boys day out

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Well whilst the Girls kicked back and had massages by some mystery "blind person", we decided to try and explore the island as much as possible within the day.

Scooters were out intended means of transportation, so we left at about 1030am on the bus to what was our local scooter place. Apon arriving we made our way to the reception passing the open sign to be greated with an open office with evertything that could be powered by a plug switched on, but no staff present. Seeming a little weird we called the number on the front of the building on a local's phone to find out that yes indeed the office was closed untill 4pm. This provides some indication of the local mentality, not a care in the world unfortuanatly being a boy from the hussle and bussle of Auckland and the Latte fraternity this has caused some frustration on my part.

So after establishing that we could not hire scooters we headed down to the nearest hotel and asked for help at reception for hiring a car. Soon enough the lady behind the reception desk had organised a car to be delivered at 12pm being 11am at the time we were more than happy to wait. At 130pm the car arrived at this stage it was lucky that we left the bar at noon to wait out front for the car or we would not have been in a fit state to drive.

So we hit the road, driving in Grenada is somewhat different to that in the states or nz the roads are very rough, no speed limits and honking is the mean of communication, it was nice that even from what looked to be caos there was no road rage what so ever if you made a mistake everyone was ok about it. We made our first mistake about 20 minutes into the journey driving through st george where the majority of roads are one way however there are no sign posts indicating which roads these were so we learnt to follow other cars and reversing where apropriate.

After we got out of St george we started to head north up the west coast, we had a small map of the island and had established that we would drive around the cost of the island stopping at a few points of interest on the way, but primarily we wanted to see the east coast as at this stage we had only seen the west.
This was the first time on the trip that i had not had the joy of a female navigator situated near, however this was of no real concern as we had not hired any normal car we had a Suzuki Vitara "gravel express" now such a car has many features that i don't need to list, but the most important to us was the in car compass.

As we headed north both on the map and the incar compass we were under control so we stopped at the local beer shop to pick up some drinks for Dave and Ron for the day.
We went through some great little town ships that were completley local and filled with Bannana platations. As we continued to head North we stopped off at a waterfall which was about 8 mtr high and jumped off it which was great fun, on our way out we stopped at the local scrap metal yard to have our photo taken. Its not that we really wanted to have our photo taken at the scrap yard but it was somewhat liberating knowing if the girls were present then perhaps we would not have the opportunity to stop for such Kodak moments.

After about 2 hours driving and heading north we still ahd not reached the top of the country to start the procession down the east coast, this seemed a little strange as its a tiny country and we were averaging about 60kmh however the compass said north so on we went.
At this stage we noticed that there were very few referance points on the map that lined up with the local signs however no great concern teh compass said north.

about 30 minutes later and some concern as to if we were only half way that it would be a long drive home we came accross a large sign for the town called St Andrews.

It turns out that St Andrews is at the bottom of the east coast and we had navigated the whole island and were only about 15 minutes from home. Now learning that the in board Navigation System was always pointing north it had been a great day and we had learned that the east and west coast look very similar.

liberation over and bring back the girls to the navigators seat.

the only disapointing thing about the day was the lack of photos taken i had left my camera with Ana as ron had said he had just charged his and appropriate memory space. after 10 photos his camera went flat.

our photo album of the day included.
-us jumping of a waterfall ( actually just the splash as we missed the actual shot)
-the scrap metal yard
-goats! ron has developed a keen interest in the local farm life so we ended up with pictures of about 6 different goats.


Dan

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