Getting Older

Today is the first of a few birthdays I will likely be having on the island. It's a bit surreal to be on a Caribbean island on your birthday. Of course being apart from family, and especially my sister on our birthday (we are twins 4 years apart; my mother had an extremely long labour) is a bit tough. We've spent the majority, if not all of them together. But as I said, we are on a Caribbean island, and that does tend to be a good cure for many ails. My pulchritudinous fiancée made my day an amazing one. She tried to have me killed.

The day was a surprise. I didn't know where we would be going or what we would be doing. We took a stroll along our quick dip beach, of which a hotel is attached. The hotel also has a dive shop that caters to tourists and guests of the hotel. We didn't go diving. To keep a long story short, I have a temporary filling that I need to have fixed before hand. Instead she had us booked for some water sports. We were going out tubing. They have one big triangular tube that the both of us were able to clamour onto. Look at us here all clamoured up:

That fish skeleton looks ominous

Contrary to the photo, we were actually laying the other direction on our stomachs for the ride. You pay per quarter hour. I figured we'd end up going at least twice. I've done quite a bit of tubing in the inlet back home and at Ruby Lake. At least I thought I had. Prior experience had not prepared me for the extreme gauntlet this 3-400 horsepower behemoth would whip us through. The air we must have had on any single bump must have been between five and ten feet. On a number of occasions I felt my body perpendicular to the tube. On others the tube was perpendicular to the ocean as well. Fortunately we managed to somehow stay on. I guess our primal instincts must have kicked in. Had we let go, I think we might have landed on campus somewhere. We should have had an inkling beforehand when he said, "Keep your tongue in… No, seriously". It was awesome; but the muscles in our arms are pretty sore and 15 minutes was enough for the week. Typing never seemed so taxing. After the tubing we made our way to a new beach. Getting there on a Sunday proved to be far more difficult than any other day. Even the busses that constantly honk at you, convincing you to ride them, were nowhere to be seen (I can't tell you how many times they almost had me with their honking and I would have been on my way to Grenville). A friend finally drove by, picked us up, and dropped us on the main road. It was smooth sailing to Magazine Beach from there. They didn't have any selections of Macleans or People, but I wouldn't put it past anyone to bring books and magazines here. It is yet another phenomenal beach I could see spending hours on. We took to the sea for a short jaunt around the reef with our snorkels. We spotted a small school of squid, and some trumpet fish. We were without our flippers and not as mobile as we otherwise would be. Our future sessions look to show some promise though. The real reason for coming here was the great restaurant called Aquarium. Not that they need one, given that they are on the ocean, but the aquarium they had did look a little sad with just 2 fish. They had live music, good food, and they gave me a free piece of cake. They've won me over on all three accounts. It was a fantastic day. But now I am going back in time for some other news…

Accreditation. The AVMA this week announced that SGU is now accredited. This is absolutely huge news. For all veterinary students, including fiancée. This means there is no need to write any foreign graduate exams after completion of their program. This is a real boon for them in terms of cost and stress of such an exam. What the accreditation really speaks volumes of, however, is the quality of the program here at SGU. You can check out an article on the announcement here: AVMA Article. There looks to be some mighty happy folks in their photo.

People that are also happy are us. We found another perfect scenario in which to capture our amphibian acquaintance. Back into frog hunter mode, we sealed every hole the room, including the last one. That frog would not escape. Had we been in there too long, we'd have asphyxiated. We had gained a lot of knowledge from our past foray into frog hunting. This time we managed to capture him within moments. It was then when our conscience finally spoke to us. Jiminy helped us as we debated whether we should turn him loose to the cruel bitter outside world or if we should seriously just let him go back under our tub. Fiancée felt a little worse for him than I did. She is the veterinary student. I assured her he would make lots of friends and would find himself assimilated into the croaking community in no time flat. We let him go…with a little water dish filled with water, should he ever be homesick and wish to visit. She was pleased (that may be the wrong word) to hear more chirping the next morning. He had roommates. To make matters worse, I found there were children in the mix yesterday. Perhaps we separated him from his family. Perhaps his however many kids he has, now think of him as a deadbeat dad. Frog culture is so complicated. Fiancée is game to evict them all now, including Jiminy.

P.S. - Those with commenting issues, I have opened it up to everyone now. The flood gates are open.

