Our Tour of Grenada Continues…

We drove through the country, listening to Assassin’s descriptions of the various areas while he filled us in on the details of the upcoming elections.  There are two major political parties in Grenada. This was not hard to remember, as signs, banners, and tshirts were everywhere you looked.  It seemed to us that many people were very politically active and that certain villages preferred one party over the other.

We arrived at the Concord waterfall, which was tall and had a delightful pool beneath it.  There were several craft stands along the road, so we had to use our duck, confuse, distract, and avert techniques to get past all the men trying to get us to buy their shell jewelry.  Once at the entrance to the waterfall, we needed to pay an entrance fee and walk through a gift shop to get there.  This was a far cry from the natural beauty and remote nature of Dominica.  We had hiked for an hour in the wilderness in Dominica to get to a waterfall.  Once there, we felt like the only people in the world, and it could have been the year 1589.  Here, our bus pulled up right along side it and the focus was on making money as opposed to communing with nature.  Apparently, I’m not quite over Dominica yet, because what kind of person complains about a waterfall?

 

We ignored all of that and enjoyed the view.  All the daring ones in our group jumped off the high ledge into the water.  I enjoyed swimming behind the waterfall and getting that fullness of air in my lungs.

 

We had the place to ourselves right up until the end, which was wonderful.  After we changed, we had to walk past the vendors again.  The men making jewelry and sculptures were all very nice, but it is just not possible to buy something from everyone, and it still makes me feel uncomfortable to have to say “No, thank you” several times while they make their best attempt to persuade me.  Luckily, many of them are simply very nice people, and when I stay open to making a connection, I am usually rewarded with a smile, a great conversation, or even just a moment where our eyes meet and that twinkle tells me that we really see each other.

 

We were ALL looking forward to our next destination: the Belmont Estate.  You are going to pretty much hate us for this, because ALL they do at Belmont is make chocolate!!!  We headed straight to the restaurant for lunch and were treated to a lovely Grenadian buffet lunch.  The outdoor covered seating area was breezy and comfortable with beautiful views of the surrounding hillsides.  The food was wonderful, but the chocolate cake for dessert was amazing!

We walked around the building to start our tour and were handed sample cups of hot chocolate.  Yum!  A table was set up with fruits and vegetables commonly grown in Grenada.  We felt very local checking out the table and seeing that we knew almost all of the tropical produce and had cooked and eaten most of it.

Our tour guide was a sweet young woman who showed us around the estate and walked us through the process of turning cacao into chocolate.  I found myself wondering over and over again how in the world the ancient peoples figured out how to do this.  There are so many steps, and if you skip even one, you would not have an edible product at the end, much less one of the tastiest ones the world knows.  I have often wondered this same thing about wine-making, beer-making, and flour, amongst others.  It’s no wonder one of the shows I find most fascinating is “How It’s Made”!

Drying platforms slide under the building when it rains.

The cacao processing starts off with a malodorous step that surely should have stopped any long ago inventor in his or her tracks.  The cacao beans are put in covered bins and allowed to ferment.  The smell is horrific.  After weeks of being turned and mixed, the beans are taken out and laid on platforms to dry.  Here’s the thing.  Grenada is a lush Caribbean island with tons of rainfall.  It would take the beans forever to dry if they just sat outside.  The invention they devised to handle this is very clever.  The platforms were put on wheels, which were set on rails, which ran right under a building.  When the rains started, plantation workers of old would run outside and push each giant platform under the building.

 

We get to walk around on the beans, just as the plantation workers did years ago. It was fun for the kids, but I connected with the hard work that those long ago slaves and workers had to endure.

 

While the beans dried, workers would walk around on them to “polish” them.  We could not ascertain why, because the following steps negated any benefit from having cute little polished beans.  The beans are then put through a number of other steps, including going through grinder to make cocoa butter with a by-product of cacao nibs (kind of like the pulp).  At this point, I might have stopped listening, because it is such a long process and I just wanted to get to the part where they make the chocolate!  As you know, various recipes can be utilized to make dark chocolate of various qualities, milk chocolate, cocoa powder, and more.

Here was one time we didn’t mind stopping in the gift shop on the way out.  We purchased several bars of chocolate made by the Grenada Chocolate Company.  My favorite was the sea salt and dark chocolate bar.  The kids like the 60% Dark Chocolate bars.

 

The rest of the plantation was interesting and we saw huge palm trees, monkeys, turtles, and more.  Unfortunately, I was being eaten alive by mosquitos and had to hide out in the van while the rest of the group explored.  Olivia got her braided hair too close to the monkey cages and one of the little scoundrels pulled her beads off and tried eating them as a snack.  Kate, undeterred, got close as well, and one monkey got a hold of her bangs and wouldn’t let go.  Olivia and Kate handled the excitement well, but Porter was traumatized and “never wants to see the monkeys again!”

 

We had one more stop on the way home: the Grand Etang caldera, which is a collapsed volcano.  We had thought earlier in the week that we could do a big hike to this popular spot, but we never made it.  Assassin said he could get us right up to the edge of the crater, which used to be a volcano.  We were so tired that we drove up, walked to the edge, snapped some pics, and piled back into the van.

The end of the tour

It had been a great day exploring this huge island country.  Assassin kept up a running commentary about all the villages we drove through, but our questions started to dwindle and it was pitch dark out by the time we pulled into the marina parking lot.  We had seen enough to know that we had only scratched the surface of what Grenada had to offer.  Our time in Grenada had come to an end, for Carnival was starting the next day and we needed to get to Carriacou for the party!

A few last pics: