Carriacou–a slice of paradise

You’ve all seen them. The postcard pictures from the Caribbean – white sand, palm trees, turquoise ocean. I’ll tell you a secret, they’re all from here.

Carriacou is beyond awesome. It does help that our lovely friends are visiting – really nice to have their company! The things we asked them to bring from home were a toy to E (she lost Barbafin in Charlotteville…crisis), extra swimwear for E (how did we think one would be enough??), potato shredder and baby porridge. So in hindsight, our packing was not too bad. And the fact that they brought Kvikklunsj and Dagbladet, oh joy…<3

We live in a house at the beach – here is our view:

First thing about Hillsbourough, Carriacou, especially appreciated by B, is this:

It’s FLAT! No hills to climb going to and from home. That’s a first! And good, because it is HOT HOT HOT here. And we have no AC, so if there is trouble in paradise, it comes in the way of trouble sleeping...

…and now let’s get to those postcard pics:

Say no more!

So we’ve been to the beach. A lot. But we have also attended to much important things – like buying all the local (alcoholic) drinks and trying them, for example. Here is a taste:

About “Bambu”I do not think we really want to know what Horny Goat Weed is. I will tell you that this one brought us back to Chenos car – and his Cherry air freshener.

Another thing we have done is eat out in the evenings. One evening we spontaneously visited a “luxury” restaurant and had lobster (1/2 lobster = approx SEK 180) in fantastic surroundings.

From there – a self portrait:

See you at the beach!

Catching up on Grenada

Even though we left Grenada main island there has been little opportunity to blog about it, so we have some catching up to do! The two weeks in Grenada has been all about sightseeing. Since we stayed at an apartment next to that horrible powerplant, and it was not within walking distance to the beach, we decided to rent a car to get around and spend as little time as possible in the apartment. We have expected that at least some time during our six months we would be less lucky with where we stayed, and this was it. Just to emphasize:

Our house is the white one on the right, just next to the steep road…

No Caribs on the verandah here, no, rather sitting in the air-conditioned bedroom playing Yatzy kind of evenings. But, we still enjoyed our stay and we can proudly say that we have done almost everything a tourist is “supposed to” in Grenada.

Driving around Grenada, we were stunned by how proud they are of their country, and how well they take care of common spaces and their houses. Everything is painted in the grenadian colours.

Also, they are crazy about Kirani James – poor guy has some pressure on him for the olympics…

Also, you can tell that it is in deed a small country. On television, each evening after the news, they show the obituaries…Also posted on a huge screen outside the funeral home.

Some of our trips included the Pearl airport – a closed airport with some wrecks. It made someone’s day! (Thorir, there is that smile again…)

Grenada was hugely effected by the hurricane Ivan in 2004, leaving some buildings damaged still. Like this church, with no roof:

Though, all the sightseeing can take its toll and sometimes keeping the kids happy meant this:

One day we were tired and wanted to escape the heat, went downtown to rent a movie – this is where you do that:

And put the whole family in the air conditioned bed room behing the mosquito net, of course (this is like 13.00 or so):

Make no mistake! Wow did go to the beach. A lot. We were stunned by the beauty!

Long one this time – we will try to be more active now that we have internet again. Now – more important things to attend to – beer drinking at the beach with our Norwegian friends who have come to visit us!

Civilization?

We have landed in Carriacou. Gone is the the noise of the power plant, exchanged for the breaking of waves (yes, the house is literally ON the beach, bliss!). Though, we have spotted free range chickens in the garden – so we expect to be back to rooster madness at 4 am. Still the chillin’ attitude, we asked at a local shack if she served dinner, she said “well, I’ll just have to make some!”

Since B is an aircraft enthusiast (read nerd) – we decided skip the convenient ferry to Carriacou and rather travel by air, a 20 minute flight, in an 8 seat Islander. At check-in we were told that we had to much luggage to fit the airplane, and one of our bags might arrive later or tomorrow. After a brief discussion we decided we could spare the stroller for a day or two. Also, we had to pay 10 kilos of overweight. This is due to a ton of baby food since the owner of the smallest restless feet decided to start eating solid foods – and lots of it. Having a hunch we would be moving out of civilization again, we brought enough to start a mini mart because everything but the fanciest baby food here contains sugar and lots of it. But happily all the luggage made it here anyway.

Since we are limin’ with a Carib in hand listening to the waves and sleeping children – we are going to keep this as a short update to let you know that we arrived and are back online – here are a few pictures from the journey:

Jupp it’s an airline alright.

Leaving St Georges behind.

We’re at the back of the plane!

Beautiful south cost of Grenada and all the beaches we’ve visited.

Some thought the aircraft was slightly noisy...

