January 11 -- Grenada

Fallen a bit behind, but we've been in port everyday since arriving in Grenada.  Grenada was a long day.  We had selected the Discover Grenada tour, which was 9 hours long.  Among our discoveries is that Grenada has main roads that are 1.5 lanes wide, are never straight for more than 100 meters and are always going uphill or downhill, usually at an extreme angle.  Fortunately the bus was small, holding about 20 people.  It's worth noting that later in the day as we were passing some schoolchildren, Cynthia remarked that we were driving pretty fast as we passed them.  A quick check of the GPS revealed that we were traveling at 20mph, although the engine was roaring, probably in 2nd gear.  Twenty mph seemed fast by that time.

In our wanderings we visiting Fort Frederick, high on the hill overlooking the harbor.  Although an impressive fort, it didn't do much good since the island changed hands 14 times -- 7 times to the British, 7 times to the French.  It seems that they enjoyed a good rum punch back in the day.

 

Next up Grand Etang National Park, and the lake within that serves as a water source for a portion of the island.  Even though rainy season had just ended, the lake didn't seem big enough to supply the population.  Sure enough, the guide told us that most homes had their own cistern to cover for the time the water gets shut off during the dry season.

Passing a Cuban-built military airport we saw the remains of a Soviet cargo plane left over after the US "intervention" on the island.  How the army could move around through the tropical rain forest on severe mountain slopes reminds me that going to war is a young man's job.

 

Next stop, rum distillery.  In much of the Caribbean they turn sugar cane into rum using age old equipment, in this case the oldest water wheel in the hemisphere (or something like that).  They grind & crush the sugar cane (and any arms and legs that get too close)  to get the juice out, then ferment and distill it into 75% (not proof) alcohol.  It comes out like "white lightning", and goes down just as smooth. 

 
Belmont Estates was the lunch stop, followd by a tour of the working cocoa farm.  Watching the young man move a basket at a time of cocoa beans to be dried (6000 pounds total) seemed pretty inefficient.  I asked him if they had a wheelbarrow (I saw one later being used for a different purpose) and he just smiled and kept loading baskets onto his shoulder.  

After several more scenic stops, including Concord Falls, we returned to the ship very tired and sweaty.  Even with all that time on the bus my Fitbit said 15K steps.  We slept well.

Dave