It seems to have become an unofficial goal of ours to get on top of the highest peak of each island we visit. Last week, we made an expedition to Mount St. Catherine with Tom and Ann of Oddly Enough. Armed only with vague directions and a tourist map (the kind that shows ATMs and restaurants, rather than useful things like contours and trails) we set out by bus to Grenville, on the east coast. There we wandered around a little, showing the map to various locals who all pointed in opposite directions, until a little boy finally led us to a bus stop where we found a driver who knew where we wanted to go.
We got off the bus at the Mount Hope road along with a local man with a shy, Radar O'Reilly smile. Winston lived in one of the highest of the houses scattered along the old road; he was 53 years old and had eleven children, and already a few grandchildren. After we left him, the road continued past a large agricultural area. Bananas, mangos, cocoa, and the ubiquitous nutmeg tree lined the road. A few fairly decrepit vehicles were parked here and there, but in general the road was just an indifferently paved doubletrack, more suitable for hiking than for driving. Here and there we'd see a young man carrying a bucket of cocoa beans, and at one point we passed a group of women with empty buckets, hiking up to their nutmeg grove. They told us that what had looked to us like one big plantation was actually a collection of smaller plots of land, with individual families having the right to harvest on their designated land.
The end of the road was the end of the cultivated area. A narrow trail continued up through the unkempt jungle, and I do mean up: in many places, we had to climb ladders of tree roots, grabbing trunks and vines to keep our balance. It was not so much a hike as a clamber, and a muddy clamber at that. But the views were spectacular when we broke out onto the ridge. We could see the small islands off the coast by Grenville, and the old airstrip which still has a few invasion-era planes moldering on the unused tarmac.
At the communications tower on the summit, we met Cornell, who'd spent the night up there. He works for the local television and radio outfit, and was waiting for some co-workers to arrive so they could begin erecting a new tower to replace the old one. Since there's no road to the top, the pieces had to be hauled up on a sort of cargo cable-car arrangement alongside the power wires. Cornell told us that the path they used connected to the power station on a lower peak, which could be accessed by road, so we decided to return by that path, especially since he said it was easier than the one we'd come up. Shortly after we started down, we began to wonder just how recently Cornell had actually hiked the other path -- it was just as steep and twice as muddy. We slid and squished through brown soupy mud, red gloppy mud, yellow clay mud.... No doubt, we agreed as we picked our way down the trail, the ancient Arawaks who once peopled this island must have had as many words for mud as the Inuit have for snow.
Eventually we broke out onto the sub-peak and found the road. But we weren't back to civilization yet, and since the road was really just an access to the power station, there was no traffic, so we had to trudge down the steep road to Paraclete, the nearest town.
We are still eating our way through Grenada. Our latest discovery is a fruit called "water lemon", which is nothing like a lemon and does not grow in the water. We were told that it's similar to a passion fruit, although we've only had passion fruit juice, not the fruit itself, so can't judge on that basis. It looks sort of like a small, warty orange, and you eat it by slicing off a bit of the peel and sucking the sweet, gelatinous flesh through the resulting hole. The crunchy little black seeds add a nutty bite to the flavor. It's another nicely self-contained fruit treat, like the chin-up (which we have since found a reference to in another guidebook, this time spelled "genip"). Another local item we have tried is "mauby", which is a carbonated drink made from the bark of a particular tree. It tastes sort of like birch beer but with a stronger woodsy aroma and a bit of a bitter aftertaste.
Avocado season has begun, but we've been disappointed in the avocados we bought at the supermarket. They just don't seem as fatty and sweet as California avocados. Maybe the market ones are better. But the green peppers (from the market) are more to my taste than those in US supermarkets, not as fleshy, but with a more pronounced flavor. I bought some unusual green beans on our last market trip, skinny like French haricots verts but amazingly long, ranging in size from 18 inches to over two feet!
Globalism has sure come to the Caribbean supermarket. Frozen packages of US pork, New Zealand lamb, and Australian beef are all less expensive than the local equivalents. We're happy to have the selection, because the fishing has been poor. We've gone out snorkeling a few times, and although some of the reefs have interesting structure and look like they were once very beautiful, much of the coral is dead, and there are few edible fish of any size. The local fishermen out of St. George's set longlines for tuna and other pelagics off the coast, but one look at the fish market -- a block-long parade of dead fish on tables in the sun -- convinced us not to buy any.
We've got a flight out in mid-August, so we're sort of spinning our wheels since we don't really have enough time to go anywhere else. It's too warm most of the time to do much boat work (although one cool day on the heels of a tropical wave had us industriously tidying and cleaning our living spaces, something that was far overdue), so we're not accomplishing much. As much as I hate to admit it, we're even getting kind of bored. The cruiser social scene is dominated by the American/Canadian over-55 retiree crowd, who we don't have much in common with. The "Not-Americans", mostly South Africans and Europeans, don't seem to care to mix with the Americans much (nor really with each other, unless they're from the same country). The locals are perfectly cordial although not really friendly, since they don't see much sense in investing any energy in people who will just be moving on in a week or a month.
On the positive side, Grenada is a nice country to be stuck in. We'd like to do a few more outdoorsy trips, although somehow one of my hiking sneakers fell overboard so I'm going to have to find alternate footwear. There are several other waterfalls which are supposed to be spectacular. We'd also like to try snorkeling some of the reefs a little further from "civilization", in hopes that they're not all fished out and dead.
Then there's the cultural aspect of the country. Carnival is coming up, and we hope to see some of the events. The little marina at Prickly Bay has a steel band every Friday night, so we've been going out to listen to the music and dance a little. (The band mostly does covers of songs you'd never in a million years expect to hear done by a steel band. "Angel in the morning", "Tie a yellow ribbon", and my absolute fave, "In the mood" -- yup, it's the Glenn Miller Steel Band!)
Other than that, we're reading a lot, writing some, playing card and board games with Tom and Ann, and thinking about all the things we plan to accomplish during our visit back to the US in two weeks.