Happy Mother’s Day! Another gorgeous day in paradise. The haziness of last week has long worn off, and the sun is shining through cloudless skies giving the sea and sky an impressive clarity that is almost blinding in their beauty. How I do love to rave over the Caribbean’s precious and free commodity. I never get tired of gazing at the sea on days like this. I can quite literally just lean up against a coconut tree and not move for hours as I contemplate how Van Gogh would paint this Caribbean sea and sun with his swirls of blues and yellows.
Kendall, whose nickname is Guana and I use them interchangeably, has decided that we are taking the entire day off (yippee!) from working on our www.greenguana.com site and we are heading off into the wilderness. In this case, it is to Carriacou’s south side. A hiking trip. Cool. We eat a hot breakfast of fresh, homemade wheat bakes (which he makes himself!) and cheese and tea with lots of brown sugar and lime, then pack up bottles of water and head off. I know there will be a beach somewhere around, so I put on a bathing suit under my shorts and tank top.
Guana, on the other hand, wears rugged cargo shorts with lots of pockets (thank the lord!) so I can give him my water bottle to stick in one of his many pockets. I am such a spoiled baby. I wonder if he’ll ever figure it out and one day leave me with all the gear to carry. I bank on his traditional island man mentality of being the strong “man” in charge, only when it suits me. I also bank on him not reading these blog entries. He’s so busy designing web sites for his web business that I expect that he’s only posting these blogs and not actually reading them.
Okay, we drive up to Six Roads in Carriacou and pick one of the six dirt roads that meander out from the hexagonal crossroads. The road we choose is taking us to Sabazon Beach, a lovely deserted area, but sadly, it also takes us first past the unsightly island “dump” where the garbage is placed in an unseemly and dangerous “mess!” I close my eyes as we go past because I cannot stand to see the stray papers flying about and I wish with all my heart that the Grenada government would figure out a better way to dispose of the island’s trash in this modern age. Alas, a future project for me to work on.
We quickly past the dump and continue rocking and rolling along the rutted dirt road, where cattle wander freely and we have to lean out the car windows to shoo them off the road. We are playing a Bob Marley CD and singing along to One Love, as a compromise since I am not into Guana’s loud, heavy bass-driving Jamaican dancehall music and he does not want to hear my Trini soca. Never mind, we can each play whatever we want when we are cooking. That is the house rule, “whoever cooks gets to jam whatever he or she wants.” So far, that works fine for me. But when Guana is cooking, I am usually working and I am easily distracted (ADHD victim and all), so he has to wear headphones! Oh, stop feeling sorry for him. I have a serious disorder!
We get to Sabazon Beach and park the jeep. Then we walk down the beach and hike up a dirt path that crosses over several medium size hills of scrub vegetation. This part of the island is very dry and cactuses abound, along with other prickly bushes and branches which Guana expertly chops away with his machete as we hike along. When, after seeing nothing but dry land and prickly bushes for about fifteen minutes, we climb along a ridge and break through the brush, with the help of Guana and his machete, there before us is the expansive glorious Caribbean Sea. From up here we peer over the cliff edge to the reefs below and we can see rocks and coral and fish and off shore islands and I am simply dazzled by the beauty of it all. See the pics for yourself.
Guana makes me perch near the edge of the cliff for pictures and then makes me climb up on a dry rotting branch to take more pictures and I almost fall off, well, actually I tumble off, and we laugh and giggle at how much fun everything is and we have yet to meet another person anywhere on the beach or on our hike. Doesn’t anyone else want to enjoy this beauty, or do they all take it for granted?
Guana tells me stories of how when he was a boy, he and many other children would come here every day in the summer holidays to fish and climb rocks and cook over firewood on the beach and the water was even bluer he says because the soil wasn’t eroding into the sea as it is now, and how it was the best of times. I could only imagine the screams and laughter of children playing on the rocks below. Right now, it is utterly silent except for the sound of the sea splashing against the rocks.
We hike further along for about half and hour, until we reach a large grassy pasture where we sit and relax enjoying the panoramic view of Carriacou. From where we are, we can see all the way to Windward and there is Petit Martinique and Petit St. Vincent (PSV) across the sea. And then, right near the village of Mt. Pleasant (which is in a valley actually!), we see a small deserted, blue water, white sand beach. It is a beach we have never been to as yet. In fact, I am sure I have never even seen it before. And it sits next to a pretty patch of land. Guana and I speculate that maybe we can purchase it for the site of our Green Guana cottages, which we aspire to own and run one day to welcome guests from all around the world to the splendors of our island.
That is the topic of conversation as we hike back to Sabazon Beach. As soon as we get to the beach, I take off shorts, tank top, and sneakers and jump in with the craving of a starved woman for a cooling dip. The water is fantastic and I become one with the waves. This beach, unlike Paradise Beach, actually has real waves. I start body surfing, and soon I am screaming at the top of my lungs as the waves gather me along in their power and dash me onto the sandy shore as if I were a small rock. I drag myself out of the surf and head back out again, ducking under waves until the right one comes along to surf it in again. I am deposited belly first flapping unceremoniously at Guana’s feet and I look up to see he is holding a towel with a “time to go” look on his face. “One more, one more,” I beg. But it doesn’t really matter, because I am happy knowing that I actually live right here, where I can always get one more wave if I want.
