Chocolate and rum - touring like a tourist in Grenada

It's been a hectic week - lots of cappuccinos, island tours and beach cafes. Rough rough.

Art Fabrik - a sensory delight and store I wanted to live in. All hand made in house batiks.

This has been a 'get to know Grenada' through the eyes of a tourist week. We visited quaint, delicious little curio and clothing shops.  I tried to take more photos, breathe in the colours, the rich emeralds and shocking fuschias. My senses were sharp, raw.

We finally made it to the organic chocolate factory. The universe willed it to happen and we easily gathered a group of cruisers, hired a driver and a van, and set off on a chocolate/rum road trip.

Our driver Cosmus is 78. He's been driving on the island forever. He is pretty much the only driver who takes the sharp mountain turns at a reasonable speed. He doesn't have a death wish, and we don't either, so it worked out well. It took us two hours of hills and valleys, clouds and sun patches, close calls around bends to arrive, but we made it to the Belmont Estate in one piece.

We pre-empted the whole tour protocol by visiting, buying and eating the treats from the gift shop before taking the tour, but it was worth the sin. Dark chocolate cashew clusters, melted in our mouths, on our fingers, and down our chins as we were called over to learn the process.

Sadly, like most agricultural industry in the Caribbean, the Belmont Estate first ran on the sweat of slavery. The big tree at the entrance was a gathering point, where slaves were called using the huge bell that still sits on the bottom branches. For punishment, slaves were hung from it's branches.

After this eery and unsettling story, we are led into the huge barn to see how the chocolate is made, as it has been for centuries.

Chocolate starts as beans inside the white fruit of these cocoa pods:

The beans are dried for seven days and then are laid out in the sun, where they are trampled on from time to time, to spread and turn them.

Walking on the beans.

The beans begin to lose the smell of fermentation and feet as they dry, and begin to take on the rich smell of chocolate.

Cocoa cocoa everywhere! Beans drying in the sun.

The Belmont Estate is fully certified organic and all product is processed completely in-house, no beans are sold or exported before they become cocoa powder or chocolate.

Some of the cocoa beans, ready to be sent down the road to the chocolate factory.

When the dried beans are cracked open, the little nibs inside can be eaten raw or roasted. The Grenada Chocolate Company makes a bar with the crunchy roasted nibs - it's absolutely amazing.

Needless to say, we bought and munched a few of these.

The Estate has recently stopped tours from visiting the actual chocolate factory, so we couldn't see the beans being roasted and blanded into the paste that makes the rich dark chocolate that I've fallen head over heels in love with. Maybe it's better. I might have wanted to stay forever.

Instead, we bought more chocolate and visited their restaurant on the hill above the estate. We watched the magnificent sky turn in seconds from sunny and hot to windy and grey and then open the taps from above. I was actually chilly for one of the first times since arriving in Grenada.

From Belmont we headed to the oldest, traditional method rum factory in the Western hemisphere - at River Rums.

The wheel that crushes the sugar cane has been in operation since the 1700's and was imported from Scotland (JW loved that little piece of trivia).

Sugar cane being fed up the wheel where the liquid is removed.

The waste material is then used for the fire to boil the rum.

Workers moving the sugar cane waste into wagons to be brought down below.

We were led through ancient stinking rooms, where vats of a brownish red muddy looking liquid is hand spooned along, boiling like a giant witches brew. Spiders and cockroach carcasses lie drunk and dead around the vats. I wondered how it was possible that I loved the end product of this filthy process!

From here, the distillation and purification process began.

The end product, a clear white elixir, was offered to us in tiny quarter ounce cups. I still remember the simultaneous burn internally and shiver on my extremities. We were asked if we'd like to buy a bottle but we all declined. I don't think any of us could have survived a whole shot of that!

We ended the tour with an impromptu visit to a roadside fruit and veggie seller. The place called to us as we drove past, and Cosmus happily stopped for us to snap a few photos and buy some fresh fragrant fruit.

Cosmus and Andrea

We arrived back at the marina exhausted and full of chocolate and bananas. Our eyes dozed from sensory overload. Our noses sensing the familiar water life smells, leaving all the tropical red earth and the pungency of it's fruits behind.

We closed our tourist eyes and rum-lined nerves calmed. We slept well, rocked by the waves and wind of spring time in Grenada.

