Carry On Carriacou

The Swiss Family Robinson … My father wanted me to read it, so I pretended I had. Swallows and Amazons … I tried to make my children read it but they didn’t even pretend to. Robinson Crusoe … scary. Lord of the Flies … even more so. And Oliver Reed with … ooh, what was that woman called? Damn sexy anyway. Yes, Desert Islands ‘R’ Us.
But where do you find a desert island? I had a plan that included a whole load of ever-diminishing islands, which, if all went well, would lead eventually to a Crusoe experience.
First stop, Barbados. If you ever thought about flying anywhere with Virgin, get on the internet and book now. It’s unlike any other flying experience you will ever have. From the moment you sit down, beautiful blondes ply you with alcohol, food, tea, ice-creams and anything else you need (within reason) to occupy you in the few free moments you have between watching uninterrupted Hollywood blockbusters on the dinky little screen in the back of the seat in front. That’d soon cure Dennis Bergkamp of his fear of flying.
In the immigration queue at Barbados, we met a lady who was going to stay with her thirty-year younger Barbadian lover. “Do you think he will like my dress?” she asked. Not knowing his tastes, we said we thought he would. Behind us was a Londoner called Rob, returning to his Grenadian homeland with a device for sterilising the beer silos in the Carib brewery. He’d been back the month before and picked up a rôle in the first feature film ever to be made in Grenada, “The Duppy Project”, only to blot his copybook by getting off with the leading lady. No, he said, he wouldn’t be going to the premiere.
We spent two days in Grenada, and besides checking out the capital St. George’s, were led to a secret hot spring, buried deep, deep in the rainforest. We paddled, plucked bananas from the trees and gathered nutmeg kernels from around our feet. Grenada is the Spice Island, after all.
Our destination (reached with the aid of a tiny yellow eight-seater plane) was Carriacou, an island with a population of just under six thousand, just thirteen miles long and one of the few spots in the Caribbean not to have been spoilt in any way. There are no “resorts”, no cruise ships call here and we were the only tourists. Yes, in theory it was Hurricane Season, but the last hurricane here was fifteen years ago and the only manifestations were the occasional short shower of warm rain to dance around in, plus a slight surfeit of mosquitos.
The advantages of being the only tourists soon became clear. Just a few steps from our house was a beach which effectively was private, since there was never another person there. A trek over the hills led to Anse La Roche beach, accessible only by hiking or by boat. No one was there either. Down the coast was the aptly-named Paradise Beach, miles of glorious sand with nary a person to be seen, yet … yes, it wasn’t a mirage, a sweet wooden beach bar called Hardwood. Here resided Joy and Joseph, who was later to turn the Crusoe dream into reality. And the final perk: For eating out, all you had to do was choose a restaurant, ring it up, say what you’d like to eat and they would open specially for you. We became used to walking into rooms in which just one table had been laid. Lobster a-go-go, by the way.
But first, more islands. The Osprey took us to Petite Martinique (not to be confused with Martinique or Mustique), where we bought a divine take-away Roti before hopping a water taxi over to Petit St. Vincent, a privately-owned millionaire’s hideaway island which kindly tolerates riff-raff like us lolling on its beaches and snorkelling in its waters. But here, if you have the money, you can hire a cottage, so it isn’t a desert island either.
The dream was finally attained one idyllic day, when Joseph ferried us over in his self-constructed boat to Sandy Island, a speck of silver sand with its own coral reef, one and a half palm trees and a couple of manchineels. Normally there might have been a yacht or two anchored nearby, but today they were all off sailing somewhere. It was us, the pelicans and shoals of millions and millions of brightly-coloured translucent tropical fish. While we lay in the shallows, they flopped around on our chests. We’d packed a Carib and a mango and kept saying, “God, life will never, ever be better than this.”
The people of Carriacou are wonderfully kind and hospitable. Many of them live in conditions of cheerful poverty and would love to welcome visitors who will take the island as it is and not seek to impose an alien culture on it. This adventure didn’t cost much more than a package tour, but it was truly a life-altering experience.

From The Hampshire Chronicle

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Christmas in Paradise

It was an offer we couldn’t refuse. Some friends who live in Grenada wanted to visit their children in the UK for Christmas and offered us a house swap. Well, would you have turned it down?

