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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nAs we got off the ship and entered the terminal, we were faced with two options (because there isn’t a public beach within walking distance of the terminal); either take a land taxi or a water taxi to Great Anses Beach. The price is pretty much the same; we opted for the water taxi, which we’ve taken before, which costs $5 per person each way. That’ll be $20 then. I don’t begrudge them that at all; a fiver for a trip across the bay in a little boat seems almost reasonable. It’s when you get to the other end that the costs start mounting up\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Great Anses Beach is a long stretch of sand, most of which is covered in sun loungers and parasols, and a handful of bars. As soon we’d climbed off the boat onto the little wooden jetty, we were pounced upon by folks trying to hire us loungers. Choosing not to have a lounger is easier said than done; there’s isn’t a lot of space left to just sit down on the sand, and there’s the issue of shade. But $25 for two loungers and a parasol just seemed like taking the Michael\u2026 and wasn’t an option for us because, having just spent $20 on the boat ride, it only left me with $14 in my pocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we walked along the beach, the prices seemed to get a little cheaper, but they were still more money than we had on us. Eventually, having been asked for the umpteenth time if we’d like a couple of sunloungers, I just asked the bloke what his best price was\u2026 and had he got anything for $14? The good news is; he took pity on us, and offered us a couple of loungers, complete with parasol, and happily took the $14. He explained that there were bathroom facilities available in the bar behind the beach\u2026 turns out they charged the princely sum of one dollar a time to use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m divided on this. Most of me thinks it’s all just a huge great scam, exploiting the tourists as they sail in on the water taxis, who will just pay the price because they’re there now, and they’re a captive audience. Another small part of me thinks that’s just the way it is; a market economy based upon supply and demand. In the hurricane season, the numbers of visitors must drop considerably, so it’s reasonable to expect the locals to try and capitalise on the cruise ships while they can. Today, the Marco Polo was berthed alongside the monstrosity that is the P&O ship Azora, which towered over us like a hideous block of flats. That’s a few thousand passengers all ready and willing to pay whatever it takes to have a memorable day on a Caribbean beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We stayed there for several hours, swimming and lounging on our cut-price loungers. Later, when we were about ready to leave, we took a stroll along the beach, to where the loungers finished and the expensive shoreside hotels began; where the beach was more or less deserted. The hotels don’t own the beach; they have signs signifyinng that they are private property, but that doesn’t include the beach alongside them. In fact, when we’d walked as far as we could, and the beach ran out, we found a public footpath that led up to the main road, slightly overgrown and probably not used very much; a footpath that the lounger-touts would almost certainly not want the cruise-ship passengers to know about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that’s been our day. Despite the cost, we’ve enjoyed dipping in the waters of the Caribbean, and not being on tour, counting passengers and watching the island pass by through the window of an excursion coach. We’ve both caught the sun, but hopefully we’ve been sensible enough that we’ll be able to repeat the exercise in Barbados tomorrow (after we’ve obtained a few more dollars\u2026).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, we arrived in St. Georges, on the ‘Spice Isle’ of Grenada. It is a beautiful island, famed for its cocoa, bananas, nutmeg and mace. First sighted in 1498 by Christopher Columbus, and named after the Granada in Andalucia, it bounced between the French and British until it was granted independence in 1974. Having done tours in Grenada before, we’ve...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2201,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2197\/revisions\/2201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/2019-03-05_grenada_3.jpg\")
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