Meghan On Amélie-August 2014

Ah, welcome back aboard fellow shipmates! August in Grenada, I think we could all say was full of parties, events and great surprises!

Carnival

In case you don’t know, most of the Caribbean islands (and some countries in South America too) have a big festival each year called Carnival. Some Carnivals aren’t that big so it is basically just a normal cool-looking parade going down the street but Grenada was nominated second best Carnival in the world (Brazil is first) so we were quite excited when we found out it was going to happen when we here! We wanted to make the best of it since it was probably going to be the only Carnival we see in the Caribbean so let’s just say, we (especially my dad and I) went a bit out of the ordinary! There were 4 parades spread out between 2 days.

The first parade was called: J’ouvert or Jab Jab and as I described it it was: “the march of the devils” because everybody really does everything they are not allowed to do any other day except for that day (not a pleasant picture in your mind is it?!)! It started at 4am and if you went parading with them (which I didn’t but my dad did), there was a guarantee you were going to be covered in either oil or paint and sometimes both! We came dingheying into town just to see what the parade looked like but we were dinghying in mostly oil not water! Rumour has it that some men just dumped out the rest of the oil they used to throw on people into the marina water! To make things worse, a couple of hours later, a few students who were covered in oil were standing on the yacht club dinghy dock and it collapsed so it was basically just oil everywhere you went! Eventually, they had it all cleaned up and the dinghy dock rebuilt.

My participation in the body paint!

My favourite costume

Later that day, after everybody rested and got cleaned up, there was the next parade called: the Fancy Mas. This one was definitely more organized and well… fancier! All the groups came in sections to show off their costumes, dance and if you were lucky, you’d be able to sneak in to ask for a picture with them (and they’d always say yes!)! The same parade happened the next day but there were judges so each group did their own routine too! The costumes came in every different colours and shapes: some were black skeletons, some were white fairies, some were silver birds, some were beige and pink cowgirls, one man was even a big green dragon but my favourite group was definitely the blue, red, yellow and orange birds in the: “In Flight” section! Here are some pictures of the beautiful costumes there were! 

The peacock routine

Bats

Yes that is a man... in a dress... with a tree on his head!

White fairies

March of the watermelons!

Silver birds

That is a lot of pink people!

There were also few kids in the parade too and I would have to say that they were definitely the most enthusiastic! Seeing those adorable, delighted kids is something I will never forget! They came in groups too such as: all 4 seasons (snowflakes for winter, flowers for spring, suns for summer and colourful leaves for fall), cows, little boys as soldiers and little girls as pink butterflies and green fairies!

5 little flowers!

An adorable little sunshine!

A snowflake and an autumn leaf

Butterflies

One little green fairy!

After a full day of partying, yes… we still had enough energy to party a bit more. The night parade was called: Light Mas. My mom, my brother and I only stayed until about 9:30 but still saw some pretty cool things! There were 3 trucks with about 20 speakers on each of them and had blasting SOCA music (kind of like rock music but has a specific rhythm and non-understandable lyrics!) with people walking behind them dressed in a specific costume that they bought when they signed up to do this. They each sponsored a famous Caribbean business: one was Lime (a cellphone and internet service), one was Carib (type of beer) and one was Digicel (also a cellphone and internet service). All you could see coming down the hill was thousands of lights all different colours! A man would also sometimes tell everyone in the parade to move to either the left or the right and where we were it looked like a lit up wave! As the people walked by, you could all their light up accessories like: a viking helmet with light up horns and a light up axe, a fake mohauk that lit up and top hats that lit up! Before we left, one of our friends who had signed up to walk behind one of the trucks gave me a plastic tube that lit up that said Digicel on it so I waved it around the whole dinghy ride back to the boat! Overall, it was an amazing Carnival and I know I will never forget it (if this is second best Carnival in the world, this makes me really want to see Brazil’s!)!

Apartment Hunting and Life Back on Land

Amélie in her "giant underpants"!

Every boat, every few years has to get their bottom repainted which means they have to get hauled out and put on “stilts” in a boatyard. Now, staying on your boat in the boatyard (even though I’ve never done it) is hot, stinky, sweaty and there are a thousand mosquitos so as most people do, we had to go find an apartment to stay in for the 2 weeks we were going to be out of the water so we took one morning to go apartment hunting! 

We first looked at a nice (ish) apartment with all the necessities (3 beds/2 bedrooms, a kitchen, etc.) but it didn’t have enough “running space” for our non-stop Matthew and there was no water to swim in nearby so as nice as the lady was who owned those apartments, we couldn’t take it. The next apartments we looked at were in a very nice and untouched place of Grenada called: La Sagesse. The apartments were beautiful with wooden staircases and original art on the walls but there was sadly one problem: there was no kitchen and we are unable to eat out every night  (because that would pass our budget). We were going to bring a microwave and a few other things but we decided to look at one more place to see if it would be just as good as La Sagesse but with a kitchen. These apartments were more like a resort but were meant for these kind of situations we are in. The place was called: Gem Holiday. They had no 2 bedrooms available but we still asked to see a 1 bedroom. It had 2 queen sized beds, a nice living area, a porch with an ocean view and voila.. a kitchen! La Sagesse was definitely a bigger living space and was more beautiful but since there was no kitchen and Gem Holiday had a beach and a pool, we decided to take Gem which is where I am writing this right now!

Life back on land has been nice and quite relaxing! There are a few luxuries about being on land now, after living on a boat for 5 months. My mom said that she thought the big fridge was the biggest luxury but I don’t really get why because we have quite a big fridge on board too. I know that Matthew’s #1 luxury (which I really appreciate too) is the big walk in and non-stop shower! Another of my biggest luxuries is flushing toilets (on the boat, we have to pump them)! It is always an instinct to wash my hands quickly because on the boat, we have to make the water ourselves using a water maker (it takes sea water and makes it into fresh water) and that takes a lot of power and time too but then I got into the apartment and I realized that the water is unlimited so now I take advantage of that, trust me! I am very happy with all of these luxuries but my #1 is definitely air conditioning!

This is a bit of an exaggeration but close enough to how I take advantage!

School starts back up on Monday so I’m going to soak up all the full days of free time for as long as I can but that is still about all I can say for now so this is Meghan On Amélie… out!