Some more Grenada
So, to continue the story from the last post... We did go hiking later that day, and boy was it muddy! Some people might like the feeling of mud squishing between their toes (in sandals), but I found that I decidedly do not. Steve kept reminding me that "people pay good money for treatments like this".
We hiked to Seven Sisters waterfalls - 3 km round trip - so this felt like nothing to us. However the conditions were quite different than we've ever tackled before. Besides wading through mud, we crossed streams where the only option was walking on rocks completely submerged, and setting your foot firmly before lifting the other one, so the current wouldn't knock you off.
The reward
We watched the guy at the top of the falls (35 ft) approach the edge, back off, approach, back off, for over 10 minutes. We left after taking pictures, and he still hadn't jumped.
This is the type of road that existed up the middle of the island.
About the roads - actual quote from the Lonely Planet guidebook we've been using for our trip this time: "Driving is technically on the left-hand side of the road, but you can expect buses in particular to be going full bore wherever the hell they want to, with full-beam lights on permanently after dark." Also, after we had driven on the cow paths that one day, we came across a road sign that said "Drive slowly - broken road ahead" and this was actually posted on a pretty nice road!
The next day, we drove up to the north point of the island (about 1 1/2 hours) to go to a restaurant at an inn that had been highly reviewed. On the way, we stopped at a rum distillery that was started in 1785, and they still use the same labor intensive methods today.
The original wooden water wheel is still used to drive this original cane pressing machine.
The hollows above are called coppers, and cane juice is heated to 250 degrees, to evaporate some water, and reach certain levels of sweetness. The juice is transferred from one copper to another by use of the long handled ladles, that you can see lying over the closest copper. The coppers are actually at different temperatures due to their proximity to the wood fire under the farthest copper. Once the juice reaches the desired sweetness, it is transferred by pipes to cement holding tanks for 2 days, where it cools and starts fermenting. The still where the actual distillation occurs uses some new fangled parts from that country up north:
Sugar cane in the background:
Our two hour lunch on the north point was heavenly. Absolutely delicious food served to us on a shaded verandah with constant cooling breezes, and we were the only ones there.
View from our table
off the north point
We're off to Tobago tomorrow for 10 days (!) for both diving and island exploring.
