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Captain Australia Enjoying the Cricket
The hill under the scoreboard with all the beer you could drink.A good friend of ours decided that the opportunity to escape the delights of a Canberra winter and come and bludge off us was too good to pass. So Svenny joined us for a couple of weeks which happened to coincide with the Australian cricket team's tour of the West Indies. Having been starved of any decent sport for the last 18 months this was too good an opportunity to pass up and we decided to book some flights and get across to catch two of the One Day International games in Grenada. Unfortunately Fiona was stuck at work and couldn't make it, so it was just Sven and I for the week - yes I have the most understanding and awesome wife in the history of the world and quite possibly the universe.
But, Grenada isn't the easiest place to visit - it's not a really well known tourist destination, in fact most people have only heard of it because the US invaded Grenada in 1983. The easiest place for us to fly out of was Ft Lauderdale which is a five hour drive south of Jacksonville, so 'Sven and Ando's 2008 Tour of the West Indies' began with
Day One
Captain Australia needs his rest before the big game. Unfortunately it was like this for the first three days. a little road trip. Our flights left quite early in the morning, so we were well behaved the night before our flights. I took Sven for a true American experience to a restaurant called 'Dave and Busters'. Basically this place is a restaurant with an absolutely massive pinball arcade - Sven was hooked. We did have a relatively quiet night and made our 7am flight to Jamaica with plenty of time. We had a 7 hour stop over in Kingston (the capital of Jamaica), so rather than spend the time soaking up the ambiance of the transit lounge we decided to go through immigration and see some of the town. Well apparently Kingston isn't much of a tourist mecca....the beaches we drove passed were quite dirty as a large amount of industry is on the coast around Kingston, and things only looked worse when we hit the town. I think we must have driven passed three prisons before we arrived at a run down restaurant for lunch. Fortunately the first one-dayer was on TV, and Sven and I settled into a crazy breakfast of spicy chicken, yams, dumplings and boiled banana.....not so tasty. Although we only saw a small part
The view from the Hotel Room
We spent three days laying in bed looking at this and wishing we could be out there. of the city in a limited time, I certainly wouldn't be hurrying back to that part of Jamaica in a hurry!
After our lay over in Jamaica we arrived into Grenada and caught a taxi to our hotel. It was a pretty nice place sitting up on the side of a step hill which overlooked the length of one of the nicest beaches on the island (Grand Anse Beach) and across to the capital of St Georges. After an early morning and a long day of travel we had a couple of the local beers (called Carib and was actually pretty good) and went to bed. In similar fashion to our trip to Mexico, I unfortunately found myself driving the porcelain bus at about 3 am in the morning and was in pretty nasty shape the next day. I managed to hold down some breakfast but retreated to the comfort of the air conditioning in the bedroom for the day amid continuing abuse from Sven about being a weak bastard. However it seems that the flu bug was not without a sense of irony, and Sven found himself driving the same bus as me later that night. So the
Captain Australia
Wherever Australia plays, he will be there......or be somewhere else.....drinking beer. first three days of the trip saw the two of us 'weak bastards' in the hurt locker wearing the cloak of despair doing nothing but laying in the hotel room watching shithouse cable TV.
Luckily by the time the first one-dayer arrived we were both feeling better and headed to the cricket ground hoping that our stomachs had recovered enough to hold down about 5 litres of Carib beer. We arrived at the ground and were pleasantly surprised at how good it was. The stadium itself seemed quite new and the field was in great shape. Our tickets were in 'De Jam Stand' which was a hill under the score board and was all inclusive. This basically meant we had all the beer and liquor we could put away from 9:30 am to 5:30pm when the game ended....time for our stomachs to earn their pay. We hit our first beer at about 10:10 and felt pretty good, so we decided that alcohol would probably kill any remanance of the bug or at least drown it, so we kicked on.
