11 February 2009 - Wednesday

A Few Things Grenada...

This past weekend, Grenada celebrated their 35th Independence Day (7 Feb). In the weeks leading up to this holiday, we begin to see the colors of their flag on display proudly. Everywhere you look, you'll see bunting, banners, and flags... in red, gold, and green. It's also very popular to wear the colors on the week leading up to the holiday. It's quite an impressive sight to see all the school children walking down the street wearing their "colors"! Grenadians are extremely proud of their heritage, and show it well!

Also around this time every year (end of January), Grenada holds their sailing festival. The most colorful event of this festival is the Work Boat Regatta. This is where you'll see lots of locals in their hand-made boats racing to the finish along Grand Anse Beach. Although the first 2 days ended up with quite a bit of rain, the sun finally came out on day 3 and I made it out to capture the excitement with my camera. These are always fun to watch, as someone usually needs a rescue from tipping their boat as they sail around the markers.

And sadly, the first of our friends are headed back to the US. It's been such a good visit with Bob & Doris! Their time here went so quickly! We topped off their stay with a lovely dinner out at The Beach House restaurant. We look forward to seeing them again next year!

5 February 2009 - Thursday

Friends...

I just wanted to post a photo of our gang at my birthday dinner Tuesday night. Here we are... Daphne, Doris, me, Scott, "Beach Bocci" Bob, his wife Nancy, Doris's husband Bob, and Daphne's husband John. We went to BB's Crab Back Restaurant, which is on the Carenage in St. George's, Grenada (right on the water's edge).

Then, last night we went to a beach BBQ and had somewhat of a reunion with some of the old Windjammer crew. (A few live here in Grenada.) We've known our bartender pal (Spice) since about 2002. (He's the one in the white shirt.) Although he hasn't worked for Windjammer for about 3 or 4 years, we always seemed to run into him in our travels... but haven't seen him for about 5 months. There were a bunch of other former Windjammer passengers at the BBQ, but we didn't know most of them.

30 January 2009 - Friday

Limin'

OK... I know it's been awhile since I've updated this site. (Sorry about that!) But for a few weeks there really wasn't much to report. Then in the middle of January our Chicago friends finally arrived! And more trickled in during the next few weeks.

So there's now a group of 3 couples that we've been spending afternoons with at Morne Rouge Beach. These are all people we met from the Windjammer Barefoot Cruise trips. This group is from Chicago, Boston, and England (and of course, our friends Mike & Jackie who live here). I guess you could say we're "pretending" to be on vacation! This is the most time we've spent on the beach since we arrived in Grenada! Now there's another group of about 20 people that will be arriving this weekend. (Again, former Windjammer passengers vacationing here.) We don't know all of them, but we plan to meet up with the group for a beach BBQ next week.

We had a chance to go out on our friend, Tony's sailboat "Sequin". He keeps it at the Grenada Yacht Club, so we went for a little trip just out from the Carenage. Unfortunately, his crew wasn't very experienced (that would be us!), which made it a bit difficult to manage the boat. So we headed back to his spot on the dock and enjoyed the view from the water along the way. Although it was a short trip, it made us wish we knew a bit more about sailing!

We're now in the dry season here, but you'd never know it! We still get rain showers daily, but usually they fade away by afternoon. So the past few weeks have been wonderful for hanging out on the beach! We had rain showers off & on all day yesterday, and it was mostly overcast... with a few patches of bright sunshine coming through. At one point late in the afternoon, it was raining and there was the brightest rainbow I've ever seen in the valley! We could see the whole rainbow from end to end... I was even looking for the pot o'gold! It happened so fast I never had a chance to get my wide angle lens on the camera to get a photo. Today we were pretty socked in with rain all day. I didn't even venture outside.

Grenada's Sailing Festival was to start today, but I doubt if there was much activity down on the beach with that. Hopefully, the weather will clear up for tomorrow's activities. By the end of the week, the whole island will be gearing up for their 35th Independence Day celebrations on Saturday, Feb. 7th. They've been hanging red, green, and gold banners up all over the place... and everyone wears their "colors" to show their patriotism. It's actually a beautiful sight!