Getting it

Each day there seems to be at least one new discovery, but more often than not, there have got to be more like ten. My last post had a lot to do with some of the new discoveries in our backyard. To be honest, I had thought we'd have sucked this place dry of discoveries in the agriculture department. It turns out there was one (at minimum) place we hadn't sucked yet. We have sugar cane right in front of our face and we had no idea. It was not until our landlord (proxy) offered a couple stocks she'd cut to us that we even realized it. She found it pretty amusing that we didn't know. To eat sugar cane you need a good knife. Our stocks were about 2ft in length and we thought we'd try something a bit smaller. After a solid ten minutes of hacking, I finally got us down to a more manageable size—and then I had to peel the skin. I resorted to YouTube here. Sometimes you get good how-to videos; other times you get baby monkeys riding a pig. In our online search we found out that sugar cane in the Caribbean was a lot like cotton in the days of slavery. Slavery is a big part of Grenadian history and most of the inhabitants are descendants of slaves that would have worked on the sugar plantations here. Having this sugar cane now really makes us appreciate where and when we come from. I did find videos on peeling sugar cane though. Many people use their teeth where I was having a heck of a time with our largest knife. To make a long story short, I got it skinned. To eat it, you just take a bite of the stock, chew it, suck it dry of its yumminess, and spit it out. It's not a snack for someone who is hungry; in fact, it is quite the opposite. It's very delicious but unsatisfying for the stomach that anxiously awaits food.

There are a lot of stray dogs that need food here. But as it turns out, most of the stray dogs here are actually owned dogs that freely roam. SGU has a program to help owners in need. They have their dogs fully checked out and spayed or neutered for free. Actually, the only exchange is that they MUST have their dogs spayed or neutered by SGU students. The program is called Pothounds Against Pregnancy. There are enough unspayed and unneutered dogs that every Sunday they pick up at least 15 or 16 dogs. They accept volunteers to come with them on these trips and help collect the dogs from owners; this past Sunday we went for a ride. The benefits were three-fold. We got to see some new parts of the island; we got to help out some dogs; and PAP got some help. Our destination was Morne Jaloux (its supposed meaning in French is Jealous Mountain. We're unsure where the word mountain is though…). There were a couple old forts up there. It makes a lot of sense because there was a fantastic view. We also met a lot of dogs in sad shape. Dogs here are treated quite differently than what we are used to in North America. In a word, I would say they are utilitarian. You can tell by the dictators' names one owner dubbed his canines. The names we give things tend to say a lot more about ourselves than the thing we name. On our trip we met a cute Mussolini, a splendid Hitler, and even a likable Bush. One fellow, who was apparently not an owner of any of the dogs we picked up, was fairly adamant that we could experiment on Hitler because "Hitler can't die. He's been poisoned so many times". To be honest, everyone around thought this guy was an idiot and I am inclined to agree. Along the way we gave flea and deworming medication to quite a number of different animals that weren't coming with us. It was great to be a part of something that is helping the community and animals alike. Everyone was pretty interested and pretty happy to see us, including this little guy:

Puppy

Back at home base I've got a new friend. He comes every day at around one or two in the afternoon for lunch. And every day I chase him down with my camera trying to get a good shot. So far, this is the best I've got:

Dine

Dash

Also back at home base, the frog saga continues. We now know there are three main kinds of frogs in Grenada; none of them are poisonous; and we can apparently discern which kind is which by their individual chirps; we have done so listening to the outdoor frogs through our window at night. I found our indoor amphibian buddy relaxing poolside on our tub the other night. This is the first I have ever seen him outside of the confines of under the bathtub. He's about the size of the end of my pinky. I told miss frog-hunter and she came rushing in with the duct tape. We closed the bathroom door and sealed the place off. I had a small Tupperware container and she had a wooden spoon that she gently used to prod the frog in the direction we needed him. By the way, frogs tend to jump in whatever direction they want as we discovered. He eventually ended up right behind the faucets of the bathtub. This is a very precarious position for us because of the awkward tiny space. She managed to inch him out and I was at the ready with my temporary holding pen waiting for a flat surface to cup him on. He got to the wall of the tub where we very suddenly noticed the one hole we neglected to duct tape. We scrambled, and before we knew it, he had slipped betwixt the cracks and was off chirping on his merry way. We've since tried coaxing him out with a very tempting frog pond, but he doesn't seem very interested. Our next best bet might be to bring in a fake froggy female friend. I think he likes the talkative type though.

We spent a couple hours at Grand Anse on the weekend. We have yet to bring our snorkel gear, but are looking forward to it. I can't say enough great things about the beach here. Every time you are there the sea seems to marble differently depending on the time of day. I think it's the kind of place that is breath-taking every time you see it. There are some resident beach bums, naturally. We always see some guys playing some sort of Ping-Pong without a table or net. There are also some artisans that traverse the surf and offer their hand-crafted trinkets. The frog-hunter considers us locals now, so she figures they should stop asking us soon. I'm pretty sure they'll ask us every time we are there for the entire length of our stay in Grenada.