Fast forward a moment. We’d been in Grenada for a week. Our daughter and her friend were meant to be flying in a few days later but got stuck at Gatwick in the snow for three days. Now we were picking them up from the airport and had some lovely things in store for them: the warm, beautiful weather, then, on the way home, the incredible Christmas lights at the roundabout near Grand Anse, and then a meal amid the beautiful twinkling fairy lights at Mangrove Hideaway. They’d love it! Except that, as they exited the terminal, the rain was torrential, and as a result, all the lights had been switched off. For a moment, they must have thought they’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

But only for a moment, because our Christmas in Grenada was incredible. The internet was telling us how the UK was shivering in the cold snap, while we were fulfilling the ultimate holiday dream, spending Christmas Day on a virtually deserted Grand Anse Beach with champagne and crisps, before returning to the house for an open air turkey dinner cooked by the girls. The evening before had been a riot of fun, partying like crazy at Prickly Bay Marina, with what we agreed was the best pizza in the world and a fantastic band led by Barracuda Man, plus the best and cheapest rum punches we found anywhere.

We’d been to Grenada once before, but only for 24 hours on our way to Carriacou in 2003, so hadn’t seen anything of the island. That’s where Vaughn came in. We’d been offered a tour by Henry’s Safari Tours and jumped at the chance. We’ve travelled widely in the world, but this was the best tour we’d ever experienced anywhere. The girls jumped into the Concord Falls, while I was slightly more interested in the Rivers rum distillery, although the tiny sip I took of the strong stuff nearly blew my head off. Lunch was a delicious Grenadian feast at Helena’s Ocean View Restaurant in Sauteurs, shortly after the fascinating nutmeg factory and shortly before the bizarre but charming Glebe Street Museum, full of things like a portrait of an owl, helpfully labelled “Portrait Of An Owl”. By the end of the day, we felt we’d learnt a massive amount about Grenada from the incredibly articulate and knowledgeable Vaughn, who later revealed that his house had recently burnt down, not long after being reconstructed after Hurricane Ivan.

On that day, Vaughn was driving, but we had been lent a car and took a while to get used to driving on Grenada’s roads. I soon descended into road rage at what appeared to be impatient drivers hooting at me so they could overtake, but soon it became clear that they were merely politely alerting us to their presence. Nevertheless, descending the hill from the Grand Etang forest towards St George’s in heavy rain but with the sun directly in my eyes, was the scariest driving experience of my life, as I could see literally nothing but was aware of a deep gutter on my left and a sheer drop on my right. It did make for a good rainbow though.

Culinarily speaking, our greatest triumph was the cooking of seven (yes, seven) lobsters, which we collected direct from the boat in Lower Woburn. As we feasted on the delicious meat, I reflected that the cheapest lobster I’d seen on any menu was 75 EC dollars, while we’d paid just 100 EC for all those lobsters. Bargain! We planned to eat out as much as possible but in the end (no way were we going to risk drinking and driving), we ended up walking over the hill to Le Phare Bleu on several occasions, as it was just a five minute walk from the house. We didn’t risk the beautiful but pricey Västra Banken lightship itself but found the Poolbar restaurant a great place to chill with nice food, very cheap Happy Hour Carib Buckets and live music of varying quality. We disgraced ourselves by allowing our guard dog to follow us into the complex, whereupon she promptly stared a dogfight in the middle of the restaurant, scattering the diners in terror. This is by no means the “real” Grenada, by the way, more the sanctuary of well-heeled European yachtie types, but still a beautiful place to relax.

Talking of Carib, I’m afraid I’m addicted. We adventurously ventured to the brewery itself and bought two crates, which I’m embarrassed to say I single-handedly emptied in a week. It’s nectar.

We just had to try BB’s Crabback in St George’s, as Giles Coren had pronounced it the “best restaurant in the world”. I don’t think even BB himself would claim that, but the food was indeed delicious and he fitted us in without a booking, even though an entire touring UK cricket party was also there. We left before it got noisy. We sadly didn’t make the highly recommended Fish Friday in Gouyave, but other random places we tried included an incongruous but rather sweet German restaurant on the harbour, the aforementioned Mangrove Hideaway (while the lights still worked) and the more upmarket Dirty Dock, great for plane spotting. But none of them could match the simple majesty of the rotis at the Hard Wood Snacket in Carriacou, where we’d taken a day trip with the Osprey (shockingly referred to by the locals as the “Vomit Comet”). But that’s another story.

One thing’s for sure – no future Christmas will ever measure up to this.

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