Happy New Year to everyone! We spent our last day of 2010 in Prickly Bay and had a great night drinking rum cocktails, eating pizza and listening to a really good steel band. The players have such amazing rhythm and really throw themselves into their music - they were fantastic. Fireworks over the bay rounded off a great night.
Earlier in the day we'd had a half-day tour of Grenada visiting places we hadn't seen before, including a spectacular drive from Gouyave (the main west-coast town) up into the mountains. We drove right across the middle of Grenada, through verdant agricultural lands - former plantation lands with so many different trees growing: Nutmeg, Bread Fruit, Cashew, Avocado, Mango .... a real hotch-potch. The plantation is long gone now and the older generation have small parcels of this fertile land. According to our guide, the younger generation are not prepared to put in the hard work to maintain the land.
Yesterday we motored around to our favourite little marina - it was too windy to sail and the direction we needed to head was straight into the wind anyway. As last time, Paul brought us in beautifully and familiar faces were there to welcome us back - it really is very friendly here, and beautiful to boot. I can quite see why some of the people who moor their boats here never leave. We've been invited aboard a catamaran for cocktails tonight - a young couple who live not farm from Paul's parents by coincidence.
The weather this last two weeks has been very blustery because of low pressures in the north and this has led to some "big seas", probably measuring up to 15 feet peak to trough. But with the right amount of canvas out, some great sailing is to be had. That said we're still hoping it will calm down a bit before our first visitors arrive - wouldn't want them to be scared off on their first day out!
So on that note I'll sign off and go and start thinking about what preparations we need to make to welcome them aboard .... or maybe I'll just laze on deck with a good book and rum cocktail!