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.

Pictures are worth a thousand words

Today, due to continued impairment in the finger department, I thought I'd share a photo collage of Grenada - the island that has welcomed us as long term visitors:

Thought I'd start with a scene from any tourism brochure, luring all the northerners from their frosty cocoons. You want white beaches and palm trees in the sun? You got it!

Here is a house, or should I say epic mansion in Mt. Hartman bay where we're anchored today. This is not what I'd picture had someone described a 'green' house built into a hillside with a grass roof!

Here's an entirely different kind of house, we walked by it on the hash, far up in the hills, away from roads and miles from anything but vegetation as neighbors. We met a roots man on the porch, he had the look - dreadlocks and the smell of a natural weed ... but he was chatting on a cell phone!

Vegetation is everywhere in Grenada. One feels that if you dropped a seed and came back in a week, there would be a plant growing. The day we walked through St. George the capital, we walked up some steep concrete steps toward the old fort, and either side of us, trees grew up, offering fruits, blocking the view of the concrete homes beyond. This is a breadfruit tree. You cut these open and boil them, then pretty much treat like potatoes. I've yet to have some! I hear they make a great addition to a breakfast fry up.

St. Georges fort sticks out, high above the city like a decaying monument to a colonial past. We saw people on guided tours, but we declined. I've never liked being led around like cattle through damp old buildings with their dead energy. It does have an interesting past though, and has been nicely summarised here.

Much more my thing, down below, the vibrancy of the city, with it's people, sights and smells.

A few cafes on the Carenage sea front road. Notice the Schnitzel Haus!

A local vendor sells lambi (conch) and tortoise shells

I love Grenada's road signs. I assume lick means wear in this instance!

This monster is a Princess Cruise ship - it was the second last one for the season to grace Grenada's shores. It holds about 3000 passengers and 1200 staff. I guess the spice sellers and vendors of cheap Chinese 'Caribbean' trinkets will have a lean few months ahead...

Finally, a scene closer to 'home' for us. A boat yard (where many people 'haul out' their boats for the upcoming hurricane season). If you look closely, a cruiser lies in her hammock on one of the boats, probably deciding whether to pack it in, as the impending black clouds were moving fast. (We did get safely to De Big Fish for a beer and protection before the rain hit!)