St. Georges, Grenada
Today, we arrived in Grenada, The ‘Spice Isle’ (on account of there being lots of spices here), and we were on tour.
Last night, we were sat in the cabin wondering whether or not we would be given escorting assignments and how nice it would be to do our own thing. So, when the dispatch sheets slipped under the door, Tracey picked them up, and I closed my eyes, in a clairvoyant-style gesture, saying ‘No… don’t tell me… I know this… it’s… it’s… ‘Sunnyside Gardens’… and Tracey said ‘Yup’… yesssss!…. Mystic Peter strikes again!
The truth is; we’d told Susan in Shorex that we’d be happy to do any, knowing full well that we’d be unlikely to get any of the more exciting tours. The reason for this is because we prefer to escort the same tours, although not necessarily on the same coach, which means we get given those tours where there are enough passengers to fill more than one coach.
Garden excursions are not at the top of our preference list, but we’re happy to do them when we are given them. I just don’t have particularly high expectations of them. This one, however, turned out to be quite entertaining…
Having had lunch on the ship, and congregated on the quayside at the appointed time, we were taken in small minibuses from St Georges town centre, up the hill to Sunnyside Garden, which is privately owned, where we were introduced to our garden guide, who turned out to be the son of the lady who established the garden way back in the 60s. And he was the entertaining bit.
For a start, we weren’t sure if he was drunk, such was his quirky, slightly swaying manner. But it soon became apparent that not only was he not drunk, but he really knew his stuff, with lots of entertaining stories of where all the plants had come from, what their particular characteristics were, and where they fitted into his life growing up in a Caribbean garden as the wayward (his word) son of the garden’s founder.
They certainly knew the first rule of how to send punters away happy… finish the tour with rum punch on the patio. Despite my general ambivalence towards garden excursions, I have to say that it really was a beautiful garden, with some outstanding views across the island.
Back at the Marco Polo, we dumped our escort rucksacks in the cabin and then went off for a wander.
We walked through Grenada’s famous tunnel to the other harbour, took lots of photographs and finished up enjoying a drink on the verandah of a German bar we remembered from a previous visit. Sitting looking over the bay as the sun went down was a lovely, relaxing end to what had been an interesting day.
