After two weeks in Prickly Bay, we finally got motivated to do a little cruising and move to another anchorage. We took down our awnings, put away all the junk in the cockpit, and battened down the hatches for the big 3-mile run to Hog Island. The reef-studded entrance was especially exciting as we are still without a working depthsounder. Fortunately, The Moorings, who have a base next door in Secret Harbour, have buoyed most of the channel, and the reefs were fairly easy to see, so it wasn't too bad. The guidebook description prattles on about mangroves and "the little blue heron who spends her day patrolling the shore", so we were expecting a pristine, quiet spot, maybe shared with a cruising boat or two. In fact there were close to thirty boats, so we shoehorned ourselves into a hole in the crowd.
(A few days later, when we were in another harbor, the local harbor cruise boat "Treasure Queen" showed up with some 400 people on board. They pulled up to the beach, turned on extremely loud music, and proceeded to party down, drinking, swimming, hooting and hollering, and tossing their trash into the water. We're glad we weren't there.)
After a couple of lazy days at Hog Island, snorkeling and socializing with Tom and Ann on Oddly Enough, we headed out again. This time, we hoisted the sails immediately after clearing the reefs as we were going downwind, back to St. George's. The winds were relatively light, 10-15 knots, and the seas were calm and beautiful. We sailed wing-on-wing as far as Point Saline, then sheeted in as we rounded the corner, skidding hard on the wind almost to the harbor entrance.
We were going back to St. George's to meet the Windjammer Mandalay, which in hurricane season makes a regular run between there and Venezuela. Aboard Mandalay was Steve Williams, who reads our web logs and had emailed us that he and his wife and some friends would be, so to speak, in our neighborhood. They all live in Colorado, and Steve and his wife had spent nearly two years cruising some time ago. So although we'd never met, we knew we'd have a lot in common!
Mandalay arrived in St. George's only a few minutes before we did. As soon as we anchored, we made radio contact, and soon we were at the Nutmeg Restaurant, having lunch with Steve, Adele, Bill, and Sharon. We shuttled everyone to Windom for a tour, then told our guests, "We've shown you ours -- now you show us yours!" Not only had they gotten permission for us to come aboard, but engine room tours were being given that day, so we got to peek in the guts of the several-hundred-foot-long schooner. Since we'd seen several boats in the Windjammer fleet while in the Caribbean, it was a treat to go aboard for a closer view. It was a fun day, capped off with some dancing to the sounds of a steel band on the huge deck of Mandalay. One enormous boom stretched right across the dance floor, necessitating some clever choreography, but we managed to twirl around without falling overboard or slamming into any boat parts.
We stayed the next day in St. George's and hiked up to the ruins of Fort Matthew and Fort Frederick. Our route took us by the prison, where Gerrod Jones was just leaving for the day from his job as a counselor. As he was meeting a friend up by the forts, he walked along with us and told us a little about the area.
At the time of the revolution and invasion in 1983, Fort Matthew was being used as a mental hospital. A stray American bomb hit the fort, killing over a hundred people. (Later we heard from someone else that the revolutionary headquarters was nearby, but they'd raised their flag at the fort rather than directly at their headquarters, and that was what the bomber had targeted.) We wandered through the rubble, seeing the combined effects of years, explosives, and neglect. Fort Fredrick appeared to be in better shape. When we arrived, a religious group was conducting an open-air service on the grounds and we didn't want to intrude, so we only saw it from the outside.
We quizzed Gerrod on his work at the prison. In the five years that he'd worked there, the number of inmates had doubled, from 170 to around 350, and the number of women inmates had gone from 2 to 25. "Most of the increase is drug crime or transhipment of drugs, especially the women." He also said that they had a problem with newly-released inmates unwilling or unable to hold down jobs. "They don't want to do any of the hard work, agriculture or construction, but they're not qualified to do anything else." So they go back to the easy money of drugs, or theft, and get thrown back in jail.
We haven't really seen any of the "dark side" of Grenada (for which we are quite happy!) Nearly all of the Grenadans we've come in contact with have been friendly and pleasant, eager to know how we like their island. Tourism isn't very developed here, and most locals who meet us guess correctly that we're on a yacht (this term has no connotation of wealth or size here, and applies to any boat which isn't a workboat). The one weird incident we had was a drunk with a 2x4 in his hand who accosted Britt as we walked back toward our dinghy from the bus area, yelling something incomprehensible which we finally parsed as, "Why you no shop with black man?" We have no idea what he was talking about, other than the fact that we walked by the market without buying anything that afternoon. Britt detached himself and said, "Look, we spent lots of money here, we just rode the bus, we bought groceries this morning." The man dropped his board, yelled more unintelligible patois at us, and then wandered away.
After returning to the Hog Island anchorage, we did a few more inland expeditions. Even though Hog Island is farther from St. George's than Prickly Bay, it's easier and less expensive to get into town from there because the nearest dinghy dock is in Lower Woburn, which is on a regular bus route. Lance Aux Epines, the peninsula between Prickly Bay and Mt. Hartman Bay, is where all the rich people (mostly white foreigners) live, and since they all have Mercedes Benzes and big SUVs there's no need for bus service. When we were staying over in Prickly Bay we'd walk toward the nearest bus stop, a mile away in Grand Anse, hoping for a bus to come by and pick us up; to return, we'd either walk from Grand Anse or try to negotiate with the driver for a drop-off on Lance Aux Epines. Although the standard bus routes have standard fees, the fare to or from Lance Aux Epines varies randomly with the whim of the driver. We have paid between EC$1.50 (which is the standard rate for Grand Anse to St. George's, so this meant no extra charge for the off-route stop) to EC$5 each. On one trip we chose to walk the mile from Grand Anse because the driver wanted EC$10. (EC$2.66 = US$1.)
Ann and Tom came with us to the Bay Gardens, a private botanical garden in the mountains above St. George's. The place is an incredible riot of plants: orchids, heliconias, philodendrons, palms, and fruit trees of every variety. Some are labeled with their scientific and common names, but many are not. As we wandered the myriad paths (all paved wtih nutmeg shells) we'd point out interesting varieties to each other: "Here's that philodendron that looks like it's got paint dripped on it!" "There are some more of those funky pine-cone flowers!" The owner charges a small admission, but most of his business is growing and shipping cut flowers. He also has a sense of humor. One low bush with gray, fuzzy growths was labeled, "Old Man's Balls." Nearby was another plant, this one sporting bright yellow gourds, each one round with one small protrusion. It also had a sign: "Young Girl's Boobs".
Another outing we took was to Grenada's highest waterfall, Mount Carmel Falls near Grenville. Tom and Ann, and Tem and Nancy from Bossanova came with us on that one. A couple of boys wanted to be hired to "guide" us down the wide and obvious path, and one old drunken man claimed the cascade was on his property and we needed to pay him to see it ( the boys said he was lying), and on the way back we saw a couple of men with sacks and machetes, who didn't want to say what they were harvesting...but it's all part of the adventure. Another group of tourists were at the falls when we got there, so we continued on a faint path up to the top of the waterfall, then hiked along the stream bed for a while, enjoying the coolness and the scents of the forest. After lunch on some boulders, we hiked back to the base of the falls, where we washed the sweat from our bodies under the pounding water.
It seems a little strange to have been in one place for over a month. Even though Grenada is a small island, there's been a lot here to do, and we've enjoyed it (although we would have preferred somewhat cooler weather!). Tuesday night is the big Carnival parade of bands, and we'll head to St. George's to join the party...then on Wednesday morning, we fly back to the US. Who needs sleep, anyway?
