Monday 23 November 2009

Welcome to Grenada

Sorry this is out of order, we have finally got around to writing. Our first morning in Grenada, we all slept until 11 am on Monday morning(7 am pst). It was a beautiful sunny day when I opened the curtains, and yes we were facing onto the most beautiful beach in Grenada. I could see some sail boats anchored out in one of our favourite anchorages. We caught a taxi to Grenada Marine in St David’s where High Five V was waiting for us. It is about a 25 minute drive from the hotel. When we got to the marina we didn’t see our boat right away, there were a lot of boats in the yard. We decided to get some lunch while it was being served. The chicken roti here is very good! After lunch we wandered around the yard looking for High Five, you would think finding a 46 foot boat would be easy. After 30 minutes of wandering around in the hot sun we found her buried behind 4 other boats. We were excited, and the boat could be heard breathing a sigh of relief when her family returned to her. We climbed up the saw horse and ladder and unlocked the door. On first look she looked pretty good. Once we looked closer we could see all the evidence of the mouse party that had taken place in our absence. Now you may wonder how mice could get onto a boat that is locked up tight and not touching the ground except for steel frames that it is sitting on. Well in Grenada one of the things done to protect the boats during a hurricane is they are strapped down to cement blocks buried in the ground. These straps act as highways to the boat for rodents and insects. A hatch or port must have been left open at some point (workers were coming in and out) and the mice found their party place. We have a theory that they got into the coffee first and once they were all hopped up on caffeine they attacked the styrofom parrot because it was looking at them sternly. They ate the tortilla chips which made them a bit thirsty so they ran all over the tops of the water tanks because it smelled like water (there are 3 water tanks under the floors throughout the boat). They chewed any containers with moisturizer in it, and the tetra packs of old French Rabbit red wine did not make their judgment any better. They got a nasty shock when they bit the stash of spare batteries which caused much defecation. We think one of the last things they ate was the 10 packages of roach killer. This made them very thirsty and they wobbled off the boat forgetting about that very large step to the ground. So we are left to clean up after the mouse party, as well as, do all the rest of the very long list of things to be done before the boat can float again. We decided renting a car would be the most efficient way to get to and from the boat and to all the stores we would need to visit. This is also the most adrenaline producing means of travel we could find. Grenada is a left hand drive country, there are no sidewalks on 99% of the roads and the roads are about as wide as a single lane in North America. Janine is Right Left dyslexic so you will be happy to know there was no way she was going to attempt driving. In fact she preferred have a stiff drink before getting into the car. For some reason every time we started to drive back to the hotel it coincided with school dismissal. So take narrow roads with cars going really fast (because the locals all seem to only have 2 speeds, stopping and going fast) and send schools full of small children looking lovely in their uniforms out to walk along the non existent sidewalks. The roads here make the old SEA TO Sky highway look straight. Every corner seems to have a cement truck or a flat bed truck with workers hanging off it coming around it. But surprisingly enough there are very few car crashes. We were told there have been only 4 fatal crashes this year. Really amazing given the number of cliffs! So we settled into a routine of getting up around 7:30 stopping at various stores to support the local economy, getting to the boat around 10 and working like dogs until 3:30 or 4 when we would climb into the Suzuki ( same car as Sue) Vitara and thrill ride our way back to the hotel, dodging school children and trucks, for a swim in the pool. Usually Gary and Janine would head out to get some food while the kids chose to stay in the air conditioned hotel room and get their last fill of cable TV. We found a great Sushi restaurant that had a pizza restaurant next door. So we could have some sushi and order the pizza to be ready to take back to the kids when we were finished. Except for the hours of sweat spent scrubbing the boat it was a like a vacation.

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