I forgot to mention... I photographed my first wedding earlier this month. The British couple was referred to me by a friend, and they were married on the beach. They were not very interested in doing a lot of posed shots on the beach, but we were able to get a few with the water & sand in the background. We also took them up to Quarantine Point (where we went for New Year's Eve)... for a scenic shot with the city in the background.

Well, that's all I have for now... By the way, if you're wondering what "limin" is... it means chillin', or hanging out. (Photo above is Grenada Hospital.. from Tony's sailboat.)

31 December 2008 - Wednesday

Old Year's Night

We celebrated the ringing in of the new year with our own little private view of the local fireworks displays... although it turned out that we weren't the only ones with the same idea! We drove out to an area called Quarantine Point... an area with a few concrete picnic tables and some beautiful views of St. George and Grand Anse Beach to the north, and a number of beaches to the south. There were plenty of other people with the same idea, so for the next hour or so, people were arriving for the upcoming show. There are no lights in this area, so while we waited, we watched quite a few falling stars... and the stars were bright! At midnight (Atlantic time) we were able to see 5 separate fireworks displays. And afterward, we drove back home in time to catch the Times Square New Year's celebration on tv!

We'll have the traditional PA German pork and sauerkraut for New Year's Day - 2009! Enjoy the video clip below!

Merry Christmas!

Our wish for you is good health, happiness, and a prosperous New Year!

19 December 2008 - Friday

Christmas Lights in Grenada!

As we were coming home last night, we came upon this fantastic display of lights! I don't know exactly what this building is (there are about 5 in this complex), but apparently they've been setting up this display for the past 10 years. People can walk through this whole thing... it's amazing! Keep in mind... we calculated that electricity costs down here are about 3.5 times more than what we were paying in the US!

16 December 2008 - Tuesday

Christmas is coming!

We've been pretty busy over the past few weeks. Since Thanksgiving was so much fun we've had a few more friends over for lunch dates! Jimmy is an older Scottish fellow who lives nearby... he brought me some mint plants for my garden. Tony & Gisela retired here from Houston (although he's a Brit & she's German)... they've been extremely helpful to us over the past few years. And Tommy (another Brit) opened his home to Scott when he came down to buy us a vehicle. Mike & Jackie brought us a few more herb plants from their garden as well. They're the British couple that managed our property for us, and were our lifeline to Grenada! He's a fantastic gardener and always has goodies to share from the garden!

I finally got a hammock for the veranda! I'd been waiting about a month for the store to get them in. Apparently they were arriving here by sailboat & the rainy weather held them up. It's a wonderful place to "hang out" now!

We were on the go every day last weekend! On Friday night we attended a special dinner & cabaret show put on by the Grenada Hashers, then Saturday was their Christmas Hash... we were told to wear something red so I got out our Santa hats. Although this was one of the shortest hashes we've done, it was almost all hiking through a dry river bed... very rocky, with lots of trees & shrubs! Most of the time we had to duck under the fallen trees. (In the photo of Scott, you can see a pile of shredded paper near his feet... that is how they mark the trail we are to follow.) Afterward, we stopped at a roadside bar on the way back. Scott & I have stopped here (Runaway Bar) before so we invited the others to join us!

On Sunday we were supposed to attend a 5:00 rum punch party... invitation was for everyone who participated in the Thursday Quiz nights. We had all intentions of going, but got a call in the morning with an invite to a small party on a sailboat! Tony knows this guy who is captain of a sailboat that's available for charter. He said he was looking for some photos of the boat, so I offered to do it for him. It's a beautiful sailboat! We didn't sail out anywhere... just hung out because he had some repairs that need to be done on it. (Nothing you could see in the photos.) So we had an enjoyable afternoon (& evening)... and never made it to the rum punch party!

I've been working on making curtains for what we still call the "pink" room... our guest bedroom. I know... we've painted over the pink, but that's what it'll be called forever! I chose to make balloon shades because we could pull them up above the open window & don't have to worry about them getting dirty from the screens. I'll show more photos of that room later.


That's all for now! I'll try to make another report in a day or two!


Oh... here's a shot of the pink room before we painted it! ......