Grenada, West Indies

30 March 2007 marks 6 months of self-imposed social exile and saving/paying off (£4.5k down since September - a break highly needed (this was the excuse I told myself). I was bored, had 3 weeks til my next reflexology exam, and my recruitment agency had no work lined up for me for the next week. Whilst looking on www.Travelzoo.co.uk scouring the deals for a last minute European city break, I noticed a price for Granada that seemed quite high for Spain at £160. I clicked to have a look, and it was Grenada in the West Indies! Wanderlust took over my index finger as I pressed the "hell yeah" button and I booked the flight leaving Gatwick in less than 24 hrs. I have been good and sensible for 6 months, a temporary blip was not only scheduled but inevitable.

I ended up, via Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree, finding www.cabier-vision.com, a little lodge run by a crazy Austrian couple and very affordable. On the southeast edge of the island, it is away from any tourist areas and for the whole week the only tourists I saw were at a restaurant near the airport before the flight home. Cabier has a lovely little beach cove right next to the rooms, which is mostly deserted so you can have it to yourself. This is mainly due to the road to Cabier being so bad that you need 4WD to get there so most of the locals give it a wide berth. .

In retrospect going to Cabier Lodge saved my life. I couldn't get money out for the first 4 days of arriving on Grenada. After a couple of highly expensive phone calls to UK customer service on my mobile it was revealed that Barclays had cancelled my card as they thought it was fraudulent activity abroad. This meant when I got in the shared taxi to Cabier from outside the airport, I had no way of paying my way. Luckily it was a shared taxi and we were all going to the same place and the other travellers covered me. Then when I got there I found out everything at Cabier was on a tab so I kept racking it up, presuming the next day I could actually get some money out to pay for everything (room included)... I was relaxing into the Caribbean way of life so well, I was in my element with reggae blasting out of every radio/shop/car on the island, and the stresses of life had melted away. Then on the 4th evening, whilst putting another rum punch on my tab and down my gullet whilst reclining on the terrace overlooking the moonlit bay at Cabier to the sounds of Jimmy Cliff, the terrible realisation hit that maybe I didn't have enough funds in the bank which was why I wasn't getting any money out. Cold sweats prevailed that evening's sleep, quite a rare thing as there was no air con and the only way to get to sleep every other night was by wetting the bedsheet under the cold tap and then wrapping myself in it, without pulling the mosquito net down.

Luckily the ATM finally belched some Eastern Caribbean dollars into my sweaty and desperate palms on the 5th day and I set about buying anything I could as it was such an alien feeling, actually exchanging money for objects. I ended with some very poor fake D&G sunglasses from a crap shop in Grenville next to the bank, as I had broken mine on the way to the airport and had been squinting since I got there. I cherished the new ones for at least an hour until I realised they made everything brighter when looking through them. Ho hum, such is life...

It was a great week, nay stupendous, and also very educational. I went to a nutmeg factory, a cocoa processing plant, a rainforest, but the Grenada Chocolate Company was shut for refurbishment (argh!). I got in some amazing beaches at La Sagesse, Grand Anse and a private bay by sicilian/Caribbean restaurant La Luna whose marvellous Sicilian chef gave us a free plate of parma ham to start with and some handrolled truffles for dessert (being in a group of three scantily clad girls had nothing to do with this I like to think). I did miss Buju Banton playing at Moonlight City in Grenville on the saturday night, which I would have loved to attend. An old rasta called Terence fishing at the Cabier Lodge beach told me about this one as he was going down too (as were most Grenadian residents it seemed!). But to make up for it I went to the island of Carriacou the next day and swam on Paradise Beach, met Banana Joe who ran a "brunch bar" on the beach but was too stoned to get out of his hammock to do anything except giggle and wave, and decided that I really should make an effort to move here at some time in the near future...