Two days of hashing

Let me take you on a journey - one written with a single hand (as the other one is injured as a direct result of the past two days of fun and struggle). This will therefore be a mostly photographic journey.

Friday was our virgin hash. The implications of this, known only to those in the hashing 'know', and will be revealed later in the post.

It started out like this:

Pretty sweet starting spot!  A motley crew of over 5o people headed up the side of this waterfall, and I noticed a proud Canadian flag hanging up on the left - wondered how anyone got to a position to hang it, but then was distracted by the mud and rocks and trees and hill in my way and had to focus on that.

We passed many hillside farms, and I noticed this lovely sign at the unmarked entrance to one farm:

Some of the farms were more friendly, and the trees proudly displayed their fruits. We saw avocados, passionfruit, breadfruit, mangoes, bananas and cocoa.

This is what our beloved chocolate looks like on a tree, many processes before becoming the bars we know and love!

This was a rum shop crawl though, and no sooner had we soaked in the fresh air of the hills, fell into some mud near the end that was knee deep and smelled quite organic, did we emerge to the road and the first bass pumping local rum shop!

Here I am, feet the thick grey shade of fresh mud, enjoying the first beer.

We carried on along the road and came across some cuties and cute houses, with locals either cheering us on or wondering what these weirdos were doing...

 At the end of the trail, we came back around to the lovely waterfall where some swam and oters had to try to remove a few layers of stinking mud from their shoes and legs...

Then finally, we came back to Mark's Rum Shop and the check in point for the ON AFTER. Food and some more beer!

But it was not over. The virgins were called to the circle and our certificates were presented, along with at least a case of beer as a welcoming shower. I was secretly not impressed, knowing the sticky hoppy ride home to follow!

Trying to look happy with our new certificates while beer dripped down our backs...

Loved the sign at Mark's Rum Shop - the venue for the after party.

Day 2 - the REAL Hash...

Well it turns out day one was a teaser, a namby pamby rum crawl, while day two turned out to be a hike - first all the way down a steep muddy, rainforest mountain, and then right back up it! Shiloh and the peaceful lapping of the ocean were far far away...

I have exactly zero photos of the trek as both hands were required - to hold vines and shield yourself from tree branches, and grasp at the clayish mud as you slid backwards down the hill into fellow hashers. Groaning, panting and many "I give up"'s were heard, but we all made it.

JW on the road for the last leg of the hike - paved and straight, it was heaven in concrete form.

The scene as we arrived back at the beautiful venue for the after party - at the northern tip of Grenada in the hills.

Amazing tree at the top.

Ok, it was all worth it for this view!

On the way back, we broke up the hour plus drive on narrow winding hilly roads, with a crazed driver, by visiting the Victoria food festival that happens in this sleepy little town once a  month.

One of the food vendors - notice the curried bull-pissle and read bull penis. I asked. I didn't try it.

The street scene at Victoria - what it doesn't depict, is the ear and heart crushing bass from the many speakers..

Another interesting menu from a local vendor.

 We tried a few fish cakes and walked the strip, but by then my hand was throbbing and my third finger (luckily on the right hand) was completely, and still is, immobile. I got a glass full of ice and was ready to head back -bus, dinghy, bed.

And so it came to be that I survived my first hash weekend. And here are my battle scars:

Roti at Nimrod's Rum Shop

As promised - the roti post. I've been anxious to try an authentic Grenadian roti since we arrived here and it took us far too long. But thanks to the cruiser's net in the mornings, we found out that a local rum shop, (famous for capturing many cruisers on their way to town, who stop here innocently waiting for the bus, only to be lured in by the first rum and never reaching town), has roti specials on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And by name alone, I was enchanted. A guy named Nimrod's got to make a good roti.

We tied up our dinghy and ventured up the road and there was Nimrod's with a welcome sign. Despite an unexpected and not completely friendly blond who greeted us, we were led around to the kitchen and ordered two rotis - one beef, one chicken.

Margaret served us and she was a doll. Her house was next door and though she was elderly and has lived in Canada and the UK, she was born only a few doors away and has returned to the peacefulness of Grenada.

And then the roti came. And though I am biased as I have LOVED and been loyal to Bacchus roti shop back in Toronto for over 20 years, I had to admit, this was excellent. JW agreed - luckily they gave me my hot sauce on the side!

I'm on a mission now - an easy one for me - to find the best roti in the Caribbean. Stay tuned...