Thrusday-Friday, April 3-4, 2026
As we leave the St. George airport terminal, we are welcomed with drums and dancers in bright colorful costumes, some on stilts, others in full dresses and a few with deep red wings or flames. A fun way to be greeted into our next week-long stay.
My college roommate Mike has been coming to the caribbean for a month each year for the past several years and has invited friends to join him. When we said we would join him this year, he said (after lots of reseach), “Let’s go to Grenada!” – and we said, “Yes!” Always a good rule when travelling – say yes to new experiences. We didn’t know much about this area of the world nor much of this British Common wealth country that celebrated 50 years of independence juat two years ago.
I knew about Grenada from the US invasion in 1983, supposedly to deal with a marxist leaning government and to ‘rescue’ 1,000+ US medical students. I remember it was during the time of Reagan, the cold war and the US support for latin amercian dictators. It was condemned by the UK, Canada and most of the UN as a “flagrant violationn of international law,” so let’s just say not everyone was convinced.
A quick wikipedia, tourbook and chat gpt search tells us that the indigenous Caribe were living here when Columbus spotted this island in 1498. They were able to keep out invaders for a while until France took it by force around 1650. Traded hands a few times until staying with the British, over 120,000 Africans were forced into slavery for the plantations until slavery was banned in the 1830’s. Now known for growing spices, like nutmeg, and chocolate, it has a growing tourism business. We like that it seemed a good mix of culture and history, not on the normal list of places to go, has great beaches, natural beauty for hikes and waterfalls and adventures such as an underwater (!) sculpture park, rum distillleries, and chocolate and nutmeg tours. We will see how much of that we are able to cover this week.
Mike has found us a beautiful airbnb with a great view of the harbor. Only downside of a great view is that means it is on a very steep hill (and driveway.) Siri and I make our first exploration down to the local supermarket to load up on groceries since we have been duly warned that, this being Easter weekend, there are national holidays on Friday and Monday.
All goes well, except we keep reverting to Spanish since that we have been speaking this past week. The store clerk doesn’t quite know what to with us when we say “gracias.” We load up our backpacks and march back up the hill, just in time to enjoy a lovely sunset from our porch. Mike arrives late, he had connecting flights from other islands, and we stay up even later catching up.
We enjoy a good lazy island morning making breakfast, drinking tea and coffee and start to plan the week of adventures. We walk into town and enjoy seeing the old wooden houses, right next to the more modern and hurricane proof cement residences. We walk along the harbor next to the colorful boats of all sizes and ages. We climb up to the 18th century Fort George and get a commanding view of the harbor and diversity of ships. Most striking are the two large cruise ships – Mike says there are 6,000 people visiting today – and the world’s largest sailing yacht, ‘The Black Pearl’ is moored just off the main beach.
Due to the cruise ships, we are approached all the time by vendors and drivers. One vendor looks like he is dressed in the Grenada flag as he sports bright green, gold and reds. Once he realizes that we are not part of today’s cruise line ‘invasion’ he tells us that we are doing it right, that his island and homeland deserves several days not just a few hours to fully appreciate. We agree.
We finish the first full day watching the sunset on the southern tip of the island and enjoy a delicious meal and drinks at ‘dodgy dock’ famous for its funky vibe of being built on a pier with whatever remained of the bar after 2004 Hurrican Ivan destroyed it. We stay long enough for the reggae band to start, make it through its 80’s cover band songs and then finally get to its much more interesting and lively Caribbean playlist – it helps ground us in this place – Grenada. It provides a good bookend to the carnival dancers yesterday.
Siri and David Adventures 