What a way to start the New Year…meeting up with my boys on Jay Sea Dee located in Grenada, “The Spice Island”. Jennifer and I flew in on January 1st. We took a day to relax, unpack and get used to the humid climate. Then today John had arranged an island tour with Henry’s Tours. Our driver, Von, picked us up from Port Louis at 9am sharp. It is supposed to be the “dry” season but has been raining on and off daily. The beautiful thing about that is we have seen many rainbows as you can see in the photo. We drove through the capital, St. Georges and saw the Fort in the distance (photo #2). In its history, Grenada changed hands several times between the French and British. The Island was discovered by Columbus on his third voyage in 1498 although there are artifacts dating prior to that suggesting it was occupied by the Caribs long before that.
As we drove North out of St. Georges we stopped at Annandale Falls. As soon as we got out of the van we were greeted by a local who plays his guitar and improvises a song just about you. Today he told Jennifer she was like Jennifer Love-Hewitt, Jonathon was Antonio Banderas, John was John Travolta and I was Celine Dionne. Quite funny actually. We proceeded to the Water Falls and watched another local do a cliff dive.
Moving on we started heading to the East coast and stopped at Grand Etang Lake.
Next stop, the Nutmeg processing factory. Grenada used to be the top exporter of nutmeg in the world but after 2004 when hurricane Ivan destroyed much of its crops and infrastructure, they now only produce about 2% of the world’s crop. Locals bring in burlap bags of the nuts which are then weighed and sorted. A nutmeg usually has a red striped covering of “mace” but the farmers strip that off to sell seperately. The women sit on the benches to sort the nuts based on size and quality. We were informed over and over again that it is ONLY women that do that job…hmmmm.
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