Friday, December 15, 2006

Morne Rouge Beach

Well, this post will serve whet the appetite of Jason's mom, sister and brother, as well as my brother who will be visiting in a short while. The first picture is taken of Grand Anse beach from the Flamboyant hotel where they will be staying. The building at the bottom of the picture is the dining facilities that are located on the beach. We will have to walk up and down the hillside to get to our hotel rooms from the beach, but it isn't far, and the additional height of the buildings means a really nice view.

Also, from the hotel, it is just a short walk to the next bay over, the much quieter and rustic Morne Rouge beach. This beach must have weathered Hurricane Ivan better, because there are a lot more shade trees available to lounge under. The sand isn't as nice as the sand on Grand Anse, and there are a lot more bits of shell and dead coral underfoot when you enter the water, but we enjoyed the quiet setting.






The only thing that sometimes marred the peace and quiet was this boat in the picture below. The Rhum Runner...well I'm sure you can imagine what the people on this boat are up to. That's right, hordes of drunken tourists spewed onto the beach from this boat. The thing that caught Jason and I off guard was the general age of these rowdies. For some reason, we had imagined that it would be the youngish tourists that would participate in this drunken voyage, but to our astonishment the average age seemed to be in their sixties. I had to laugh at this group of tourists in the water, giggling like kids, waving their swimsuits in the air! It seemed pretty harmless, but we were glad when they piled back onto the boat and moved on.


Monday, December 11, 2006

Kristy and the Chocolate Factory

Last Tuesday, I tagged along with Jason as he went into the field to look at cocoa farmers’ fields. Now, while I was interested in seeing what he did when he was out with the cocoa extension officers, I had an ulterior motive. It was to go to this place:



Yes, it is the Grenada Chocolate Company. I’ve been disappointed that considering that Grenadian cocoa is supposed to be some of the most fine flavoured in the world, there was little chocolate to be found in the grocery stores other than the typical imported chocolate bars. The factory was a small affair. It had a roaster, a cracker and sifter, a masher

an emulsifier to make the chocolate smooth, an area for pouring and packing the bars, and two hydrolic presses to extract the cocoa butter used in the bars. They make both 60% and 71% cocoa, and it is the smoothest dark chocolate I have ever eaten. It is smoother than those Lindt dark chocolate squares we always get at Christmas. The chocolate just melts on your tongue and fingers. Needless to say, it’s wonderful! I think that Jason and I know what we’ll be bringing home for gifts. Any arguments?


At home we also tasted what the cocoa is like in the pod. Jason is holding a cocoa seed. Before it can be used to make cocoa it has to be sweated (fermented in a way), dried and roasted. In its raw form it is a slimy seed that you can suck. Andrew discovered that they aren’t particularly good to chew. In fact, the seed itself turns your tongue purple!





That’s it for our cocoa adventure. Stay tuned for our next post about the Morne Rouge beach and the Rhum Runner from our weekend adventures.


Monday, December 04, 2006

River Walk





You cannot wait for adventure to come and find you, you have to go out and find it. I think that was Kristy’s motto when she suggested that we go for a walk upstream along our local river. On Sunday afternoon, we struck out on our expedition, walking down to the river where it crosses under the road a few hundred metres from our house. After a little bit of rock-hopping we realised that we were going to get our feet wet eventually, so we waded into the cool, rushing water, still wearing our shoes of course. Though our expedition only lasted a couple of hours, as we picked our way upstream, over rocks and boulders, under vines and overhanging trees, we saw a part of Grenada that we hadn’t seen thus far. Though some properties have access to the river, there is very little development along its banks, creating the feeling of unspoiled exploration along a river through a tropical rainforest. A very awe-inspiring experience indeed! I think that we surprised a few local children when we rounded a bend in the river and came upon them washing and playing in the river. I don’t think that very many people do the sort of thing that Kristy and I did today. Especially a couple crazy foreigners.

We realise that our continuing adventure in Grenada has had some ups and downs, as we reflect on our first two months. (Has it really been that long? Time may travel in a straight line but it definitely doesn’t travel at a constant speed.) Though we love the small town feel of Gouyave, especially seeing familiar faces and knowing many of our neighbours on a first name basis, we do feel a bit trapped at times. Grenadian buses don’t travel very frequently after 6 pm, thereby limiting our evening excursions. Though we had the option to rent a car on a long term basis, we opted for public transit and saved ourselves a fair bit of money but limited our mobility. Sometimes this leaves us feeling a little stir-crazy in the evenings and on weekends. So it was with great eagerness that we accepted an invitation to a co-worker’s house on Saturday for a late evening meal and some good conversation. We also got to sample a few more local delicacies such as curried carrot patties with tuna (very good), some good homemade bread and boiled breadnuts. It was a pleasant meal and it felt good to get out of the house for a while. We have found it somewhat difficult to find people our age with similar interests. For many, partying and clubbing are their only extra-curricular activities. So it was great to meet some people that also like to get out into the outdoors and explore their surrounding environment. We hope to go and explore some of Grenada’s south eastern coast with them in the near future.

We know that the Christmas season is in full swing in North America but it seems a little quieter in Grenada. We hear the Christmas songs, often as dancehall remixes on the stereos in the buses and on the radio, and there is a 50ft fake Christmas tree in front of the cruise ship pier in St. George’s, but Christmas still feels a little distant. But we know that we have only two more weeks of work before the GRENCODA office closes down for the Christmas season, as they close their doors for about three weeks during the holidays each year. So before our first round of visitors arrive, Kristy and I will be finishing up our Open Water Certificates for SCUBA and relaxing on the beach. Life is so hard.

Question of the week: How do you keep yourselves entertained when you find yourself with an abundance of free time? What’s the strangest thing you have done out of boredom?