This place you have to see to believe.

So because I am short on time, I will encourage you to take your own sightseeing trip through my slideshow and pick out the parts that interest you the most.

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Belmont is more than an hour’s drive up the island and into the interior. And it is what it is – a plantation estate. You know, those places where the French/English set up uppity agriculture operations and worked the land with slaves?

Yep, that kind of plantation.

The operation was started in the 1600s and is still going strong today.

However, now, in addition to producing chocolate, the plantation pumps out tourists like nobody’s business. There is even a museum. They call it agri-tourism, where you can see how your food is made and get a little taste at every step in the process.

Take the coco pod for example. No really, take it. And bust it open and taste the sweet, goopy seeds inside. The gloop on the seeds tastes kind of like Skittles.

Now don’t bite down! Once washed of its slime, that little seed needs to be fermented in a lot of rotten fruit before it becomes chocolate.

After sitting for about 5 days, the seeds see the daylight.

They are put out into drying beds where someone turns them over with their little toes every half hour. Like so …

After touching them with our dirty feet, we got to crack open the hard outer shell and taste the chocolate. Which actually tasted like very bitter dark chocolate. At this point, it is pushed through a machine into coco butter and then processed into whatever chocolate product you find on the shelves.

All of this is watched over by a few talkative parrots, some turtles and a monkey or two.

If you want to read more about Belmont Estates, click here.

Hope you enjoyed our (very) brief agri-tour!

Our next stop on last week’s whirlwind island tour was Carib’s Leap.

(Sheesh, has it been a week already?!)

While currently a well-kept touristy destination, it isn’t quite the happiest place on earth. Here’s the story.

The Caribs were the second civilization to inhabit Grenada. According to what I read, they weren’t very nice – especially to the native Amerindians. They liked to kill those poor natives then eat them. Yuck.

But the pesky Caribs probably still didn’t deserve what happened next.

The English came. The Caribs thought they were pretty tasty hunting too. So the English didn’t last long.

After that the French came. Although they were also in the Carib’s crosshairs, they were a little moe persistent. The French wanted to farm Grenada for all it was worth and they weren’t about to let a few pesky natives get in their way. So in true European style, they bought the island for a few bags of beads and a bunch of brandy.

When the Caribs realized that they got the raw end of the deal in 1650, it was full-scale war. Eventually no Frenchman could leave his house without being butchered and the Carib population was getting pretty thin with the help of French muskets. One day, the Caribs came in force against the French fort with every able body they could find – about 800 people. After being massacred by the French, the 40 Caribs left alive were chased to the top of the island to this precipice.

Rather than give themselves up, they all jumped.

Unlike the story I had heard before, this leap didn’t mean the end of the Caribs. There were still a handful left, but eventual inbreeding with others put the final end to Grenada’s Caribs, leaving the island to the French and, eventually, the African slaves.

And that is why there is now a tourist shop on this remote old cliff.

P.S.

There is also a graveyard that sits on the cliff where the first man with diagnosed sickle cell disorder rests, providing an interesting stop for those in medical school.

Once upon a time, there was a little fort named Matthew.

It was named after a French Lieutenant Governor who no one had ever heard of and was put in a place where no one ever really fought.

But of all the little forts in Grenada, it has the grandest and strangest story of all.

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Matthew spent its childhood in the 1700s as just another French fort with an identity crisis. In the age of the great West India Co. and when European fortunes could be made or broken in the business of Atlantic shipping, the fertile land that surrounded Matthew was a coveted prize. Both the French and the British wanted a piece of Grenada and each took their turn defending Matthew’s battlements from each other.

Then in 1880, Matthew went insane. Literally.

Frederick was just up the street to keep watch and defend, so Matthew was transformed into the country’s mental hospital.

Those poor souls with a touch of Tourettes or a bit of bipolar disorder were helped back to health within Matthew’s walls. I wish I knew more about these experiences, but the unwritten stories seem to have disappeared into the unknown.

Then the Americans accidentally dropped a bomb on Matthew in 1983. The confusion is understandable considering Frederick (the communist coup stronghold) was just next door. However, their “oopsie” cost 19 people their lives.

Today, the crumbling ceilings and decrepit cells are home to a small weekend drinking establishment.

And that, my friends, is the story of Matthew.

As the packed school bus rumbled up a few tight turns, the walls of a stone cold precipice came into view. Grenada’s Fort Frederick was just ahead, and next to it, Fort Matthew.

As the contents of our bus scattered our of the bus with clicking cameras (like the group of tourists we were) the Significant Others president charmed a pleasant woman in purple.

Alice, as she was called, turned out to be a good person to make friends with. After collecting our entry fee, she hitched up her billowing skirt, hiked up to the top of the fort and gave us a tour.

She told us some wild stories, but best of all was her tale of Hurricane Ivan – the 2004 terror that decimated a nation.

