Bamboo House, Woburn, Grenada

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Grenada is a bigger island, a full 21 miles long. Our ferry docks on time, a first on the trip, but there is no sign of our hire car. A quick phone call and we discover we have been forgotten. Half an hour later the boss turns up to lend us his wife's car for the night - he'll sort out our jeep in the morning.

Our house is very comfortable, set in a lush garden on a hillside. Dining and lazing on its large and shady verandah have become favourite pastimes. We have a good kitchen, so are back into cooking. This week's discoveries include pigeon peas - peas that grow on a tree - and sapodilla - a fruit that looks like a very fat kiwi and tastes very sweet.

Grenada's tourism, we discover, is very low key. The main beaches are not busy, the isolated ones are havens of solitude. When we visit a major attraction, a cocoa and chocolate plantation, there are just six other visitors. We had Fort George, the ex-British garrison that overlooks the capital, all to ourselves.

This does change on the day a cruise ship docks. From nowhere, little tourist stalls appear at every viewpoint, only to disappear again when the ship weighs anchor.

St. George's, the capital, is also the main port. It is a sleepy little place with steep narrow streets and old traffic lights that are stuck and never change. Most of the buildings have seen better days but many were clearly once lovely, with wrought iron balconys or art-deco designs.

Our jeep enables us to get to the island interior. We walk through tropical rainforest,around lakes in old volcanic craters and up peaks with great views. In amongst the verdant green foliage flowering trees stand out - especially the red African tulip and vermilion immortalle. The interior seems to be a random patchwork of jungle foliage and cultivated land - mainly growing bananas and cocoa. And always, in the distance, is the oh-so-blue sea.

Driving here is exciting, every road is bendy and everywhere there are minivan buses to avoid. Our map is an interesting work of fiction and Grenada only has road signs as you leave St. George's, then we are on our own. Navigation is achieved by taking sightings on the sun and asking local people, a lot. We are usually lost.

The beaches range from white to black, depending on whether they are coral or volcanic. Most are interesting blends of both. The white sand is often very fine, like icing sugar, and our feet sink in with every step.

In the very north we visit a pristine white beach, a nesting site for leatherback turtles. We are two weeks too early, we are told. We sit under the trees with our picnic lunch and wonder whether to wait it out. A young couple appear and put some of the sand into a jar. A souvenir, we ask? Sort of, she says, he proposed to me here yesterday and I wanted a keepsake. Its that sort of beach, we muse, that sort of island.

Tomorrow we travel to our last island, Tobago, this time by small plane.

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