March 08 – March 23 2021; 6783 nm and 733 days after departure from La Rochelle.

Isn’t that a sweet name for a street? “Lovers Lane”, I thought it kind of represents how the Grenadian people are. So far we only met nice and very friendly people. Yeah, sure, you always find some grumpy ones in any country, but all in all they are super nice and helpful! It doesn’t matter where you go they are always willing to help or happy to chat with you. When we ask them how they are doing, they often reply: “Wonderful”. Such a nice positive life attitude! Sometimes chatting turns out to be difficult as their English accent can be veeeery – let’s say – Grenadian. The conversation can be like this: “Wwwwwww lke crry?”We: ” Please, could you repeat?”,Wwwwwww lke crry? we:”say it again”, “Wwwwwww lke crry?”, me:”I still don’t understand”…, well I guess our ears need to get adapted to that slang. Btw, that was a conversation we had when we were walking to the next bay, to Secret Harbour. A lady in a car stopped and asked us the above 😁or something like that. We couldn’t figure out what she wanted but it was still fun! She probably thought we’re a bit crazy…

Last week we went to the Seven Sisters waterfalls. Usually you have to pay a small fee to get to the fall which includes a map to give you some directions to find your way. When we arrived it was all closed, but we got some directions already ahead from our dear friends Shell and James. So we thought we didn’t need any help when some workers asked us if we know our way. Our directions were easy to follow. At a junction or in doubt, just take the left path. Hahah already at the second junction we made a mistake, we went left but not left enough as we didn’t recognise the path we should have taken as a path. Almost immediately after we took the wrong left we heard some shouting across the valley. We first didn’t realise the calls were for us, but then we understood “left,left” and we knew we took the wrong left. So nice of the workers checking on us and making sure we – even though we didn’t asked for – took the right left lane. Later on, already on our way back from the refreshing waterfall, we passed by the nutmeg plantation. And again there was a sweet worker who saw us and came by to show us the nutmeg tree and gave us some nutmegs as a present. So very nice!

What I also really love is the bus system here in Grenada. It is very simple, easy to understand and also efficient. Simple, as the price system is pretty clear. EC$ 2,50 (around 80 Euro Cent) for adults and half the price for kids. On longer distance bus rides like e.g. going to the waterfalls we paid 5 bucks each. (I only mention this as in Germany you sometimes need a Diploma to figure out the transportation fee, veeeery complicated!) Easy, as there are two lines around St George’s and about 6 other lines around the island. Efficient, because you can enter the bus anywhere on the bus route and as well leave it. Just knock on the roof of the bus or where ever it is possible to knock and the driver will stop, awesome! To enter, you just need to raise your hand. Often, if not full, they will anyway stop and ask if you want a ride when they see you walking down a street. Nobody wants to miss a business, right?! And if you’re willing to pay a little more (it’s helpful if you know to negotiate well) the driver will even take you to destinations off his regular route. Great!

In my opinion a ride in a bus is a must do! Of course taking a taxi in an air-conditioned car is more comfortable but definitely not as interesting as taking a local bus. I think I already mentioned that it is a squeezed-in-ride which can get a little sweaty but its always a fun experience. E.g. depending on where you sit you obviously have to get out of the bus each time when people want to leave or get in. That at least helps your legs not to fall asleep when they are cooped up in the seats. Sometimes when you think the bus is already packed, the doorman will squeeze in another pupil or a mother with two kids. It is just getting cosier😊 and if lucky, one can study and admire the amazing hair art of some of the kids. Most of the time there is a second guy in the bus to support the driver- I called him the doorman- as he always sits next to the door. His tasks are collecting the money, opening and closing the sliding door or asking people -on the fly- weather they need a ride. These guys are usually also looking well after their guests. Sometimes they help the 80 year old grandpa to get in and out of the bus (no low-floor busses here😉), they hand over bags or very cute, they help elementary school children to cross the road to make sure they come home safely. They deliver food or packages to houses. Just a quick stop and the doorman will run to the house and hand over the item. What a great service. Ok it can get annoying for the other passengers, when they stop veeery often but usually nobody minds. My absolute favourite so far is, when even Babies get delivered😁. Ok, it’s not that they take the babies and deliver them like a package, but it’s a bit similar. Well, one day on a ride back from town, a young woman with a cute little baby (the mother?) was sitting with us in the bus. At a stop the woman got up and left the bus, at least we thought she would do that, but no. She only delivered the baby girl to -what we guessed- was a nursery school. Another young woman received the little girl and the first woman stayed in the bus. It was a baby delivery service, wasn’t it? Anyhow I like this uncomplicated bus and delivery system and am very curious what more we will experience.

Even if it it might have sounded like it so far. No, we didn’t just sit and drove around the island in the local busses for the last two weeks. In fact in between the bus rides, walks and fun evenings we were quite productive! The most important assignment was El Capitano swinging the scissors and cutting off my beautiful though annoying hair. It took me a couple of days to decide wether I wanted him to cut my hair or rather let Shell do it. She cuts James and her hair regularly since ages. In the end I wanted him to cut it but with Shell as a back up. Snap,snap,snap and cut it was. Easy, peasy, done! I think it took only two mins to cut and I must admit my Capitano did a good job. Don’t you dare and say anything else 😉! The other worth mentioning assignment was finally trying out my new sewing machine. I needed a couple of hours to figure out how to use this heavy beast. But as soon as I have become familiar with operating the machine it was fun to finish our last project, the sunshade. This machine just smoothly runs through x-layers of canvas and webbing. Just what I wanted! And as I was in the flow of sewing I finally sewed our long-awaited cockpit cushions. Now we can have very comfortable naps in the cockpit😁.

Almost two weeks ago we decided to get our dinghy checked. Already back in the Canaries we detected that our dinghy bottom was loosing very slowly air. Our attempt to fix it unfortunately turned out to be a failure. Since we are here and using it every day for longer distances, Norbert needed to pump it up every morning to make a ride reasonable comfortable. As we wanted to leave this anchorage to head to Carriacou and some more anchorages we thought it would be a smart idea to get it checked and repaired before we leave. Instead of getting it back within a couple of days, we’re still waiting for it. Leaving postponed. They found three little openings. One is a very complicated one as it is in the seem underneath the bottom which connects the two inflatable floors. So cross fingers that we will get back our rib tomorrow as we really would like to leave. The upside, we can continue using their swop dinghy. which is an awesome 3m dinghy with aluminium bottom, planing well with our 10HP engine :-).