After making several stops to pick up the other passengers at other harbors, we were taken to a recently opened French bakery with breath taking views of St. George and Morne Rouge Beach where Oprah Winfrey has a house. Her house is the large one with the white roof in the middle of the three houses in a row going down the hillside.
Oprah's beach..but she probably has a pool!
Next stop was the Crayfish Bay Organic Chocolate Farm. We drove for about 45 minutes to get there crossing rivers that divide the different provinces. The road ran along the western coast of Grenada and along the water for most of the trip. We passed by beautiful St George Harbor.
Traveling through some of the small town such a Gouyave, you held your breath and closed your eyes hoping you would make it through the tiny streets that are for two way traffic with barely enough room for one car. But our trusty driver Cutty got us though with no incident.
The organic chocolate factory was originally a 800 acre British plantation that raised various crops including sugar and chocolate. It is now divided and owned by many different people....many of which are local Grenadians. The current owner of 15 acres is an English retired sailor who originally planned to buy beach front property and drink beer. Now he runs this farm and drinks chocolate tea with brown sugar and rum.
Owner of Crayfish Bay Chocolate Farm
Fresh spring water
The factory is run much like it did back in the 1800s. The red bud is a young chocolate pod. They are not harvested until October or November when they are much larger. They are shaken off the trees or cut off with a knife attached to a long pole. They naturally roll down the mountain and down to the farm area where they are put into holding bins to ferments for 2 to 3 days.
Baby chocolate pod
Mature chocolate pod with beans inside
The next step is to dry the beans out. This building has huge drawers that slide out from under the eaves and the fermented beans are put on to these flat drawers to dry. A process called shuffling takes place with people walking up and down the drawers and shuffling the pods with their bare feet.
Then they are roasted over a hot wood burning fire and stirred until they have a crisp skin. This lady has been working on the farm for over 12 years.
The beans are then separted from their hulls, and ground at high speed until they become a liquid.
They are then shaped into balls and are sold like that to candy manufacturing plants.
We were treated to chocolate cake and hot chocolate tea flavored with rum.
Next stop was a chocolate making factory. It was very modern and large machines spinning and churning the chocolate to be exported to all of the major chocolate manufacturers around the world. The plant was well protected by glass windows so pictures didn't turn out very well.
Time for lunch at Andy's Soup kitchen located in a house built in the 1800's overlooking the Caribbean Sea. I had fish creole and Will had a roti...a local version of a tortilla wrap.
After lunch we walked to a nutmeg factory. This is a ripe nutmeg. It has a shell and the seed is protected by the red coating called mace. One of the uses of the mace is to actually make the mace spray.
There are a lot of nutmeg trees around Grenada, and we have learned how to recognize them. There sure are a lot of nutmegs around here. All of these will be exported off the island.
Finally, after many short rain showers, we venture up into the mountains to look for monkeys, view a volcanic crater lake, and finally a hike to the Allendale waterfalls. It was dusk by the time we arrived at the falls, and all of us were quite tired. It was a quiet drive back, but some people with headaches probably caused by the caffeine in the over indulged amount of chocolate they ate during the day.
We arrived back at the marina after dark and dinghied over to get Bentley. It was an awesome day!
No comments:
Post a Comment