Grenada

I'm back from my vacation to Grenada, and it was a blast! I really enjoyed it, and the best part was getting to spend time with my friend who's going to school down there. It was so much fun.

The only travel issues I had were on the trip down there. I flew from DFW to Miami, Miami to San Juan and then San Juan to Grenada. They delayed us leaving DFW for about 40 minutes because they had too much fuel on the plane and had to off-load a bunch. True. Then on final descent into Miami there was a plane on the runway, so our pilot hit the gas and began climbing. We had to go around and try again. All of which would have been just typical travel events, except that I only had an hour between flights in Miami. Luckily my Miami-to-San Juan flight was also delayed.

I arrived in Grenada at about 8:30 at night and my friend picked me up at the airport and for the next week we played. Well, I played the whole week. Two of those days she had to go to classes, but the other days we ran around. She lives at a resort which sits up above a beach (BBC beach?). We spent time strolling the beach and also swimming, generally in the morning before it got too hot. The climb back to the hotel is steep and in the heat it's not very fun. There are a million flowering plants along the way though, so it's beautiful and sweet smelling. It doesn't matter if you take your time. The bird in the picture above is a little blue heron who was hunting from the rocks along the shoreline. He was polite enough to stay still and let us take pictures. The bird later down in the blog is a night heron and he was hunting up on the shore. You can also see in this top picture that the sky was grey rather than blue. I'll talk about that later.

One of the days I was there we took a car and drove to the "Seven Sisters" Falls in Grand Etang Forest Reserve. We took the 'scenic' route since roads are ... less than well marked, but it was a lot of fun and I got to see a fair amount of the island. Grand Etang is a reserve in the center of the island. It is tropical rain forest and it includes the highest peak on the island, which is just under 3000 feet high. One of the things to do in Grenada is to 'jump' the Seven Sisters, which means to jump off each of the seven falls into the pool below. We didn't do this. One of those falls is said to be a 35 foot drop and I'm kind of a chicken. So we hiked out to the last two falls you jump and waded in the pools below them. We also hiked to Honeymoon Falls which is shown in the picture to the right. Hiking in tropical jungle was a fun adventure and I'm glad to have done it, but all told, I think I prefer the mountains, and less heat.

We also saw part of the birth of a calf. A cow was giving birth on a small farm near the trail, so we saw the front legs and nose emerging as we hiked in, and arrived in time to see the afterbirth and watch the calf take it's first steps and drink it's first meal. We kind of wanted to watch the whole thing, but didn't know how long it would take. We had a guide for this hike, and he identified and showed all sorts of plants to us, including cinnamon and nutmeg trees. It was totally fun.

An interesting phenomenon was taking place while I was in Grenada. I thought that it was really foggy and wondered why the fog wasn't burning off. Come to find out, it was Sahara dust. At times dust from the Sahara Desert crosses the Atlantic and blankets the eastern Caribbean. It was amazing. Of course the sky wasn't it's usual brilliant blue, but also the sun wasn't beating down on us continuously, so I felt like it was a fair trade-off. That explains the grey sky in the first picture.

We also went to St. George University where my friend goes to medical school and toured the school. The campus itself is absolutely gorgeous, as well as being surrounded by the most amazing scenery and views.

I had to laugh, though. Grenada has the usual laid-back, get-to-it-when-you-get-to-it lifestyle, and into that you put all these type A medical students. I can see why my friend occasionally gets really frustrated trying to get things done. Luckily for me, on vacation things just aren't urgent. We could take things as they came.

The last night I was there we went to a restaurant called Aquarium. The food was great and you sit out on an open veranda. It was night so we couldn't see the undoubtedly gorgeous view, but there was a lovely breeze off the ocean and the whole thing felt special. Actually, the whole trip felt that way. I hope to do it again some time.