Explore Bright Red Grenada
If you had to choose a particular day to explore the island of Grenada, then Easter Sunday would be an excellent choice. In every town and village there are crowds, street parties, gatherings and the visitor is invited to join in. The beaches are busy and everywhere there are drinks and dishes to enjoy. This country is truly open to celebrations and gatherings.
Murals / St. George’s
© Hegel Goutier
If it were a fruit, Grenada would have to be a pomegranate, bright red on the outside and bursting with a myriad of little red jewels on the inside, just like all that flamboyance that decorates the villages for the day. All those colonial-style houses: small, pink, red, richly coloured and lined up along the narrow village streets, grand in the centres of larger towns or hugging the steep slopes for the large houses. Colours with the same sparkle as the infectious smiling faces.
A day trip has to begin in the capital, St George’s, which wakes up in the arms of its bay, adorned with the bluish misty colours of morning. Not to be missed is the arrival of the cruise ships, often bringing young couples for their weddings to be celebrated a day or two later in the idyllic setting of Port Louis on St George’s former harbourside. Port Louis has no other ambition than “to embrace the more charming elements of St-Tropez, Costa Smeralda, Portofino and St Bart’s under the distinct influence and umbrella of Grenada”. From the seafront, you can admire the City on the Hill’s many hills which hug the bay, on top of which are sites to visit such as Fort Friederick and Fort Matthew to the east. To the north is Fort George. Fort Matthew, which was used as a hospice for the certified mentally ill, was bombed by mistake by the American air force in 1983, killing a number of its occupants.
To the north and south of St. George’s on the south-west of the island stretch endless beaches, the most typical of which is Grand Anse. It is the busiest tourist spot. A little further along the beach, not to be missed, has to be Morne Rouge with the whitest possible sand on the edges of the most crystal-clear sea. The pretty little town set in a virgin countryside has few inhabitants, barely ten thousand, and very few tourists. But the island has plenty of beaches. Among the pretty little coves is La Sagesse to the south-east, symbolic as the setting for an historical event. When the then owner of the adjacent house wanted to block access to it, the militant Bishop organised a major demonstration there, which led the state to guarantee public access to beaches as a basic right. The current tenant, Mike Meranski, who has tastefully transformed it into an original hotel restaurant, La Sagesse Nature Center, has other concerns as he explained to The Courier: due to the current crisis, the decreased number of visitors and also the shortened length of their stay.
Other coastal towns to visit are Greenville on the east coast, the second largest and probably the country’s liveliest and Sauteur in the historical north; the Caribs, when conquered by the French, committed suicide by throwing themselves into the sea from its 130-foot-high rock.
Inland, it is the flowers and fruits that glow red; bunches of cashew apples, of which the nut is only the outer seed, and the cardinal red nutmeg, embossed with black-stylised patterns reminiscent of the delicate work of an artist. It is the country's symbol. To the west, between St. George’s to the south and Gouyave more to the north, stretches Grand Etang Forest Reserve with the must-see Grand Etang Lake, so calm in a restful landscape and, not far away, the many waterfalls of Concord Falls along the length of the Concord river.
There just remains Carriacou, with its population of nine thousand, ten times less than the island of Grenada, and Petite Martinique with just a thousand. Are they just as surprising?
