Grenada!

Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Grenada

The Caribbean is a special place.  It's a place of wonder and mysticism.  People grow up thinking about the Pirate of the Caribbean, thanks to Disney no doubt, and even more so because of the movies that they finally made to back up the ride at Disneyland that has been there for ages.  And you know what, that's the way it should be.  It's nice when you have an image of a far away place that is awesome.

Now I, on the other hand, had the opportunity to go there for about two and a half months.  This is kind of a mixed bag, and I'll be really honest and up front about it.  Yes, it is cool to go to the Caribbean, but you have to acknowledge that there is going to be some level of disappointment whenever you take something that is fantasy and make it real.

There's no real reason why I decided to write this here on my post about Grenada as opposed to perhaps Dominica, or St. Barth's.  Truthfully, I could have put these paragraphs in front of any of the islands, but I'm doing it here and now.  So, please don't think there's anything wrong with Grenada that would make me want to say all of this now.  What I'm saying is that despite all the glamor, mystery, and intrigue that surrounds the Caribbean, whether it be from movies, television, video games, books, or history...they all kind of suck.

There.

I've said it.

Life is just rough when you are an Island.  Things cost more because they have to be transported to you over water.  And most of these Islands are poor, and that's no fun.  Then there's the complete contrast with St. Barth's being overly expensive because it's still kind of France.  I don't know.  I do these contracts because they're good money, and because they're NOT more than 50% in the Caribbean.  I would hope that my producer is awesome enough to not ever send me to a ship that stayed in the Caribbean 100% of it's time.  Then again, maybe I wouldn't be saying all of this if I didn't just have four shots of vodka washed down with a little Baileys.

Who knows.  Anyway, on to Grenada.

I was fortunate enough to land a shore excursion on this day.  This is actually saying something because my shore excursions manager swapped over from this really awesome guy to this guy that is a total prick.  Please excuse my language.  I'm sure that I will write much nicer blogs when I'm sober, but this one is just going to tell it like it is.  For many reasons, that I won't go into right now, my current tour manager didn't like me very much, so I didn't get as many excursions to accompany.  Grenada, however, is one of the last places that I got to take a tour of with the guests, and so therefore, I thought it would be fun to post all of the pictures and include a little video.  So, without any further ado, here is Grenada:


This shore excursion was pretty simple, and pretty awesome at the same time.  All that we were doing was going up to this one fort at the summit of the hill that overlooks the whole island, and then going to a private beach.

So here's the fort:

Here's our view of the ship from that fort:

And here is a basketball court in the middle of that fort:

Sure, it looks like a court now, but lots of people were actually executed here.

Looking left from the top of that hill we see this:

Here you go.  Because panorama's are always fun.

Now here is that beach that you were actually just looking at in the above pictures.  Up on that fort, we hopped onto a bus that took us all the way down here to this private beach.

There was a restaurant/bar on this beach that had rum punch and tacos waiting for us.

I'm a fan.

After eating, I went for a walk.  And that's where I took this video:

In this excursion, I had at least an hour to relax by myself.  At some point, I had a little friend come and relax next to me.

And then another friend came and relaxed next to me.

All in all, Grenada is a nice place to me.  But I'm going to share with you my absolute favorite thing about Grenada right here.  Inside the cruise terminal, there is a smoothie shop that sells the freshest smoothies you will ever taste for the cheapest prices you will ever pay.  Now, I have always been a big fan of Jamba Juice.  In fact, I was a fan way back when they still called themselves the Juice Club.  But this little place inside the cruise terminal on Grenada beats everything I've ever had at Jamba juice and for a fraction of the price. Here I am drinking a smoothie made from Sour Sop.
Yes, it was good.

The best thing about Grenada, period.