On that fateful day, as the winds got wilder, Alice grabbed her five small children and a bag of sheets and headed for home.  She was not about to lose her kids or the roof they slept under. As the winds shook the small house, Alice tied 10 sheets together into a rope. Then, climbing up to the rafters, she tied one sheet to the roof. The other end of her “rope” cinched her to her children, tying them into little knots then wrapping the whole bundle of kids around her waist.

Then, she held on for dear life.

The winds got wilder and began ripping the wood roof from the ramshackle home it covered. Alice felt herself and her bundle of children lifting off from the ground. So she grabbed a knife and began tearing at the sheets. Moments later a gust of 165 miles per hour tore the roof from the building – with Alice and her little ones huddling in a corner.

This story might sound a little fantastic, but after hearing others from Ivan, it’s likely Alice is telling the truth. I think she is still upset about losing her roof.

Alice then pointed to landmarks on the horizon and told us little stories about her county’s history. The large building just below her hand in this picture is the home of Grenada’s military. Goats, cows and pigs take up residence there too. Each soldier farms the communal land around the base, takes care of his animals and feeds himself entirely from the fruits of his own labors.

The little landmark has another story, one that redefined Grenada’s history. Listen closely.

You can read more about this event in my Blog Post Here. 

Even through the tumult of the 1980s, Fort Frederick remained the one of the only strongholds in the world that never fired a shot in anger.

It was originally built by the French who had seized Grenada from the British in 1779. Over the next few hundred years, the two countries played tug of war with the little  island. One year it belonged to the French. Don’t blink, because in the next moment it belonged to the British.  Then it went back to the French. Each country took their turn standing watch atop Fort Frederick – and the many other forts that sprinkle the little island.

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From their vantage point, they could look down on their next door neighbors at the insane asylum. But that’s a story for tomorrow …

Dear Faithful Followers (aka family and a few friends),

I apologize for the lack of posts over the past couple days. But as you are about to see, I have been busy.

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Friday, I hopped on a bus with 27 other happy-go-lucky people for a whirlwind all-around the island tour.

Up the windy road we went to Fort Fredrick and Fort Matthew – conveniently located a stone’s throw apart.

At Fort Fredrick we took in the breath-taking view from the top and were led on a little tour by our own self-proclaimed “Alice in Wonderland.”

Alice told us stunning stories about Hurricane Ivan, which almost destroyed the island in 2004, and the city that lay below us. When she was finished and we were roaming the fort on our own, I realized she had forgotten one important detail about Fredrick’s history. This is where Grenada’s prime minister and his 7-month pregnant wife met their doom at the unfriendly end of a machine gun in 1983 as a military coup was about to overrun the country. The bowels of the fort are sealed off to the public now.

Just down the street lies Fort Matthew, a funky little maze of cells and hallways that was once the country’s insane asylum. The mentally ill were housed in its cells until that fateful day in 1983 when a stray American bomb shattered Matthew’s roof and killed 19 people. It’s never been the same since. In fact, it is now a creepy weekend drinking spot for the locals.

From Matthew and Fredrick, we rode a few nausea-inducing miles up to Carib’s Leap; the place where all the Caribs Lept.

Chris Columbus made first contact with the natives during his string of 15th Century voyages. Columbus saw the island said, “meh” and moved on.

Later, the French paid the Caribs a visit in 1626, but the two civilizations just couldn’t seem to make a relationship work. Citing “irreconcilable differences,” the French declared open season on natives in 1650. It was slavery or death for this peaceful population. So rather than play the game, they all jumped off this cliff into the unforgiving Atlantic. An entire civilization (or what was left of it) committed suicide.

Today, Grenada is almost entirely populated with descendants of the French, British or their African Slave labor.

At Carib’s Leap, we had reached the northern tip of the island – a journey of 21 windy miles. There was nowhere left to go but down, so we went to Belmont.

We ate our packed lunch under this cute little canopy before going exploring.

The old fashioned plantation estate is best described as a sprawling … um …  plantation estate. After gathering the spices and working the chocolate, slaves would be called from the sun-soaked fields with the clang of this bell.

Belmont is best known for its chocolate production, which we got a succulent taste of. From the goopy, Skittles tasting seeds of the freshly cracked open coco pod to the bittersweet taste of refined chocolate, we got to taste (and experience) it all. Stay tuned, faithful readers, for the full story of the coco pod – coming to you in another post soon.

Scattered throughout the estate were cages of beautiful birds, scrappy little tortoises and even a monkey or two! I hear there were goats too, but for the girl who hears them clamber down her street every morning, they have kinda lost their charm.

After burning through most of the afternoon at Belmont, a happy group of people boarded the bus again destined for Pearls Airport – the home of the Cuban/Russian/Mexican planes.

Prior to 1983 (when the “big” airport was finished), this was how people got on and off this little rock we call Grenada. In the moving process, they left this little airplane behind to keep the cows and goats company.

One bull was particularly fond of the plane and charged us when we tried to approach!

As the sun was sinking below the horizon, we were a bus full of pooped people. We were tired (and just a tinge car sick) and it was time to go home.

It was the end of a whirlwind day that gave me a great view of the whole island in just a little time. There is a lot to do in 21 miles!