While others were just as happy as could be…

And others won’t let anything get in the way of a good meal…  (By the way. It’s the luggage that’s behind C hidden behind a curtain!)

And before we knew it, we landed in Carriacou. Looking forward to getting to know the island.

 

C n B logging out.

Serious multitasking skills

So, still no internet. To link to the recent blog on civilization, we are currently driving back and forth the Kirani James boulevard (read up on your Grenadian sport history)  where there is a free wi-fi-spot. Not stopping, because F is falling asleep. B is telling E a story while driving. Good thing there is a roundabout in each end of the road.

 

Anyway, we will not be online until the 23rd – until then – I’ll share a Grenadian funny sign.:

Welcome to civilization

Oh Grenada! It’s the smallest independent country in the western hemisphere (pop 90 000), but oh did this move throw us back into civilization! We’re in St George’s (pop 30 500), the capital, a truly beautiful town of that could have been built by lego:

Civilization does not help on the steep hills though – this is where we live:

Good thing we’ve been walking up and down hills before! But the heat….oh goodness. The air condition (thank God!) is set on 27 degrees which we think is cool– say no more.

The view from our apartment includes the national stadium, giving us free entertainment since they are currently in season for national sports championships.

Why all the cables blocking the view? Well. because of our other neighbor:

It’s a power plant, driven by diesel or coal, generating power for the whole island. It makes you feel like you are on a steamboat 24-7. Other than that, civilization has its advantages after two months out of it. We’ve done some essentials:

 

….but not forgetting to the other Caribbean essentials:

Civilization can drain the smallest restless feet…..

…and make others somewhat confused. This tunnel – giving passage to cars from the seaside to the other side of St George’s – was used by us, only it is a one way tunnel – and NOT the direction we drove it…

And of course a self portrait:

So – to summarize – we are enjoying Grenada and civilization, and this (unexpected) blog post is sponsored by the free wifi spot in St Louis Marina.

<3

Up up and away

So it's time for our first move. We're sad to leave all the wonderful people we've gotten to know - but the feet are indeed restless now, and excited to explore St George, Grenada, for 2 weeks, and then Carriacou, Grenada for three.

Today - saying our goodbyes - it took a whole day. Also, we had to go to Scarborough yesterday since the ATM is still not working - we needed to repay our debts. B managed to borrow a car for free, of course with some favours involved again; buy fake flowers for one person, and toilet paper and garbage bags for another.

The day started with Bjarni getting up at 06 to visit Cheno to learn his recipe for Saltfish and Coconut bake. (Last week we were invited to Oswald the vegetable kings house to see how his wife Hazel makes hers.)
Then we had a visitor drop by, old Taylor, who came by to drop off some newly baked bread and excuse himself for not showing up for pizza. He invited us to come see his house "up da road by the church" within 3 hours. Fisherman Old Taylor is the father of 6 boys who seem to run all the business in Castara (rental cars, apartments, restaurants, boat trips, fishing). He is a 67 years old, fitter than you, for sure, keeps fishing and building his house and also obviously bakes bread. We continued with a tour of the village, and two of the others that did not show up for pizza excused themselves by saying it was too much rain, so that seems to be the socially accepted excuse. After a tour of the village, and a very heavy lunch, accompanied with another recipe and a few email addresses, we walked up to Taylor's house and he invited us in for soup. So delicious! And so heavy. No need to eat for a couple of days now!

We leave Tobago woth lots of great experiences - next stop Grenada. You will probably not hear from us within the next couple of weeks, no internet at the next place.

Cash is king

So, we are leaving for Grenada next Tuesday, meaning 3 days left in Tobago. We are ready to move on - and the last days have been slow... 3 days of consecutive rain, and I mean monsoon rain - pouring so hard on the corrugated roof it makes it hard to have a conversation. But on the upside - it has been cooler - by carribean measures...still around 27 degrees.

Anyway, the ATM in the village is out of order. Here, credit cards are just a piece of plastic, so we have had to be creative. We now owe one of the neighbours 20 SEK, Cheno (the guy with the car and saltfish) 200, and a restaurant 34. This was to get us enough cash to buy supplies for our farewell party, where we would bake pizza in the clay oven in the garden. We invited 7 people, to come last night. They all accepted gladly, so our last cash went to buy beer, rum and coke (of course) and ingredients for pizza for 9 people.

1 person came!

We had a great time though, delicious pizza and the rum was almost finished.

I have made a hilarious attempt to email the bank that the ATM is out of order(which I will not tell any of the locals, they would die from laughter)- but we have no hope whatsoever that it will be fixed in the next few days.

And we will cetainly not starve our last 3 days in Castara - having 7 pizzas in the freezer and A LOT of beer.
Though we are out of mosquito spray, so I might have to send out B to give some favours.