Kendall, whose nickname is Guana and I use them interchangeably, has decided that we are taking the entire day off (yippee!) from working on our www.greenguana.com site and we are heading off into the wilderness. In this case, it is to Carriacou’s south side. A hiking trip. Cool. We eat a hot breakfast of fresh, homemade wheat bakes (which he makes himself!) and cheese and tea with lots of brown sugar and lime, then pack up bottles of water and head off. I know there will be a beach somewhere around, so I put on a bathing suit under my shorts and tank top.
Guana, on the other hand, wears rugged cargo shorts with lots of pockets (thank the lord!) so I can give him my water bottle to stick in one of his many pockets. I am such a spoiled baby. I wonder if he’ll ever figure it out and one day leave me with all the gear to carry. I bank on his traditional island man mentality of being the strong “man” in charge, only when it suits me. I also bank on him not reading these blog entries. He’s so busy designing web sites for his web business that I expect that he’s only posting these blogs and not actually reading them.
Okay, we drive up to Six Roads in Carriacou and pick one of the six dirt roads that meander out from the hexagonal crossroads. The road we choose is taking us to Sabazon Beach, a lovely deserted area, but sadly, it also takes us first past the unsightly island “dump” where the garbage is placed in an unseemly and dangerous “mess!” I close my eyes as we go past because I cannot stand to see the stray papers flying about and I wish with all my heart that the Grenada government would figure out a better way to dispose of the island’s trash in this modern age. Alas, a future project for me to work on.
We quickly past the dump and continue rocking and rolling along the rutted dirt road, where cattle wander freely and we have to lean out the car windows to shoo them off the road. We are playing a Bob Marley CD and singing along to One Love, as a compromise since I am not into Guana’s loud, heavy bass-driving Jamaican dancehall music and he does not want to hear my Trini soca. Never mind, we can each play whatever we want when we are cooking. That is the house rule, “whoever cooks gets to jam whatever he or she wants.” So far, that works fine for me. But when Guana is cooking, I am usually working and I am easily distracted (ADHD victim and all), so he has to wear headphones! Oh, stop feeling sorry for him. I have a serious disorder!
We get to Sabazon Beach and park the jeep. Then we walk down the beach and hike up a dirt path that crosses over several medium size hills of scrub vegetation. This part of the island is very dry and cactuses abound, along with other prickly bushes and branches which Guana expertly chops away with his machete as we hike along. When, after seeing nothing but dry land and prickly bushes for about fifteen minutes, we climb along a ridge and break through the brush, with the help of Guana and his machete, there before us is the expansive glorious Caribbean Sea. From up here we peer over the cliff edge to the reefs below and we can see rocks and coral and fish and off shore islands and I am simply dazzled by the beauty of it all. See the pics for yourself.
Guana makes me perch near the edge of the cliff for pictures and then makes me climb up on a dry rotting branch to take more pictures and I almost fall off, well, actually I tumble off, and we laugh and giggle at how much fun everything is and we have yet to meet another person anywhere on the beach or on our hike. Doesn’t anyone else want to enjoy this beauty, or do they all take it for granted?
Guana tells me stories of how when he was a boy, he and many other children would come here every day in the summer holidays to fish and climb rocks and cook over firewood on the beach and the water was even bluer he says because the soil wasn’t eroding into the sea as it is now, and how it was the best of times. I could only imagine the screams and laughter of children playing on the rocks below. Right now, it is utterly silent except for the sound of the sea splashing against the rocks.
We hike further along for about half and hour, until we reach a large grassy pasture where we sit and relax enjoying the panoramic view of Carriacou. From where we are, we can see all the way to Windward and there is Petit Martinique and Petit St. Vincent (PSV) across the sea. And then, right near the village of Mt. Pleasant (which is in a valley actually!), we see a small deserted, blue water, white sand beach. It is a beach we have never been to as yet. In fact, I am sure I have never even seen it before. And it sits next to a pretty patch of land. Guana and I speculate that maybe we can purchase it for the site of our Green Guana cottages, which we aspire to own and run one day to welcome guests from all around the world to the splendors of our island.
That is the topic of conversation as we hike back to Sabazon Beach. As soon as we get to the beach, I take off shorts, tank top, and sneakers and jump in with the craving of a starved woman for a cooling dip. The water is fantastic and I become one with the waves. This beach, unlike Paradise Beach, actually has real waves. I start body surfing, and soon I am screaming at the top of my lungs as the waves gather me along in their power and dash me onto the sandy shore as if I were a small rock. I drag myself out of the surf and head back out again, ducking under waves until the right one comes along to surf it in again. I am deposited belly first flapping unceremoniously at Guana’s feet and I look up to see he is holding a towel with a “time to go” look on his face. “One more, one more,” I beg. But it doesn’t really matter, because I am happy knowing that I actually live right here, where I can always get one more wave if I want.
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