Hello again from Grenada!

I hope everyone is doing well back home (in what seems to be cold weather and snow!)

It is extreemely warm over here in Grenada – it will definitely take some time to get used to this heat (I’m not complaining, I’m just stating, haha!) It’s usually around 30 degrees in the shade, so I escape to my room with my air conditioner set on 17 degrees as often as possible (yes, I have developed quite a bad cough because of this…).

Today I wanted to share with you some pictures and experiences from Wednesday, when I got a tour of part of Grenada. On Jay’s birthday, I met one of Jason’s family members who drives a tourist bus when cruise ships come in to the island, and he said I could come with on one of the tours – how perfect!

Driving through the capital, St. Georges

With 20 (almost all American) tourists and myself, we were on our way bright and early in the morning. I hope with the pictures from this post you will get a pretty good understanding of ‘what’ Grenada is and what it looks like.

Along the road – 1

Along the road – 2

Along the road – 3

All the yellow, green and red flags around are decorations for Grenada’s upcoming Independence Day on the 7th February. (Their flag is yellow, green, and red…)

We were told the red represents the love and kindness of the people, the green is for the lush vegetation, and the yellow for the sun. The little nut is a nutmeg, which Grenada used to produce in large amounts and the stars are for the provinces on the island.

Haha, what a funny palm tree! Also look at how incredibly green it is!

We passed some fishermen who were hard at work (here they do it the old-school way). So in their small fishing boats they would throw out the net and then pull it back in. People from the village would come down to help for a free fish or two in return.

The locals helping out so they can get some free fish

Stunning! 

We then went on to visit a ‘factory’ where they produce various spices. Grenada is known as the spice island as there is an abundance of spices such as cinnamon, saffron, clove (nellik in norwegian), and nutmeg. So we got to smell and hear about all the different spices.

Then we passed some villagers who were sorting the nutmeg. A nutmeg looks like this:

So with the fruit, you can make jam etc, with the mace (the red) you can spice your food or it’s used as food colouring, and then you have the nut inside. So here the men were taking the fruit/nut apart.

The red in the tray is the mace. It is the most expensive part of the nutmeg

There used to be lots and lots of nutmeg growing in Grenada, but large amounts of the nutmeg plantations were wiped out during a hurricane in 2004, called Ivan. It had huge impacts on the island.

Not only do they fish the old school way, washing is not exactly done in a washing machine (they don’t have the water system for that in the villages in the mountains)

The picture above is a papaya tree! What I found so amazing about Grenada is that along the road you have mandarine trees, lemon trees, papaya trees, cashew nut trees, nutmeg trees – just anything!

Rainforest! 

Green, green, green

Pictures of pretty flowers is a must

Then we entered the Grand Etang national park, with the Crater Lake.

The hair!! This man was selling spice necklaces, which has all sorts of different spices on it and smells delicious! 

An awesome tree! Also known as a eucalyptus tree 🙂

Next stop was the Annendale Waterfall.

Lastly, we went up a Fort, which had a great view. We saw down to St. Georges, which you can partly see on the ‘arm’ there, with the cruise ship on the back side.

A long and great day – but lots of fun learning about the island!

The green dots show where we went on the tour (I think…). Point 1 is St. Georges the capital city where we started and point 2 is where the lake was. Point 3 is where I am staying with Jason and his family 🙂

A long long post but hopefully you have a little better understanding of Grenada now 🙂