Grenada is affectionately known as Camp Grenada. It is a cruisers haven with planned and unplanned events happening all the time, including water aerobics aka noodling, bingo, dominoes, yoga, full moon dinghy drifts, and beach outings just to name a few. At the top of the list perhaps is the Spice Mas aka Carnival. Unlike Dominica where the music was more akin to Caribbean Rap (were all too old for that), the music in Grenada has a nice beat except maybe at 3am.
What is Spice Mas? Simply put, it’s a huge celebration. It begins late Sunday night and lasts thru Tuesday and is held during August every year. For most it begins in the early hours of Monday morning with the J’Ouvert celebration where revelers coat themselves with used motor oil, dragging chains behind them and parade down the street wearing little more than horned helmets. If you get close enough, you could be wearing the motor oil. This is followed by colorful devils that only want to dab you with their body paint as they dance thru the streets. This is followed by a traditional parade during the day on Monday then the Monday Night Mas. Many cruisers participate in the Monday Night Mas, waving glow sticks and neon hats and t-shirts drinking “free” beer (they did have to pay for their party paraphernalia). The celebration continues thru Tuesday with the parade of the bands and the “Pretty Mas”. Officially it ends early Tuesday evening but unofficially it continues till the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
So how did we participate in this celebration? Well, since we are such party animals, we decided to be tame this year so we put in our ear plugs Sunday night and when the music started up around 2AM, we slept. We roused ourselves out of bed around 7ish and were onlookers to those that were dragging themselves back from what looked like a big paint ball fight. We took pics of these partygoers taking their shower in the garden (they had the restroom and shower rooms locked down). Later that day, we walked down to where the party had been in full swing (think French Quarter, NO) and watched the disgusting litter and oil in the streets along with the not so few revelers still celebrating. The crews were hard at work cleaning up the mess. The Monday night parade had all the participants meeting about 3 miles down the road at 7pm so what did we do. We had a nice dinner and took a nap then at 10pm, we moseyed our way down the street about 200 yards and watched the parade come to us. It couldn’t have turned out any better. Tuesday, we went early enough to scout out a good seat for our viewing of the last parade, then walked amongst the parade participants. All in all, we had a really good time and I have been singing to the tune of “Jab on Sesame Street”. Google it and give it a listen. It was one of the theme songs for this year’s carnival.
You can google Spice Mas 2015 and you will get a sampling of what we were fortunate to experience. Also check out our picture gallery for pictures taken during Spice Mas.