus into St. George. From there, buses may be used to reach all parts of the island.

A description of the buses: They are all twelve passenger Toyotas. They don’t operate on a schedule, however, we’ve never waited more than about 10 minutes for one to come by. They’ll pick you up regardless of passenger load out-island, but in town, at the bus terminal, they won’t leave until the bus is full, and I mean full! They have factory jump seats that fold down over the mini-aisle. Then, the drivers insert little foam blocks in what’s left and select kids with narrow butts to stuff into unbelievably small slots. Then they leave town. They drive like crazy, often reaching 55 mph on brief stretches between curves, even though the curves are all blind; there are people and dogs in the streets; there are impromptu watermelon and roasted sweet corn stands in the streets; the streets are narrow. It’s absolutely frightening, but gradually you realize, you never see an accident. We’re able to reach grocery stores, the main post office, the FedEx depot, two chandleries, many restaurants, the big open air market, lots of shopping, all by these buses. The fare is EC$2.50, or about US$0.94 per ride. The public buses are also the means of transporting children to school.

A description of food in Grenada:  Sadly, Grenada is no where near food self-sufficient. All of the canned and frozen food is from the US or the big South American countries. Much of the produce is Chilean or from the US. The island does have agriculture, and there are seasonal tropical treats. When we arrived, mango season was at its peak. Later came the watermelons and tomatoes and sweet corn. In autumn will come squash, sorrel and pidgeon peas.There’s usually local eggplant, okra, and onions. Another tropical treat is callilou, or leaves of the dasheen plant, that make wonderful soup. There’s a fair amount of chicken produced here, as well as some pork. Cows are rare. We can shop in a choice of several decent-sized supermarkets, or, we can shop in the big open-air market in downtown St. George. There’s also a fish market downtown. Island spices are for sale everywhere. Like most other Caribbean societies, this one has a huge lore of alternative, herbal, homeopathic, etc., medicines and cures. The big market has great displays of natural products for every conceivable medical need. Corollary with food is the people’s health and fitness, and I must say that these folks look great! There’s little obesity here. Most people look like the jog and work out in a gym, although there’s no gym here. The girls are lovely and curvy. The boys look like they lift weights. It’s hard to find junk food here. 

A description of the people. They’re so nice, it seems unreal. Early on, you notice how native Grenadians want to get to know you. They are always offering to help. If you ask directions, they’ll not only describe them, but drop what they’re doing and take you there, visiting the whole way. If you’re sick, they worry about you. If they’ve had good fortune, they want to share it. There’s almost no crime here. The bus drivers always wait and watch to see that the younger school children have made it to the house safely. People with garden produce to sell commonly send their adolescent girls out on the streets to hawk to strangers. I just don’t think I’ve ever been in the company of more loving and lovable people. They’re also an extremely social bunch. Everyone seems to have a garden, and they usually get together to weed or harvest each others’ gardens, usually accompanied by a little beer and some food cooking on an outdoor fire. Apprenticeship of the young is so obvious in the gardens, too, as you see fathers teaching sons how to transplant sweet potatoes or pick okra at the right stage. Their most glaring weakness is that they’re poor business people and competitors. If they had to compete with Mexicans or Chinese or even Americans, they’d starve to death. They’re indifferent about making a sale. They’d rather not be bothered. They’re also essentially apolitical. Most leaders tend to be corrupt. The people accept it as a way of life and don’t get involved.They also don’t have a feeling for animals. You see hundreds of dogs, never neutered, with big batches of starving puppies. You see tethered cows and sheep with no water to drink. Being a farmer and a dog lover, this is very hard for me to see.

