Grenada Farewell

The last week on Grenada is over, and we are heading for Carriacou and Tyrrel Bay.

We started our final lap on Grenada last Wednesday, when our excursion ashore to grab a quick meal took us to the middle of an Indian Birthday Blame-It-On-The-Curry Dancing Fiesta.

Very funny, and really goood curry!

On Thursday Valentine invited me to the Phare Bleu floating restaurant.

«Vestra Banken» is a over 100 year old Swedish lighthouse-ship, that has been transformed into a high-class restaurant here.

We went there with high expectations, since visiting the place has been a theme all the way back to when we started to read about Grenada in Doyle's pilot book.

The ambience was delightful, and the food really excellent.

This was supposed to be a taxi transport night, since the Restaurant Ship is located in a marina quite far from the city. But due to Valentine's logistic improvisations, we ended up driving with locals in private cars both ways. Interesting people, really good conversations.

We moved Yum-Yum south to Tyrrel Bay on Friday, to see if some of our friend-boats still were hanging around there, which they were not.

But as we hoped, Barracuda’s band was plying that night at the TIKI outdoor venue.

Barracuda is a local guitarist/singer who has a great voice, and plays just the music that we love to dance to.

There was a performance by a surprisingly good steel drum band before Barracuda entered the stage, the TIKI happy hour and pizza worked well. Dancing was great and without injuries. We had an interesting conversation with two Canadian couples. We got in contact when we saw some people crawling around on the lawn, and offered them support with our flash light. The crawling was not result of a too happy hour, but a lost earring.

One of the couples were experienced long time cruisers.

The other had moved to Grenada some years ago for retirement, but had been offered irresistible, interesting job challenges here.

It is not the first time we have met people here, for whom the Grenadian retirement escape has been overtaken by irresistible and fulfilling job life opportunities.

Thoughest goes first!

Saturday.

We finally managed to join the Grenadian Hash Harriers for their weekly hike / run.

This is an international movement, giving «drinkers with a running problem» a controlled and beer-stained opportunity to follow their unbending desire to run in the woods.

On this rainy(!) Saturday the event still gathered a 100+, of which a little less than half was «virgins» in the Grenada Hash, and of cause had to be de-virginified in a simple ceremony of drinking beer from your hiking-shoe.

No woman with sticks overtakes me!!

I was not the only one feeling that the Swiss-Norwegian team had an unfair advantage with our Vibram soles and hiking sticks on the slippery, narrow and steep track, which was well marked with dots of paper laces from a document maculator.

My telemark downhill skills allowed me to overtake some of the Harriers in the steepest downhill mudslides.

After the run we had to go through another beer baptism and a diploma ceremony for us the not-longer-virgins. And some other Harriers that was due for special celebration this particular Saturday.

Then, plenty of food and drinks.

Those humans...

Everything about the Hash seemed well organized in a casual style, very unlike everything else we have seen on the island.

We got to the venue by meeting up at the announced roundabout in St Georges, and was picked up by a couple of locals that had spare seats in their car and plenty of loud music.

Grab a bush or slide.

But on the return with the same car we had a good conversation, and the driver insisted on driving us all the way to Prickly Bay, and Brian refused firmly any contribution from us to cover his expenses.

Counting Jupiter's moons from the trampoline a little later, all on board agreed it had been a fine day.

The official Sunday on Yum-Yum starts with a big breakfast that includes eggs, crisped baguettes and sliced seasoned tomatoes as an addition to our everyday fresh fruits, yoghurt and muesli dishes.

After which we moved the boat to the east side of Hog Island, making ourselves ready for the famous Roger's Sunday cruiser gathering five minutes dingy ride away on the other side of Hog.

Every Sunday his improvised open dingy-in seashore driftwood shacks become a meeting point for the boat people. Over the bar counter we delivered greetings from my sister and brother in law, whose only specific instructions for this adventure has been to visit Roger's, and hit the Panama Channel. Synnøve and Sigurd finished their first sailing adventure spending some months in the Caribbean about 12 years ago.

They will be back here with their four children as visitors on Yum-Yum for Christmas vacation. Report will follow.

Having collected our food and drinks at Roger's, we dropped down at a table and introduced ourselves to a long-time cruising couple on a Welch flagged boat, and their crew, Klaus aus Deutchland.

They shared with us their extended knowledge of the African coast of the Mediterranean, especially cruising Tunisia.

Roger's was also loud music, mosquitoes, and sharing the bench with a local in deep hibernation that we were totally unable to bring back to consciousness. Until a couple of raindrops hit his face. Then he jumped up like a high-tension Jack-in-the-box, landed on the neighbour-bench, were he returned to reality and gave us his gentle “Hello, how are you?” with a smile before he slid off in the shadows.

As we dragged our dingy out of the bar and into the water, we realized that these footsteps in the sand would be our last touch of the Grenadian island for a long time.

My mind already set for the next day's adventure in Dominique's floating workshop on Carriacou, we dingied into the night back to Yum-Yum.