South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
‘Spice Island’
Twenty percent of the world’s nutmeg grows in Grenada, but this “black gold” isn’t the only flavor found here. Long known as “The Spice Island,” it also supplies home pantries with cinnamon, allspice, turmeric, mace and bay leaves. Spice plantations open their doors to visitors to show how it’s done.
At Dougaldston Estate, guides crack open nutmeg pods to reveal a seed inside laced in red, affectionately known as the “lady in the boat with the red petticoat.” The red covering becomes processed as mace. The nutmeg seed is used for flavoring, in medicine and, in some parts of the world, as a natural aphrodisiac. Inside a wooden shed, benches hold an array of other bits of plant material — leaves, branches, seeds — scraped and pummeled into spices until the room fills with the fragrance of Christmas.
Outside, the hot sun shines down on cocoa beans filling shallow wooden platforms where women walk slowly back and forth, shuffling their feet through the beans to aerate and dry them so they can be shipped to a chocolate factory. Grenada chocolate earns high praise as some of the world’s best and, unlike in some developing countries, no child labor is involved in its production.
The Grenada Chocolate Co. welcomes tours, as does a nutmeg-processing cooperative in the fishing village of Gouyave. Bags of spices and bars of chocolate always can be found among the goods vendors sell at the outdoor market in the old town section of St. George’s, Grenada’s capital city.
Beaches and rainforests
An underwater volcano created the main island of Grenada and its six smaller islands about 2 million years ago. It formed the rich volcanic soil responsible for the high quality of Grenadian nutmeg, and The first of three tiers of Concord Falls plunges over black volcanic rock dressed in rainforest greenery.
— perhaps more of interest to vacationers — nine black-sand beaches. These, along with more than 40 stretches of white sand, allow beachgoers to choose from simple, secluded hideaways to long seafront arcs lined with luxury resorts. Grand Anse Beach, lying along the southwest coast, often has appeared on lists of the best Caribbean beaches. For nearly 2 miles, its white sand fringes a cobalt sea.
Hills and mountains rising from these sandy coastlines lead into rainforests. A driving tour up the west coast on winding roads, often narrowing to one lane, passes bamboo forests and nutmeg trees. Cocoa pods hang heavy on their branches, and bunches of bananas dangle along the roadside. Farmers wielding machetes dodge vehicles as they walk to their fields, drivers raising their hands in greeting.
At Concord Falls, the three-tier waterfall cuts through black, volcanic rock dressed in the lush greenery of the rainforest. Children play in the pool at the base of the falls, and young men may offer to stage a spectacle by jumping from the top of the cataract in exchange for tips.
Another route through the rainforest travels up to 1,900 feet above sea level through Grand Etang National Park. Hiking paths