We weren't even going to spend the night in St. George's. Heck, we weren't planning to stop in St. George's at all, but we were out of fresh veggies and figured it was our best bet. The plan was to get here mid-morning, do some shopping, then continue on to one of the more popular bays on Grenada's south coast. That was nearly a week ago.
It's
hard to imagine a more picturesque harbor town than St. George's. The
city, Grenada's capital, sits in a natural bowl; colonial brick
buildings surround the commercial harbor below hills thick with
vegetation in every shade of green, dotted with pastel houses and the
bright red flowers of flamboyant trees. The waterfront is fairly
clean, and the water surprisingly clear (although this means that the
junk on the bottom is in plain view).
The harbor itself has two lobes: the Carenage, which is the commercial harbor for small cruise ships, fishing boats, and ferries, and the Lagoon, which is the yacht harbor. Between the two is a long wharf where cargo ships tie up to unload. The nearly perfectly round Lagoon, where we are anchored, is actually an ancient volcanic crater. While visiting the national museum, we learned that in the late 1800's, volcanic activity in the Lagoon caused the water to boil and belch sulfuric gas, and the water level rose several feet. Fortunately, the volcano is no longer active -- or so we hope.
It's a lovely city to walk around in, made more interesting by the free walking tour pamphlet we picked up from the tourist office. We learned that the brick shops downtown were formerly warehouses, that they were mandated to be of brick or stone after several disastrous fires in the 1700's, that the tiles on the roofs were brought as ships' ballast. We got great views from Fort George, which was built in 1706 and is still used as a police station. We poked our noses in several churches, and stopped to listen to the organist practicing in one, a free private concert for us eavesdroppers.
Both our cruising guide and the travel guide we have on board had given us the impression that St. George's was a seedy place, somewhat on the unsafe side. We were pleased to be disappointed. No boat boys, no dock loungers asking to take your trash or get you ice, and although we've certainly been locking our boat every time we go ashore, the harbor doesn't feel any more theft-prone than, say, Baltimore. The one place we've been pestered by touts is along the waterfront, where the taxis line up; you can't walk ten yards without someone saying, "You want a taxi, my friend?" Occasionally a local will fall in step with us and talk to us about the city, angling to be hired as a guide. But nobody has continued to bother us after we tell them we're not interested, and everyone has been perfectly friendly and polite. We've not been offered drugs either, although at first I was a little suspicious of the women calling out, "Buy some spice, darling?" But their vending boxes are filled with nutmegs and cloves and bundles of cinnamon bark. Grenada calls itself the "Spice Island", and its flag is even adorned with a nutmeg.
We did stop to chat with one taxi driver, an older man who pressed his card on us ("Alphonso and Son Taxi Service -- For Reasonable Sightseeing Tour, Airport Transfers, Shopping, etc."). Alphonso had been driving a taxi for twenty-five years, mostly catering to day visitors off cruise ships, although business was down lately. We asked if it was down because it was off-season, but he shook his head. "The government here got mighty friendly with Fidel, invited him over. Americans don't like that, don't like the offshore banking going on here, so they don't send the cruise ships here much any more." We're not completely convinced the American government's got that much influence on the cruise ship industry, but other taxi drivers we've talked with agree that tourism is down.
A grocery store with a dinghy dock, a "yacht club" with cheap beer and a pleasant view of the harbor, and an internet cafe which serves excellent ice cream are only a few reasons to linger in St. George's. It's also the transportation hub of the island, and you can get a bus from here to just about anywhere. The "buses" are actually minivans, with a driver and a "conductor", much like the guaguas we rode in the Dominican Republic. The main differences we noted are that the Grenadans don't stuff quite so many people in their buses, and that they speak a language which at least sounds kind of like English. But like the Dominicans, they drive like maniacs, and since the roads here are narrower, hillier, and twistier, and they drive on the left (the "wrong side" to us Americans -- actually, I should say they pass to the left, as most roads are only one lane wide and everyone just barrels right down the middle), riding a bus is twice as terrifying.
On the way to Grand Etang National Park with Theresa and Patrick from Kajsa, I gasped and closed my eyes at least half a dozen times as we almost hit other buses, cows, bicyclists, and roadside guardrails. We were let out at the park headquarters, where we signed their guestbook, browsed the exhibits, and bought a trail map. Our goal was to climb Mount Qua Qua, above the Grand Etang (a crater lake), and then hike down a trail along a river which eventually becomes the famous Concord Falls.
The
guidebook in which we learned about this hike had warned that it was
a mud-fest, so we were expecting to get dirty. And get dirty we did.
By the time we got to the summit of Mount Qua Qua, our shoes were
invisible under layers of thick red gooey glop. But it was beautiful
hiking through verdant rainforest. We were buoyed along by birdsong
and the clicking and buzzing of frogs and insects (one was quickly
dubbed the "back-up bug" because it sounded just like a truck's
backing-up beeper), and made cool by the permanent overcast and the
tradewind breeze. The trail followed a knife-edge ridge, but it
rarely seemed exposed because of the thick jungle on both sides.
Every once in a while we'd break through to a view, where after
oohing and ahhing at the sight of Grand Etang out to the east, or the
Caribbean coastline out to the west, we'd take a quick glance (as
much as vertigo would permit) directly down, off the side of the
trail. Clouds whipped by the rocky summit, but we got a few good
views down to the Atlantic.
The summit trail was more or less maintained, with wooden planks delineating rough steps out of the mud, but the trail down the Concord Falls drainage was a little trickier. In some gullies we could only step in the foot-sized ruts where people had gone before; in others, we grabbed at roots and branches, any sort of handhold to keep from sliding down the slick mud. Trees had fallen across the trail in several places, and we clambered over or squeezed under as necessity dictated. The mud patina on our shoes oozed slowly up our legs.
Mud
washes off, though, and we had a lot of fun washing it off in the
cool waters of upper Concord Falls. After a dip, we dug into our
lunches and watched weird little freshwater fish and long-tailed
lizards. Alas, we saw no monkeys or tree boas. The trail down to the
lower falls led us through cultivated land -- we'd gotten out of the
National Forest -- where we saw nutmeg and mango trees, and steep
hillsides planted with garden crops. Two men cut cane with machetes
by the side of the trail, the first people we'd seen since leaving
the visitor's center at Grand Etang. Nobody was at the lower falls
either, other than a security guard who identified some of the fruit
trees around us -- cocoa, French cashew, breadfruit -- and showed us
the trail down to the pool below.
We continued down on what by now was a paved road to the town of Concord, where an animated and very pretty young woman ran across the road to us. "Hello! My name is Roxanne! Welcome to Grenada! Did you like the falls? You're probably very hot after your hike -- wouldn't you like to buy some ice cream for our fundraiser?"
It's hard for me to turn down ice cream any time, let alone after an all-day hike, so we gladly trooped across the street to Roxanne's ice cream stand. She and her friends were selling home-made nutmeg ice cream -- the hand-crank machine and a bag of ice were sitting under the table -- to raise money for a "queen show." After some questioning, we determined that "queen show" is Grenadan for "beauty pageant." We licked our cones and chatted with Roxanne and her friends for a while, then she flagged down a bus for us and waved us on our way back to St. George's.