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Diane's Diary7/13 Friday I cooked chicken cutlet parmesan today - with real mozzarella cheese. What a treat. We haven't had real mozzarella cheese since St. Martin. I did some emails in the am. After lunch, we walked over to the Rendezvous hotel. S/V Jacobite was on the hard getting their bottom painted & invited us over to use the hotel pool. So, we went over along with Kristali. Kristali was already in Prickly Bay so they just dinghied over. While we were walking over to the hotel, someone driving offered us a ride. This was the rich neighborhood & apparently the neighbors often pick up walkers. Anyway, it was hot, as we had already been walking about 20 minute so we were grateful for the lift. We stayed at the Rendezvous from about 2-4pm. Kristali gave us a ride back to the Spice Island Marina in their dinghy & we walked the 10-15 minutes back to Secret Harbor. We took showers at the marina & then joined in the Friday night bar-b-que at the Moorings. We stayed for cocktails only as I had already made the chicken cutlet. It would have been about $7USD for a hamburger & everyone told us the food was only mediocre so I am glad we didn't stay for dinner. We had a Tropical wave last night-lots of rain but very little wind. We need some wind to get the wind generator going. 7/14 Saturday Legacy, Pride & I went for a long walk this morning from 9:30- 11:30am. We must have walked over 4 miles! I was tired from the heat but not from the walk itself. We met a number of people we knew on our walk so I didn't get back to the boat until 1pm. At 3pm we went swimming again at the Secret Harbor pool- it has been so nice having freshwater to swim in. I get sick of the high salt content of the water around here. We went to Legacy for drinks (BYOB) along with Pride, Driftwood, Pearl, us, & Side-By-Side. We stayed from about 5:30-8 & all had a good time. 7/15 Sunday We gals went walking again this morning & today we had 7 of us all together. There was me, Legacy, Pride, Driftwood, Side By Side, Kristali & Pearl. We walked from around 9:30-11:30. In the meantime, Eric from Driftwood came over & he & Larry had drinks together. OK it wasn't that early, they only started around 11:30!. After lunch, I made appetizers & a baked taco dinner. We had S/V Rejoice over tonight for cocktails. We first spoke to them over the phone before we had left NY. Forest & Susan helped us with the SSB installation - we called them over the SSB to see if we could transmit. We could hear them but they couldn't hear us. We were able to fix the SSB problem before we left NY. WE did have Rejoice over for cocktails in Bermuda but things were very crazy then & we didn't have a chance to really get to know them. We have been in SSB & email contact with them for the entire trip. However, since they left Bermuda in November they were always 2 months ahead of us for the entire trip. We had a good time with them tonight over cocktails. Hope to get to see them some more before we leave Grenada. 7/16 Monday We took the 9am bus into town today. We saw the fort, museum & walked around the Careenage. We had a roti lunch at the Nutmeg restaurant. We ran the water maker for a few hours. It's blowing about 20 knots out - a small Tropical wave is going through. We walked over to Prickly Bay at 4pm for a hurricane seminar given by John from Second Millennium. He also runs the Safety & Security net on the SSB every morning for the cruising community. The seminar was very good. One couple that spoke had survived through 5 hurricanes in ST. Marten & gave some advice. (ok I know you are all wondering why they stayed for 5 hurricanes & we were too, but they were working in St. Marten) They stated they would NEVER go through another hurricane again! Their best advice was to get out of the area before the hurricane hits. Also, someone else stated the wind goes dead calm 1-2 days before the hurricane hits so it's best to leave before that. Boaters trying to get out of the hurricane path need wind & the engine to get as far away from the hurricane as possible. But if there's no wind 1-2 days before the hurricane you won't get as far away from the hurricane as possible just using the engine. So, it's important to leave at least 3 days before the hurricane. The seminar was very interesting & got us all wondering. They also said we boaters in the Caribbean for the summer should have a hurricane preparedness plan written out in case one does approach. It's too late to put a plan together once a hurricane has been announced as everyone is scrambling to prepare. I'll have to get Larry to work on one. 7/17 Tuesday Lori from S/V Pride came over this morning. We are running the women's group this afternoon & wanted to talk about what we would discuss. After she left this morning, I made appetizers & dinner. I took a shower on shore before the women's group started. We had the women's group from 2-5pm. 27 ladies came & we all had a great time. M/V Gabrielle is leaving tomorrow so we wanted to have them over for drinks since they took us fishing. We had Gabrielle, Pride & Legacy over for drinks. 7/18 Wednesday Today we went on an all day bus tour of the island with Darius with 11 of us on the bus. The bus was $100 for the day, so it was only $9 USD per person & Darius acted as our guide. We stopped so Darius could get the shoppers arranged so we didn't leave till 9:30. We all wanted to leave even earlier as it gets so hot later in the day. Just after we started the bus had a flat so he had to stop & fix it. We also had to stop to get another tire so we really got delayed. The first stop was Concord Falls to see the lower waterfall. It was pretty but at $2USD admission charge was not worth it. Larry went in but I didn't think it was worth it so I stayed behind with Kristali- they didn't go in either. Next we went to the spice estate & got a tour of all the different spices & how they are made. It was very interesting & we all bought some spices. Then we went to the Nutmeg co-op in Gouyave. The workers get paid about $7USD per day. We watched some of the ladies work, they sort through nutmegs all day long - boring, tedious, hard work. If OSHA were there they would close the place down! It wasn't exactly sanitary conditions! However, we really enjoyed the tour. Then we had lunch in a horrible little restaurant in Goyave. There was no fans or AC (only in some of the stores & offices in St. George's do they have AC) & it was really hot in there. The food was cheap but horrible. No one enjoyed it. It would have been better if we had all just bought a picnic lunch. After lunch, we drove up to the Carib Leap. This is where the last of the Carib Indians jumped to their death rather than be captured by the British. Not much to see except a cliff but the story is interesting. The Caribs were fierce warriors. Next we stopped at Levera National Park. It was beautiful but unfortunately we didn't have time to stop as everyone wanted to go to the rum distillery before it closed. The rum distillery was a big disappointment- the place was disgusting- it was absolutely filthy. I was even hesitant about trying the rum since it was so gross. The rum was also disgusting- it tasted like the cheap Martinque rot gut. The tour was $2USD & not worth it. I definitely would NOT recommend anyone stopping there. The last stop was the Grand Etang National Park. Larry & I had been there while on a cruise a number of years ago. It was beautiful & very cool up there. The rest of the day had been extremely hot but when we got up there it was fantastic. It's too bad it was almost 6pm so we only had time for the quick 20minute hike. We went on the same trail we went on the last time we came to Grenada. We were all tired by that time after the long hot day. But we did stop at a bakery on the way home to get some bread & pastries. We didn't get back to the boat until 7:30. We all enjoyed the tour very much. But I would have rather started off earlier in the day to beat the heat. We certainly got our money's worth on the tour though - we paid $9USD each. When we got back to the boat I was too tired too cook so I just made grilled cheese sandwiches with the bread we just purchased. Bread is pretty inexpensive here, you can buy a loaf for less than one USD. However, in this heat it gets moldy within a few days. New Zealand Cheddar cheese is also available everywhere & is pretty cheap, in Grenada we pay about $5 for a 2.2lb size, in the Tobago Cays the same cheese was almost $9USD! So, it definitely pays to bring as much food as possible into the Cays. We stayed there over 2 weeks & unfortunately ran out of fresh supplies so had to provision some. Luckily, we didn't have to buy too much but what we did buy was very expensive. |