Meanwhile, what we’ve been up to: During this period, we wanted, literally, to see the island. We joined one of the commercial tours that took us by bus up to an overlook of St. George, where we could see the old French fort, the harbor, the downtown buildings. From there we went on up into the higher elevations and into the rain forest of Grande Etang National Park. We hiked to one of the seven major waterfalls on the island. We stopped at a spice plantation and saw growing ginger, turmeric, cocoa, nutmeg, citrus. We went on north to stop at the Rivers Rum Distillery, a site that I would nominate for World Heritage status. First of all, they are certified organic. They grow their own sugar cane. They squeeze out the juice in a plant built in 1789, that was originally used during the early British colonial period to produce coarse sugar. They carefully maintain the plant in its original design. If a part wears out, they have a replacement cast just like the original. The cane crushing mill is still powered by a water wheel as it was 221 years ago. In keeping with the “green” theme, they use dried bagasse along with timber culled by highway maintenance crews to fire the still. Their product is not exported, but sold only on the island.

 After this distillery, we drove on to the city of Grenville, second largest on the island, to visit a nutmeg processing plant. With most of the nutmeg trees blown down during Ivan In 2004, they only produce enough now to show the tourist how it used to be done. Even so, it was quite interesting.

Early in June, quite to our surprise, a dear couple with whom we’d become acquainted in 2008, sailed in and dropped anchor just a few dozen yards from us. Neither knew the other was here. They are another English couple, Mike and Barb of S/V Phantasie. A couple of weeks later, in celebration of a Mike’s seventienth birthday, we rented a private car and hired a driver to visit a site known as Belmont Estate. Here, they maintain a grove of cocoa trees. This farm is also certified organic. They harvest the cocoa pods and take them through the process of fermentation, drying, polishing and on to the finished, dried cocoa beans. They do not produce a confection here. Like the rum distillery, much of their facility also dates to the eighteenth century. Another company uses their cocoa beans to produce a Granada chocolate bar -- really tasty. 

During this period, we also strove in vain to find a healthy coral reef over which we could snorkel. The marine environment here in our part of Grenada has received many assaults. I imagine that the reefs were already suffering from the effects of elevated sea temperatures when Ivan struck in 2004. As a Category III, the hurricane would have driven a storm surge ahead of it and then generated waves around forty feet high. Conditions like this just pulverize marine life shallower than about 30 feet. What you expect, and what we see, are huge patches of white sand (pulverized coral), growing up in turtle grass. Scattered around are recognizable pieces of coral rubble. Also scattered around are new, infant corals no more that a year or two old. Occasionally, one finds a chunk of old boulder coral or brain coral that still has patches of living polyps. Rarely, there will be an intact old coral. In keeping with the prolific beds of turtle grass, there are sea urchins in huge numbers everywhere. Most are a short-spined decorator urchin. Some are the familiar Caribbean long-spined urchin. There are a few schools of reef fish. With the turtle grass and abundant sea weed growing on dead coral, there are schools of Blue Tang, accompanied by a few Yellow- and Blue parrotfish. The tang and parrotfish are the “cattle” of the reef, grazing the plants that grow there. Very occasionally, the big predators will enter our bay from the open sea. You usually don’t see them, but see the small baitfish in a frenzy at the surface trying to avoid being somebody’s meal.

Toward the end of June, the temperature has been climbing. The rainy season of the tropics has arrived with a vengeance. Along with daily rains has come hoards of mosquitoes. These are mostly the twilight biters. What this means to us is that in the late afternoon, when our boat cabin has reached about 90 degrees and the humidity is at 100% from the afternoon rains, we must shut up our boat against the evening mosquitoes. If we’re careful, we can run our built-in air conditioner for an hour or so, while we’re running our AC generator for our refrigerator. The other 23 hours, we just sweat a lot. We got to thinking that nothing here was charming enough to live in these conditions into the indefinite future, and that we should look seriously at buying or renting a home air conditioner that could operate on the island’s 50 cycle electricity furnished in our marina. Our boat, being a US boat, has AC appliances designed to use 60 cycle electricity. You can transform voltage but you can’t transform frequency. First, we shopped the appliance dealers and hardware stores. All the island retailers and installers offered were 12,000 BTU units and larger, much too big and too expensive for our small boat cabin. We checked with a marine repair service that advertised rental units for boaters. They wanted $400 per month just for rental. Finally, I started shopping on the internet for units I might buy abroad.