sunsation tours

We start at Westerhall, a heritage site. There is an old distillery which once had two water wheels (only one of them used to crush cane). It houses also a museum which contains the collection of journalist Alister Hughes. You see a wide Kalinago pottery,. A treadle-powered dentist’s drill, the first taxi on the Island (A Willy’s Overlander, 1915), petrol pumps to match… and so on! Of course, there is also paraphernalia associated with rum production. Rum is still produced, though not distilled, here and of course sampling is included!

Theresa's Backyard Garden is not so much a showpiece garden of tropical flowers and shrubs (for this, see our ‘Homes & Gardens’ tour); though there re some striking flowers here. It is more a well-stocked ‘productive’ garden of fruit and vegetables, where you walk around to see different kinds of bananas, pawpaws, guavas, … and many other fruits in season. Again you get to sample – straight off the tree!

Next stop is Leonie's Melting Pot, a little roadside café where you are plied with herbal tea (fresh from the garden outside), a fruit drink or two (again, fresh), and cake made with local fruit, not imported dried fruit. The welcome, as at her friend Theresa’s, is warm and sincere.

On to an extraordinary little museum, lost in the countryside. Mr. Rome, sculptor, holder of a British Empire Medal, has chosen to showcase not the great civilizations and migrations of history, but the way the rural poor lived in Grenada in the 1950s. Look out for the charcoal toothpaste, the treatments for a nail in your foot, and the test that young men had to undergo to impress their intended father-in-law. And, as they say, a great deal more. It wasn’t easy, and it’s all presented with originality and humour.

The last stop is at Carlton cocoa fermentary, where you can follow the progress of cocoa beans through fermentation, drying, ‘polishing’, sorting by size, and bagging for export. Cocoa is one of our main agricultural exports – and our beans are among the world’s very best. (Ask the Swiss importers!)

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