A Tour of Grenada

 We have not been to Grenada for some time, so we booked an island tour called 'Discover Grenada'. What we discovered is that even though Grenada is only 10 miles wide and 12 miles long, it is so hilly that it takes over an hour to get from one side to the other.

The sail-in and arrival at St. George's,
Grenada

The tour would cover lots of things from nutmeg to rum as well as take us to visit some historically significant places. It also included lunch, which we hoped would showcase some of the famous spices of the island.

We were on minibuses, which are about the largest vehicles that can navigate the narrow and winding roads. As it turned out we were among the last to board, so we chose the back seat, mainly because any of the others left were over the wheel wells and had virtually no leg room. Our driver and guide was a fellow named Terry, and he turned out to be very informative about all things to do with the island, especially the effects of the major hurricanes, from the 1950s up to 2024, on Grenada's economy.

Our first stop was still in the city of St. George's, at Fort Frederick. It is the highest spot in the city and provides great views all around and into the countryside beyond.

After a fairly long and bumpy ride through small communities that still had their share of destroyed houses among the more solidly rebuilt ones, we crossed the highest point in this part of the island at 1,910 feet above sea level.

Our next stop was at the Nutmeg Museum. Even though it is only a one-room museum, our guide gave us a comprehensive presentation on the growth, harvesting, preparation and sorting of nutmeg seeds for the export market. We also had the opportunity to try some products made with nutmeg, like syrup and jam.

Who knew that nutmeg and mace come from the same tree? The nutmeg seeds split open and drop from the trees when they are ready, and inside of them is this stuff that looks sort of like crushed maple leaves in October. This is the mace. Inside of that are the actual nutmeg seeds that we use.

The seeds are still inside of another shell, and this one is cracked open after being checked for damage, insect infestation, holes and the like.

This process used to be done by hand, but is now automated to a degree. The discarded shells in the bin have decorative uses - many people paint them in the national colours of red, yellow and green and put them in the garden or use them in walkways. Our guide said that the most popular use is as a 'security system'. These shells make such a crunching noise when you step on them that you can't miss hearing it. So if you have a two-foot wide path around your house, nobody would be able to break in without you knowing it. And if parents want to hear when their teenagers came home on a Friday night, they put some under a mat at the door.

After the nutmeg is taken from the shells, it is graded to determine how much nutmeg oil it contains. The more oil, the heavier the seed, so they are separated here. The oil extracted from the lighter nutmeg seeds goes into medications and cosmetics among other things, and the heavier seeds are used for food. Then they are put on drying racks for 6 to 8 weeks to reduce the water level inside to less than 10%.

After this they are graded again for size, dividing into larger and smaller nutmeg seeds. From there they can be packaged for further processing or for sale as whole seeds. I did buy a small bag of commercially packaged nutmeg seeds since the freshly grated version is so much tastier than the pre-ground one. The seeds should last up to 10 years as long as they are kept in proper conditions. The mace is also dried and either processed further or sold in its 'leaf' form.

After that informative visit, we headed off to Grand Etang National Park in the rain forest at this high elevation. This was just a refreshment stop where we could try some local rum in the form of rum punch. There wasn't enough time to look around any further than the souvenir booths nearby, which we avoided. Our tour was made up of 4 buses of about 15 people in each, and they were all there at the same time.

The Heliconia Pendula, national flower
of Grenada

These ladies obviously shilling for photo ops
at the souvenir stands.
I caught them from the other side of the road
when they weren't looking.

The Red Ginger Lilies, also very abundant.
They also come with pink or white flowers

Our next stop, another 15 minutes away, was at a local cacao production facility. Not production into chocolate, but just the harvesting and drying of the cacao seed. It was interesting to see what the cacao seed pods look like and the process it goes through before it is shipped for processing from nib into chocolate.

These purple things are the cacao seed pods.
They are harvested when they are
orange in colour.

After they are cut open, the white pods are taken out and put into these large bins where they are turned by shovel for about a week to dry out. They also ferment while the moisture comes out. The place smelled more like a winery than a cacao facility. 

Once they have lost most of the outside moisture, the cacao beans are placed on drying racks and set out in the sun and heat for another 5 to 7 days until they are dry enough to crack open. What is left inside is what becomes the cacao nib that is used to make chocolate.

