IMAGES: ALAMY; GETTY
GRENADA
M 20
onkeys, monkeys everywhere. These are Old World mona monkeys — weighing around 11lbs and groomed as if having come from the hair salon. Their body fur is coffee brown, their chipmunk-like cheeks covered in bushy white tufts. Those closest sniff the air, displaying
masks of bare skin around their eyes, making them look like miniature Dick Turpins. They act like the highwayman, too. Watchful, hungry and with slim pickpocket fingers, I fear they’re here to rob my lunch. “The Mona is one of the few monkey species
in the Caribbean,” says Jeremy, our guide, as he surveys their gang hideout in the treetops. “They act like they own the place too.” Even eyed from a distance, at the far end of a track through an overgrown canopy, it’s clear they have swagger. Spend a few moments watching them and it feels — briefly — as though they’re policing the rainforest, tails swinging like batons, as we try to lift the veil on their natural world. The Grenada experience begins from the
get-go and, this year, the country is marking its 50th anniversary of independence, after it transitioned from UK rule in February 1974. Five centuries before that, Grenada was first sighted by Christopher Columbus while sailing from Sanlúcar, Spain, on his third Transatlantic voyage to conquer the New World. The Italian named the island Concepción, a hat tip to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, mother of Jesus, but never set foot on its shores. For Columbus, suffering from the relapsing arthritis that is said to eventually have killed him, another week at sea awaited before he instead landed on Hispaniola. For me, landing close to the rolling waves of Grand Anse Beach, it’s a far more straightforward arrival from the airport in a minibus. Out of all the islands in the Lesser Antilles,
Grenada is the near-forgotten speck at the bottom tip of the banana curve. This is a country neglected by most visitors to the region — compared to big hitters such as St Lucia, Barbados, Antigua and the Virgin Islands — and it’s a land more reliant on agriculture and export crops like nutmeg and mace than the tourist industry. On first impression, it’s all the better for it. Tourism is still developing at a relatively grassroots level here and it feels distinctly authentic.
NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/TRAVEL
We begin our first day on the road to Grand
Etang National Park, with the asphalt uncoiling into the island’s volcanic interior and lumpy hills. It’s a glorious autumn morning in the island capital, St George’s: the sun breaking the clouds above the hewn battlements of Fort George is a hymn for the day ahead. The rainforest, meanwhile, is a thick pelt of dense, dark green. It’s a wild place and, as we move from the suburbs past gas storage tanks onto a mountain road, looming bamboo begins to block out the rippling blue sky. There’s no lack of competition. Eucalyptus, teak, gum, guava and rainbow trees creep towards the verges, almost shielding our entry. It’s no prison, but our progress is slow. The problem is that our minibus, with loose
exhaust and coughing engine, doesn’t have enough power to accelerate uphill, especially with the air conditioning chasing the stifling heat away. “Windows open,” yells Jeremy from the wheel, as he turns off the air-con. He doesn’t waste words, I come to learn, and so our writhing bus becomes a safari vehicle and the little details outside quickly become more exciting: our nostrils full of earth, woodsmoke and diesel, before we head into an interior laden with foilage. An out-of-tune steel band would make less rattle and hum than we do. As we lurch uphill, vendors at tarp-covered stalls appear in whizz-by auditions wielding pineapples, breadfruit and mangoes. Grenada is oval-shaped, almost like the cacao
fruit on which many of its farmers so heavily depend, and, at the island’s heart, is the seed of so much of this growth: Grand Etang Lake, a mineral-rich crater basin, which empties into the upper headwaters of steep-sided ravines and the tributary of the raging Great River. The air is heavy when we step out at the road’s highest point, 1,910ft above sea level. Just east of Grenada’s tallest volcanoes, we have views of the Caribbean Sea, the shallow curve of Grand Mal Bay and the wonderfully named Mount Qua Qua, framed in forest green, views that Columbus would have kicked himself for missing. As I wander the trail to Grand Etang Lake, the
landscape — what’s here and what isn’t — fills my mind. In recent decades, Grenada has been hit by several tropical storms, including Hurricane Ivan, which caused widespread damage during the 2004 season. When its westward jog across the island began, palms were scythed and the national park’s high forest canopy toppled. The good news is that species are recuperating and every candlewood or mahogany tree in the forest is knee-deep in its own
Clockwise from top: Boats in The Carenage harbour in St. George’s; hiking in Grand Etang National Park; Mona monkey sitting on a tree in Grand Etang National Park Previous pages from left: The commercial and tourist docks of St George’s Grenada’s capital city; Grenadan flower lady
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108
