Getting Thirsty?

Let me quench your thirst with a tall glass of blog. The title of this blog is brought to you by my lovely's new catch phrase. Keeping hydrated greatly affects our mood and I am not exaggerating when I say that the words "I'm thirsty" come out of her mouth more than routinely.

I was fairly misleading at the end of my last post by promising a new entry shortly after. I got busy! I'm going to try to get back on track here though. I hope I haven't lost too many of you frequent visitors. My apologies.

What I really wanted to talk about was our island tour with the significant others group. At the time it was probably our favourite day thus far. The goal was to circumnavigate the island and hit some of the hotspots along the way. We did something very similar when our parents were here but in the reverse direction. I wouldn't hesitate to say that this was our new favourite day. And just because I really want to induce some confusion, I am going to attempt to tackle some of the overlapping events at the same time.

All the forts on the island are quite fascinating. We visited Fort Frederick, Fort Matthew, and Fort George. It stretches one's imagination to picture the time and circumstance that they were built. I often forget that people have stood where I am standing and had an entirely different experience. We were lucky on our first visit to Fort Frederick to have a great tour guide who refers to herself as "Alice in Wonderland".

Alice In Wonderland

When the French took over from the British, they were able to do so by attacking from inland, rather than the expected naval assault. This is why Fort Frederick, cunningly built by the French, has all of its cannons pointed inland and was also given the nickname the "Backwards Facing Fort". Even more interesting than that, Alice in Wonderland told us her story of hurricane Ivan (as a quick recap, hurricane Ivan in 2004 practically obliterated the island. It was the worst since hurricane Janet in 1955). The winds were treacherous. She took her bed sheets and tied her children to her body and furthermore,  to the top of their roof to keep it from blowing off. Wisely, she had a knife at the ready should she need to cut them free. Her story had a bit more impact because of the tremendous wind we felt up there that day.

A lot of hairspray was needed in the making of this shot

Fort Matthew, the friendly neighbour of Fort Fred, has its own stories to tell. From the perspective of tourism, Fort Frederick is far more popular. If you are asking me, I think Matt has the edge. At one point it was a mental hospital. After seeing some of the wreckage and the intricate tunnels here, I'd wonder what a place like this would do to someone's psyche, let alone someone's whose is already delicate. This Fort is not as well preserved as its kin, but I think it has a lot of charm. One of the reasons it is in rougher shape is the US intervention in 1983 (they came in to extract American SGU students and to put the kibosh on a violent revolution involving Cuban and Russian communists). Unfortunately, a US bomb meant for Frederick hit Matthew instead, leaving much of it in a more ruined state. One could go on an on about the place, but I suggest you visit the bar that it now houses.

I hope she's taking a better shot than this one

Fort number three is Fort George. As I just recently read, the French originally named it Fort Royal. As with the other forts, there is a great deal of history here. One tid-bit I'd like to mention is that apparently there were connecting tunnels between all three of these forts. Given that two, Fred and Matt, are on the hill, and George down at sea level, it seems like a pretty astonishing distance to me to have a tunnel. Fort George is where Maurice Bishop, the prime minister at the time of the revolution in 1983, met his demise in the way of execution at the hands of the revolutionaries from his own government. This would be the straw that broke the camels back when the US decided it was time to intervene. For a somewhat B movie recommendation, watch Heartbreak Ridge—it's a Clint Eastwood flick with a dash of Operation Urgent Fury attached to the end (actually, don't waste your time).

Atop Fort George

Next up, Carib's Leap in the town of Sauteurs. Sauteurs in French means "jumpers". No, the people in this town did not wear cozy little pullovers—it was named by the French not the British, remember. It was when the French decided to try and colonize the island that the aboriginal Caribs became hostile to the idea, and rightly so. Unfortunately, the French fortified and killed nearly all of the Caribs on the island. The survivors were cornered to what is now known as Carib's Leap. An estimated 40 Caribs jumped to their deaths to avoid surrender and enslavement.

Leapers Hill Monument

Belmont Estate is part of what they call the Agro-Tourism business. Currently, it is cocoa plantation. We learned a whole heck of a lot about the process of harvesting cocoa, a process that I guess I had absolutely know prior knowledge about. First of all, did you know that this where the cocoa bean comes from?

A Cocoa Pod

Inside the beans are covered in a white flesh that is sweet. Part of our tour here let us try sucking on a bean. Depending on your tour group size, it may be off-putting to see a dozen different dirty hands in one cocoa pod fumbling around for a white gooey bean. I thought it tasted good regardless. They take all the beans from the pods and cover them up in banana leaves and burlap and let them ferment for 8 days. From there, they dry them in the sun thoroughly and every half hour someone needs to walk the cocoa to turn the beans over. What I mean by that is this:

Walking the Cocoa

I think if they can get a new tour group every half hour they'd have it made. For those that are concerned about the possible toe jam in their Butterfinger, the actual cocoa comes from inside the bean after they crack it open. But you can take pause and think of our sweaty feet next time you sip a hot chocolate. Before cocoa, the estate also was a sugar cane plantation and a cotton plantation and was an estate run by the labour of slaves. Interestingly enough, here remains the slave bell they would call them with.

Belmont Slave Bell

For me something seemed slightly awry when all the tourists (white skin in nature) rang this bell. I can see keeping the bell for tourism's sake, but am not too sure why the Grenadian people didn't choose to destroy it instead. I guess it is possible that such a bell's role was reversed and sounded to mark freedom as well.

Belmont has cocoa, history, oh, and of course a petting zoo.

Who is petting who?

On to Pearl's Airport i.e. an eerie abandoned runway that they sometimes do drag racing on. It was built on Amerindian remnants. Later my lovely's father and I attended a talk by a US Marine that was part of the US intervention. He mentioned to us this airstrip was partially funded by the Russians to increase tourism to the island, however, the strip was just wide enough for Russian military aircrafts and not the typical passenger flying aircraft of the time. If there is truth in this, I have absolutely no idea. There is a couple of old planes still sitting on the side of the strip. They apparently have a bull guarding them (this is likely happenstance because there are cattle and goats along the entire strip). During our time there with the SOs some of us played matador so others could get photos of themselves with the plane. I think he just wanted some attention.

See, I wasn't bull-shtuffing

This is where most of the overlap finishes. If you want more info on any of the places we went to, I'd highly recommend coming for a visit. I think my idle banter and photos can only do so much justice to the place.

Again, I am left with enough material to write another blog post and so you will be spared until the next post. No promises on when that will be this time. But I truthfully really want to have it done sooner rather than later. We may be four hours ahead of many of you (daylight savings doesn't affect us), but I think the Grenada pace is really starting to take hold.

For the new mothers out there, I will leave you with this...

Behind a fish store in Grenville