Getting more acquainted

I fear that perhaps my last post may have left some rather distasteful visions of a dilapidated home where the frogs and crocodiles are scratching at our windows to get in; a place where out of the darkness the silence is only broken by the chirping beneath our tub. This is not the case. I honestly can't find any proof one way or the other that crocs, other than the splendidly comfy shoes, exist on the island. I'm trying to self-correct by posting something of the contrary in the way of photos—those will come later (in this post, not in life). Regardless, when I am home alone it is somewhat reassuring to hear the chirping and know I'm not alone.

In actuality, I think my post may have even swayed my female cohort's thoughts about the place. We did some looking around in the last week at other places. A logical, but pretty inconvenient, aspect of using a real-estate agency to find rentals is that they will only show you the suites that they currently list. We used a different agency from the one I used to find our present place. The apartments they (there were two of them) took us to first were "next to the White House". I did a little research, the house is White, and so that's the name. Next to that white house, were the 80% completed suites they wanted to show us. They were fantastic suites for those that like the open-air concept. The next place we saw was in an area called "Golf Course". At this point we began to really appreciate how small the island is. The reason this entire neighbourhood is called "Golf Course" is because this is where the only golf course on the island is. It's only 9 holes. What we had discovered was one of the most amazing views of Grand Anse. You could see clear to campus from up this hill. The building itself had a magnificent foyer that overlooked the island and we could see ourselves spending many hours studying or relaxing here. From then on, the appeal unraveled into what can only be described as a real monster mansion. We wandered through a maze / labyrinth of rooms that even the real-estate agents admitted resembled Hogwarts. Nothing really appealed to us except the seemingly sporadic views we'd catch around the odd corner. I wouldn't suggest a dip in the milky pool. They said there are very few security issues because basically no one wanted to go up the side of a cliff for their criminal activities; I must admit, on the way back down the men with the machetes were rather friendly. For whatever reason, we asked the agents what rent would be in one of the rooms here. They talked each other down without our intervention. I think it was then we queried "How long have you been doing this in Grenada?" "3 weeks". At this point I felt better equipped at finding an apartment having been looking for the entire length of our stay (4 weeks) just to keep our options open. I think we might just stick it through for awhile.

This weekend we did some more exploring in our own backyard.

Nuestra Casa

No crocodiles or alligators in sight here. Our biggest discoveries are actually around back. This was more of an excuse to show you the front. The yard is pretty substantial. We are really looking forward to having the dogs here to fully utilize it. In the meantime, one of our pets is this guy and all of his twins:

Dino

They are pretty cute little lizards that run around the outside of the house. They're probably keeping the mosquito and ant population down to a reasonable level. In this particular photo Dino is at the ready. He is our guard lizard. He makes sure no one steals these:

Mango

We've got them. Mangoes! They aren't ready yet, and probably won't be for a few weeks at least. Traditionally mango season is finishing at this time of year; but apparently given that there are so many different varieties, there are some that have yet to produce. I wonder if some of our other trees also had mangoes, but they have since been picked and eaten. This is pretty good news because they will go great with:

Atemoya - i.e. some lumpy fruit thing

I'd actually seen one of these on the tree earlier. I figured it was basically a growth defect. It only occurred to me yesterday to actually Googlify it and find out what it really is. It apparently resembles a piña colada in taste. This had only skirted away our attention from the mangoes for a moment before we came across:

Yoshi

He was climbing our purple banana tree that may also be a dinosaur in itself, given its long slender neck. It seems fitting, as perhaps Yoshi is its offspring. It seems pretty ridiculous (just bare with me), but I bent down to check to see if I could find any more banana lizards and found:

Bananas (this links to a Grenadian Night Club/Restaurant of the same name)

Actual yellow (well, right now green) bananas! These are going to go great in our smoothies provided Yoshi doesn't eat them all before we get to them. The next item technically isn't in our yard, but it was a discovery nonetheless. I think it might be okay if they are on our side of the fence. Fruit foraging ethics are slightly foggy on this. We'll have to snag a couple of these:

Seaside Grapes

Another discovery I made was just how quickly our grass grows. And on the flip side, how resilient it is. We get sun basically every day and I haven't seen one blade of brown grass. On the note of sun, I've found that my Vancouver mindset is still holding on strong. Everyday I feel like I should be outside because it's sunny; turns out tomorrow will also be sunny and the next day...and the next. But, back to grass:

St. Augustine

I think we have St. Augustine. It seems fairly coarse and feels funny on my feet. These other things that are coming up, I have no idea about. They look pretty neat though. At the rate they are growing we may not be able to see the road by the end of the week. Luckily I took a photo from the road where the bus stop is:

The Bus Stop

The AC here can weigh pretty heavily on your electricity bill. I try to hold off from using it as much as I can. At nights I set the AC on a timer of approximately 3-4 hours; this is enough to ensure we are asleep by the time it goes off. Unfortunately it also acts like an alarm. After those 3 or 4 hours we simply just wake up grouchy and sweaty. At that point I set it for another few hours, just enough time to wake us up when we should be getting out of bed (again, we are grouchy and sweaty). Luckily this is mitigated by what my lady gets to see every day before she heads to class—see above. I'm not jealous. I could be floating next to that boat every day if I want. We run the AC all night now though. Avoiding the grouchy sweatiness is worth it even when you have a view like this to wake up to.

Getting Antsy

There are quite a few creatures in Grenada. We've seen a number of them so far; I'm hoping to see more by the time we leave (like the mysterious monkeys at monkey point). Some I am sure we will never see, but we are very aware that they exist. Others we will see a lot, but will have trouble believing they exist. And of course, there are those that we won't see and hope don't exist. Those last ones are probably the ones we will worry about the most.

Many a lizard runs amok. Sometimes they are on your doorstep. Sometimes they are on the inside of your door. They're actually pretty neat little creatures. The majority of them are blue and green. I haven't figured out their particular breed(?) yet. At our quick dip beach they are always sunning on a concrete wall. There are a bunch of small caverns that I assume are made by the lizards. Sometimes I think something that doesn't exist might be in there though. I'm not daring enough to stick my head in and look. I bet it’s Tremors.

Many normally domesticated animals are about too. On the bus route to campus it is fairly common to see the odd goat or cow meandering through the bushes on the side of the road. I feel like these animals must be very lost or confused. I figured them both to be grazers, not bush whackers. Somewhere along the way they must have forgotten their life purpose or decided that they were a much more rugged creature stuck in a cow or goat's body. There are also the stray dogs, and the not so stray dogs that we often see. Someone carries kibble in her purse, so naturally, no dog's affection discriminates. At the beach just the other day we made friends with some dogs that like to eat. From then on they would bark at anyone that came near us. They became so quickly attached to us I felt a little bad that we ran from the beach as soon as they turned away to pee on a tree. *Don't sit under the tree near the fence of where the hotel starts. It smells like pee.

You'll find a vast variety of insects here. This is pretty well expected when you come the Caribbean. I would say there are about as many mosquitos per person as there are hairs. The worst time is the evening. I may have a receding hairline, and bubble at the thought of the Sun, but at least the mosquitos don't have the same love for me as they do others. The other person in the room is constantly itching but is golden like a graham wafer and has a nice thick coiffure. Take your pick. Other insects include these really tiny, basically translucent, ants. They'll swarm anything you leave out on the counter. Having to constantly wipe up immediately seems to be instilling some good habits though.

And lastly there are many a creature we haven't seen, but they sure make their presence known. At night we hear the constant buzz from whatever that thing is and the cooing of something else. Actually, I might have any idea what the buzz is coming from. On our hike up Grand Etang I saw a moth gyrating it's bum to generate the noise. All I can think of now is a thousand gyrating bums in the moonlight. At least knowing what the noise is gives you peace of mind.

I mentioned a post or two ago about our visitors. We had the place sprayed to keep them out. It doesn't work so well with the guy who wants our water nuts—he came back. The spray worked otherwise, we thought. After dawn I had discovered a few expired visitors. The other day I found two in one day and then I decided to have a shower. This is when I heard chirping from beneath my feet. As far as I know, this is not atypical. I should preface this with, a couple days prior we cleaned the bathroom; in the grout of the tile wriggled out a thin earthworm (I hope). Needless to say, the previous worm, and now this noise irked me. As it turns out, according to Google, visitors make either a hissing noise, or a chirping noise depending on type. My discovery, and then my Googling, all took place while she was at class. I was not so careful with the terms I used when I described our problem to her as I have been here. That being said, she'd been in class all day, studied for countless hours, and I decided to reward us both with a light movie before bed called Alien Resurrection. We slept very little and paranoia was set in a bit more in one of us than the other. This lasted two nights; but we slept easier the second night regardless of the fact that the chirping had persisted and our imaginations grew wilder. The chirp itself sounded cute, but the implications seemed dismal. We began to believe that any living creature in this post, save for maybe the goat or cow, might be living under our tub along with all the creepy crawlies. Today we were to have the underside of the bath sprayed. I peeled back the 'door' of the tub and saw something half the size of my pinky hop away. Our cohabitants are frogs. That has put at us much more at ease, for what reason, I don't know. We're sorry to say that we are hoping to evict chirpy Kermit and his family; I hope they find a nice puddle beyond the orange tree.