The 'Fanatics' who follow the Aussie team around the West Indies had headed home after the first one-dayer so
Beer O'Clock
If anything is going to kill the flu bug it's Grenadian Beer! there were only a handful of Aussies left to support the team. This meant that whenever they wanted some Aussies on TV they came and filmed us, so my head finally got the time it deserves on international TV - complete with ridiculous handlebar moustache. A couple of mates have since called us and said they saw us on Fox Sports, so yes, now you know some international TV celebrities (I will sign autographs later). The Aussies were batting and were off to a bit of a shaky start, although the ball was moving an absolute mile off the pitch. We ended up making about 220 odd which was very defendable on such a good bowling wicket. This was proven by Brett Lee who picked up a wicket on the first ball of the second innings. Australia went on to win the game with no difficulty much to our delight and the disgust of the thousands of West Indian supporters.
The next day we were feeling well enough to explore the town and see the local sights. Grenada is not a very tourist orientated island and is often described as an insight into the Caribbean as it was 50
Enjoying the View
Ah the Carib Beers girls, gave Captain Australia something to look at when the cricket got boring. years ago. Sven and I headed into St George's and wandered around the markets which were rich with the smells of the many spices produced on the island. Grenada is known as the 'Spice Isle' as it produces approximately 80% of the world's nutmeg and many other spices. St. Georges itself is not the most picturesque place in the world, but it is located on a beautiful natural harbour with numerous old style buildings surrounding the water front in various states of repair. Some areas have been restored and provide a really good idea of what it must have been like in the times when the colonial nations and pirates were fighting for control of the West Indies. We bought a couple of nic-nacs before being caught in a rain shower and taking cover. We headed home and spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool.
The next morning we got up for the last one-dayer and headed to the stadium. This time we made it in time for the first ball and were tucking into our first beer at about 9:30am.....excellent. The West Indies were batting first on a much friendlier pitch and got off to a
Drapped in the Flag
Captain Australia taking a moment to reflect on just how much Australia is kicking ass! pretty good start. Chris Gayle set about taking the Aussie attack apart and hit 3 sixes on his way to a half-tonne before being unluckily run out. After that, the sting went out of the batting and it looked like a collapse was imminent. By the time Sven and I switched to guns (in this case some of the home grown rum which turned out to be very smooth yet surprisingly alcoholic) the Windies were stumbling their way through their innings. Nothing better than rum in the morning and watching Australia hand out yet another ass kicking. The Windies ended up making about 220 which much to the delight of the whooping West Indian supports who continually told us they would be eating Kangaroo for dinner.....
Fortunately for us Australia made the most of the batting friendly wicket and proceeded to cart the West Indian attack when it came their turn to bat. Without much difficulty they managed to pass the WI total in the 41st over leaving us cheering on the sideline amidst the Windies supporters. But I have to say, I have never seen people more gracious in defeat than these guys - they loved the Aussie
More Beer
Svenny doing his best to get over the flu. team and genuinely impressed with how well the Aussies played. But, if these guys typified grace in defeat, Sven was the very definition of being obnoxious in victory. With his eyeballs floating in Rum Sven stood in front of the stand dressed head to toe in Green and Gold waving the Aussie flag screaming, 'Take that your bunch of weak bastards, your team's a bunch of hacks, I could beat them - put me and Ando out there and we'll still kick your ass!!'. I was trying to hide somewhere at this stage, but the Windie supporters loved it, they just clapped him and patted him on the back yelling 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie'. After such a great victory, it was time to get a taxi home, so we heading outside only to have Sven fall over in the gutter and cut himself open - a great way to end a great day.
Just as we were really starting to feel better it was time to head home. Even though we were sick, we had a great time and can't say enough about how friendly the Grenadian people were. We caught our flight home and endured about 6 hours of
delayed flights before landing in Ft Lauderdale and commencing the 5 hour drive home. It took us nearly 22 hours to get home, of which about 8 was traveling. A very nasty day indeed - it was time for some decent rest, America's biggest holiday, the 4th of July was just around the corner.
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