Grenada

The day after my family left, we went to Grenada, our closest island neighbor. Grenada was different: it has tourism, most of the coastline is beachy, and it’s more subdued than Trinidad. The existence of tourism threw us for a loop. Things were easy—there were turn-outs on the road so traffic didn’t stop when someone got out of their car to get a coke, banks were everywhere, the grocery store had more options, and my favorite—it was safe to walk for hours around the island. On the flipside, people constantly tried to sell us stuff. Aaron had a hard time saying no, so now we have eight necklaces made out of various spices (Grenada is the Spice Isle). Now our house smells like a cinammony, clovey, gingery dinner.

We drove around the island in a jeep and stopped at Grand Etang National Park. In Trinidad, we never see anybody on hikes. Here, there were tour guides just hanging out, waiting to show us waterfalls. Morbidly, we also went to a place known as Carib’s Leap, where supposedly the last of the Carib people (men, women, and children), simultaneously jumped off the island, choosing death over slavery to the Spaniards back in the day.

On a few walks, we found many buildings destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, like this church.

Making cane sugar juice---see the stalks that he's putting in the machine? Then it comes out of a spout by his ankle. And that's a pile of dry stalks on his right.

Aaron has become scuba certified, so he went diving. I played with my new camera.