Grenada: Wild 'n Spicy
By Lauren Kramer
It’s choppy in Grenada’s Moliniere Bay, and as I try to summon the courage to slip off the side of the boat, I’m thinking the dark water looks nothing like the turquoise blue I saw from the window of the ’plane that chugged laboriously through the sky to bring me here. Snorkel in mouth, as I splash over the edge and glance through misty goggles, I find myself looking straight down at a female figure standing on the ocean floor 30 feet below me.
Her name is Sienna and she is one of several submerged sculptures placed in this bay by Jason de Caires Taylor, a British sculptor and scuba diver. Over the past two years he has blended his two passions to create an unusual underwater art gallery, and is hoping his sculptures will help regenerate Grenada’s coral reef systems damaged by storms.
Snorkel around the bay and you find yourself moving over some 55 different life-size sculptures, ranging in depth from 30 to 50 feet. Taylor has turned his Sculpture Park into a canvas through which he explores Caribbean folklore. One sculpture, titled La Diablesse, is a devil woman with the face of a skull. Legend has it that she entices men to follow her in the night, eventually leading them to a cliff where they jump to their deaths.
“It’s startling when you scuba dive up to her and see her face up close,” confesses Suzanne Clarke, co-owner of Grenada Seafaris. Until recently, her company hired a young Grenadian to help out with the business. But after taking one look at La Diablesse he hung up his snorkel and mask and refused to have anything more to do with the operation.
Image Courtesy www.jasondecairestaylor.com
“Despite the strong influence of Catholicism on this island, some islanders still believe fervently in superstition and folklore,” she says.
It is an eerie but compellingly beautiful experience to snorkel over Taylor’s sculptures. One gallery called Grace Reef features 16 casts of a Grenadian woman lying down. The Lost Correspondent is a sculpture of a local dive master sitting at a desk, and there’s a circle of 28 life-size children holding hands – although some have been knocked down by storms or stray anchors.
Two years ago, when Taylor first lowered his sculptures, he hoped they would promote coral growth and provide a habitat for marine life. A glance at Still Life confirms he’s doing the right thing. The sculpture, which features a table with a bowl of fruit, is all ready attracting schools of fish who come to nibble on the corals growing from it.
Fish aren’t the only ones who come to experience Grenada’s delicacies. The island’s simple charm and serenity are attracting travelers in increasing numbers, among them Morgan Freeman and his spouse, long-time fans of Grenada. Some come to park off on the beach and do little more than soak in a Caribbean suntan. But for the active and adventurous, there is plenty to keep your interest piqued.
I donned hiking shoes and braved the steep roads into the interior of the island to reach the Grand Etang Forest Reserve. Here, I hiked along a steep path that wended its way between lush rainforest laced with the glint of red baliser plants and towering bamboo. I passed trees heavy with nutmeg, one of the island’s foremost spices, and fields of callalou, a nutrient-rich plant easily mistaken for spinach at dinner later that night. A half hour later, at the Seven
Image Courtesy www.jasondecairestaylor.com
Sisters Waterfall, I gladly tore off my clothes and plunged into the cool water, grateful for the respite from the heat. 
The breeze was welcome in the late afternoon as my car climbed to a
precipice on the island known as Leaper’s Hill. As history tells it, Frenchmen from Martinique tried to buy land on Grenada from the Caribs, who inhabited the island at the time. The Caribs refused to sell and battles ensured over the next year until all but 40 Caribs had perished. Faced with slavery to the French, they jumped to their deaths from a cliff at Grenada’s northern end, now known as Morne des Sauteurs or Leapers’ Hill.
That’s the history book version, at any rate. As the sunlight shimmers off the water some 100 feet above the ocean, local tour guide Roger Augustine tells it differently. “The Caribs had two choices: massacre by canon or jumping to their deaths,” he says. “When the site was excavated, portable canons were Image by Lauren Kramer
found that suggest the only alternative to death by canon was a suicide jump off the cliff.”
With the Grenadine Islands in the distance and the turquoise water below, it’s difficult to muster an image of the brutality and bloodshed that occurred here a few hundred years ago. Today the only possible trouble broiling beneath the surface is Kick ’em Jenny, a submarine volcano 187 meters beneath the sea surface that has erupted 12 times since 1939, most recently in 2001.
The Seismic Research Unit at the University of the West Indies monitors its activity carefully, but the Grenadians don’t seem worried. They have seen their share of natural disasters, most notably in September 2004, when Hurricane Ivan hit the island. The class five hurricane incapacitated Grenada, bringing tourism to a virtual standstill, and anyone who was on the island can recall it vividly.
Andy, a staff member at the Spice Island Beach Resort, remembers covering his body with a couch at his home to prevent being swept away by the fierce winds that claimed 49 island lives in its eight-hour-long duration. “Trees were uprooted and blown away – I could not have imagined it if I hadn’t seen it,”
Image by Lauren Kramer
he told me gravely.
All that has changed now and Grenada has bounced back from the storm, its businesses and infrastructure stronger than ever. Today a visit to the island is filled with the aromatic tang of exotic spices appearing in the most unusual places - like nutmeg yogurt for breakfast and guava jelly on your toast.
Grenada is an island full of surprises, with ephemeral underwater art and landscapes so densely covered with foliage they look like the backdrop to Jurassic Park. Giant leatherback turtles lumber onto the beaches to lay their eggs at night. Fishermen with skin wizened by the sun sell their daily catch from the back of a truck, blowing through a conch shell to attract the attention of residents. Islanders often share their meals, grilling their seafood over an open flame outside their homes in a ritual fondly known in the local dialect as an oil-down.
There’s a vibrant community life in Grenada and a relaxed friendliness that hangs in the hot air. Spend time on this exotic isle and you cannot help but feel the primordial stillness that prevails, lulling all who visit into the tranquil pace of island life.
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