From here they are bagged and sent off to processors around the world. This was certainly not the most comprehensive explanation of the whole process, and I'm sure many people would have liked to know how the chocolate is actually made, especially as they were selling chocolate bars at the end of the tour.

Next up was another interesting tour, this time at the Antoine River Rum Distillery. This is a family-owned distillery that uses a 180 year old water wheel to power the crusher that extracts the water from locally grown sugar cane to start the rum manufacturing process. As we visited on a Saturday, there was no production, but our guide gave us a very good explanation of the process and we got closer to the machinery than we would have otherwise.

The water wheel is powered from a local river. They
divert some of the water through a channel when
the wheel is in operation.

The crushing machinery. The sugar cane pieces are fed
on a conveyor and then go through large rollers
to extract the water

After the water is extracted, it comes by pipeline into this building where it is heated up to start the fermentation process. Each of these concrete vats is heated from below with increasing temperatures and the water flows from coolest to hottest to start evaporating the excess water. If we had been here on a workday it would have been very warm in this room!

The next step in the process is to let the fermentation into alcohol happen. They do this in huge open tanks so the fermentation uses only natural yeast from in the air. It also smelled like a winery in here. It was really interesting to see the oldest tank, which was very still, compared to the newest one, where the liquid was bubbling and moving around on its own.

The newest tank of liquid just starting
the fermentation process. The bubbling and
moving around looked almost like magic!

And finally, the distilling process starts. Even here they continue to use an older process that is more environmentally friendly. The distilling tanks are wood-fired. They use wood from trees that fall during storms, or were being cut down to make way for house construction or similar reasons. They use hard woods to be able to keep a low and slow burn process in the fires. The fermented cane water is simmered and the resulting steam goes through pipes in cool water to condense it back into liquid. They test the cane water beforehand to make sure it has a high enough sugar content, and augment it with molasses only if they can't reach the necessary number.

This distillery makes 150 proof, or 75% alcohol, rum as their main product. This was fine until the regulations changed after 9/11 to allow no more than 70% alcohol products to be carried on airplanes, so they now make another version at 69% for tourists to purchase to take home. We had a chance to taste both, and boy, do they have a kick!! I only had a small sip of each version, and it was more than enough. It was strange that the 75% rum had a much smoother taste than the 69% version. And no, we did not buy any. Rum drinkers at our house will have to make do with Captain Morgan's!

Our final stop on this island tour was for a buffet lunch at a beach bar and restaurant. The less said, the better. It was rather chaotic as all 60 of us arrived at once, and the food was okay, but definitely nothing special. This nicest part was the beach, even though it was covered in sargassum, the seaweed that is plaguing much of the Caribbean due to warming in the oceans.

Some houses on the beach. It was very windy
but this cove is protected by a large island to keep
the waves tamed.

These children were playing in the water
and on the beach, ignoring the seaweed
everywhere.

All in all it was a very interesting tour. The devastation caused by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 caused damage to the nutmeg and sugar cane plantations that the island has never recovered from, although the positive was that the building code was changed because 90% of the buildings on the island had been destroyed. In 2024, when Hurricane Beryl hit Grenada, it only caused minor damage to buildings, although all of the replanting of nutmeg trees was affected. Not even a year later in 2025, Hurricane Melissa struck as well, keeping the country from re-establishing its agricultural industries.

We took the long road back from the north coast and as we approached St. George's, the large number of boats and big marinas were a testament to the success of tourism as the biggest industry on the island.

What would be a better place for the sign
that right in front of the main cruise ship wharf?

We didn't have anything planned for the next two ports of Point-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe and Fort-de-France, Martinique, so I took the time to get the blog up to date.

The next stop is yet another French island, St. Barthelemy, or St. Barts. This will be the last port stop on this cruise and we have a short culinary walking tour there in the morning as we're leaving around 1:00 p.m. tomorrow.

Photography Tour of Curaçao

We had not been in the ABC Islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao for a few years, but we had already seen much of what the tours offer, and knew they would be busy if there were more ships in port.

We only took a walk down the main street in Oranjestad, Aruba and turned back when it looked like we could get a rain shower. It was very busy and we had the longest walk from the port entrance to the ship out of the 4 vessels in town.

