What do you see when you look at this strange outgrowth of piece of wood?? Do you notice the colour? The faint tinges of a growing mossy green? Or the twisted sinewy lines of time evolving stages of bark? Or do you see the perfectly placed hole that could be an eye? Or perhaps the split in the branch just below "the eye" that could be an open mouth? And now, when you look again, do you see the whole beast hanging upside down??

*****

A hike could quite possibly be the one of the correct answers if I asked you the question: "What do Black Sand Beaches, and Bat Caves, and Bois Bande Wine and Way-Too-Effin-Hot-to-be-Hiking-but-OH-look-what-we're Discovering!! Days, have in common?"

The general gist of the plan was to head ashore after Morning Yoga class and walk the the half hour or so from Secret Harbour to the Round-A-Bout, catch the Number 1 bus to down-town St-George's Bus Terminal, where we would meet up with friends Lynn and Ken (SV Silverheels III) and Izzy and Jeff (Izzy R), then take the Number 5 bus that would, after some speedy hold on to your hat zigs and zags on the narrow ledges of roads that go up the Nort-West Coast of Grenada, towards Pappy's Rum Shack where we would be dropped off so we could start our Hike.

And sure enough, that's what we did, except that by some fortuitous luck of fate, there just happened to be a bus at Secret Harbour Marina, that saved our already hot and stretched by Yoga-weary souls from having to walk that first half hour. We flagged him down with a yell and a wave, and pre-arranged a fee of 10EC$ pp, for him to bring us the ten minutes or so to the downtown hustle and bustle that is the Bus Depot.

The number 5 bus, drove us for well over half an hour, and dropped us off right at Pappy's Shack, all for only 3EC$ pp. Go figure.



Across the way we found and followed the road down-a-ways, always interesting to look at how others live,



but where our attention was instantly diverted as this little guy emerged from under the bushes, and we just had to stop and ooh and aaah !! Just one week old, whose momma had died,



and in need of some serious cuddles. Aww...

And then past the deserted trucks left to a slow rusty death on the side of the road,



the air quite thick with heat and humidity we felt we were in a bath-tub,



not unlike this one, sitting openly on the front porch of this resident's house, collection rain-water for the next bath, no doubt.

The views were far reaching and splendid and picturesque, making one feel rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things and notice the 50 shades of Leafy Greens??



We walked by some gardens of Callaloo, saw some pretty impressive tree formations,



and shortly thereafter found ourselves by the very recently cleared entrance to the Bat Caves,



where a wee bit of a rock clamber led us into the darkness.

Inside, our eyes slowly adjusting to the lack of light, the intense humidity instantly dampened our already sweaty skin and the smells that permeated our nostrils hinted of wet earth and damp rocks. A hint of dark claustrophobic heebie-jeebies diffused itself around us.



Ken's flashlight quickly illuminated the cave with its damp rocks, the ground covered in bat poop, and of course, a few of these creatures just hanging around,



and a hundred times as many more flitting about overhead.

They never came close, or touched us, or swooped down on us, or got tangled in our hair.



Pretty darn cool. There's just something about bats that fascinates me...

Once the bat fetish satisfied, we emerged back into the light, and followed the path onwards and downwards, towards Black Bay Beach



stopping along the way to admire the trunk of this tree,



or how about this one?



A bit of a downhill slide, a hold on to the roots (not the thorny bushes, please!) where our toes immediately hit the black sand.



Some of us ventured into the refreshingly cool waters,



of the beaches,



while the rest of us explored the inland venues.



The unique black sand comes from volcanic activity of long ago. When hot melting lava reaches the water it cools and the resulting newly formed stone disintegrates into fragments that with time and erosion, turn into black sand.



It was soon time to head back and we entered the grounds of the Black Bay Estate,



where the fields were once again enveloping us in their lush-ness and green-ness, the only other life around us the butterflies flitting from flower to leaf to tree, and when we emerged, sights of more rusted remains,



where the immediate and next order of business was to stop for a cold one,



and where we noticed some very distinctive carvings just across the stret from us.



And on and on we walked,



chatting with the villagers who were curious, and greeted us with "Good afternoon, where you from?". The eye squinting glare of afternoon sun and oppresive heat of the pavement had us moving along, on and on we kept going and going until we (finally!) reached the village of Concord.

We saw what we thought was someone washing their laundry in the River,



but upon arriving closer heard the clink-clank of bottles in the already full white burlap bag. "Getting ready to make some Babash" (a Grenadian term for Moonshine) said Lynn with a knowing nod.

It was a collective sigh of relief when we finally arrived by Pappy's, not to be outdone by a moan of disappointment when we found the doors to be locked shut. However, our voices called out to the shack on the hill, and the kind lady came out and opened up for us. This is an open for business when the clients come type of enterprise.

What followed were some quite interesting tastings of "wine"? or "rum"? Who knows !!??



We'd heard about Pappy's before, of how he mixes his concoctions with flavours like hibiscus to make Hibiscus Wine, or Tamarind or Sorrel to make Liqueurs, and for the men, some Bois Bande (said Baw-Ban-day), which can have effects similar to a little, but well known, blue pill. "I'll just have a cold beer", said Glen.

Time to catch the bus back to downtown St George's. As is always the way, the hotter and sweatier you are, the more people get squished and crammed into the bus to sit beside you, skin on sweaty skin, thigh on sweaty thigh, and not even one wisp or breath of wind coming through the open windows.

It was with a bit of a "oh gosh now what?" moment when the police officer whistled at the driver to pull over just by the Carenage, shaking his head with incredulity as he peeked inside the three sets of windows, and counted the bobbing heads, three different times. And so, just how many people can you fit on a Grenadian bus? 21 last time we checked. And, if you're under 11, you apparently don't count.

Seems like a 9EC$ fee per person was to have been the penalty but given we were in the back seat, we didn't see the exact results, if any, exchange hands. When we asked the driver to take us directly to Secret Harbour Marina, he was quick to accept the 10EC$ we were offering up. Once again we were thrilled to not have to walk the last half hour in the heat of what was left of the afternoon sun.

It turned out to be a fun day in Grenada's Black Bay, seeing Black Sand Beaches, and Bat Caves, and sipping Tamarind and Hibiscus and Bois Bande Wines and Way-Too-Effin-Hot-to-be-Hiking-but-OH-what-we're Discovering!! Days!!

And my apologies for having inundated this blog with probably way-too-many photos, and if that's not enough, please follow THIS LINK to our Facebook Page, and if you haven't already done so, give us a LIKE, for even more photos of Just Another Hike.