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Ticky-tacky tourist shot of Regent Grandeur

We remember this boat entrance to the
hotel from our first trip to Aruba,
probably in 1990

One view of town from the ship

We visited the islands in A-C-B order, so our next stop was in Willemstad, Curaçao. Larry elected to stay on board, but I wanted to get some sketching photos, so I booked the 'Capture the Moment' tour. Our guide, Cris, said they usually called it a Selfie Tour, but as nobody in the group was interested in borrowing a selfie stick, she stuck to the name the cruise line had given the tour.

We began by walking from the ship into the recognizable centre of the town, and across the Emma Bridge, the world famous floating wooden bridge that was the only connection between both sides of town until the big blue Juliana Bridge was built in the 1970s.

Only the emerald green and yellow buildings are
still original dating back into the 1700s.

The Emma Bridge pontoons

The Emma Bridge is opened when ships need to enter into the protected harbour where we were moored. Curaçao was a major trading hub for the Dutch, especially for the slave trade in the 1700s and 1800s, and later on, up until the 1990s was a major refinery for Venezuelan oil. Now the island depends on tourism for almost all of its economy.

We took a short walk in town, passing by the floating market. Here vendors have stalls right on the water's edge with their boats right behind them holding stock. Fish, fruit and vegetables are sold here, as well as souvenirs.

One of the façade painting on the yellow
Penha building. It was originally built for the slave
trade but now deals in duty free fragrances and jewellery

This cute little trio in a small square near
the market

Some of the fruit and vegetable stalls
at the floating market

The market from the other side

We passed through a park on our way to our
bus, and found this. The ultimate in recycling!

We climbed into our mini-bus and were driven across to the north side of the island to Shete Boka National Park. The north side of all the islands is the rougher one, and we got to see that first-hand here. The landscape is very sparse - just lava rock and cactus plants, and the ocean pounds into the shoreline with real violence. I wouldn't want to fall into the water by accident; chances are you wouldn't survive it.

The waves crashed on the rocks and then back into
the next ones coming in, causing some huge sprays
near the viewing area.

This is the very north end of the island. Nothing here
but rocks and cacti.

and geckos and small iguanas

Someone in government has a sense
of humour! We should have signs
like these at home.

During our drive around, Cris gave us some background on the history of the island and taught us all a few words and phrases in Papiemento, the native language. She also told us a story she heard as a young child when she was disobedient, which all led up to a brief stop we made along the way.

The story she heard from her mother told of a time when the trees had legs and could walk around. (Yeah, Mom, sure...) They all got together for a party, but the rule was that they had to be back where they belonged before sunrise. They were having such a good time that the sun was almost up before they noticed it, and they all started running back to their places except one. By the time he noticed the sun it was almost too late. He ran as far as he could and sat down to catch his breath. The sun came up and planted him where he sat:

This is obviously a very old tree, as Cris heard this story about 50 years ago. The 'do as you are told' moral of the story wasn't lost on her at the time, but when she tried it on her own daughter more recently it didn't work at all. 

After driving most of the way back to Willemstad, we made a final stop that I didn't recall reading about in the description - at the Hato Cave. As a rule, I'm not crazy about caves if they are small and dark, so I did a quick Google search on this one and it looked okay.

Here are a few shots from inside. There are 6 caverns all together, but you can only take photos in a couple of them, as there are small fruit bats living inside the cave and light flashes would disturb them. The stalagmites and stalactites form very slowly in the cave, so everything we saw was millenia old, not just centuries.

To give an idea of scale, here's a couple
posing for a photo inside the cavern. There
is a hole in the ceiling where the bats go in and
out at night.

This stalagmite almost looks like the
Virgin Mary. The light is coming from our
guide's flashlight.

That was our final stop on the tour, and the bus drove us right back to the ship. We didn't leave until almost 10:00 p.m. and had a lovely sailout past the town and through the Emma Bridge.

Looking at the Juliana Bridge after we turned around
to leave.

The 'skyline' of Willemstad all lit up

With just as many lights on the Emma Bridge

We didn't have far to go to get to Bonaire yesterday. Again, we had no planned excursion, and although we thought we'd go for a stroll in town, I got busy with the blog and we ended up staying on board. Today is a sea day and tomorrow we'll be in St. George's, Grenada where we have a longer island tour of about 6 hours. It has been quite a while since we've been there, and we'll see how it looks.

Pacific Rim for dinner tonight. I'll have to get some photos for the next food post.