Monkeys at Grand Etang

Saturday December 28th, 2013

Even though the day before was kinda really awful, with the days of her stay quickly dwindling, we made the most of Saturday!

Ross and I ran over to the store to get some monkey bait food. The store was fresh out, so we did a drive by the fruit stand behind the store. Don't worry east Palmdale friends, what I mean is, I stopped the car, and paid for the bananas. She really talked up her crop. She said that they were gomishell bananas? Yeah idk. But they were AMAZING. I guess they are just a type of banana but they were really sweet and creamy (sorry Cass). I really wanted to keep them for myself, but I also really wanted to see a monkey.

Anyways, we packed up for a fun day and headed into the heart of the rain forest.

If you are wondering/ jealous, the party hat came with the car.

It looks like I am all about story telling today, so let me tell you a story about the freakin' monkeys up at Grand Etang. Those little stinkers hate me. When you first come down to Grenada, everyone has to get their picture with a monkey to be in the cool kids club. It's a rite of passage, like getting a picture with Cosmo when you attend BYU.

You wanna know how many times I have been to Grand Etang?
Too many.  

You wanna know how many times I have seen a monkey?
NEVER. 

Those monkeys are just so freakin rude. This time I was determined to see a monkey. Apparently they are out and about for the tourists this time of year, so I grabbed my gomi-whatever bananas and delicately carted them 1,800 feet up, up, up above sea level.

Bless my lucky stars, guess who rushed out when we got out of the car.

Boom! Those gomi-nanas are purrre gold! I think they know the good stuff when they see it. Honestly we were pretty lucky, there were plenty of tourists bustling around, but the monkey came straight to us.

These monkeys don't take no crap. Monkey Rules: Don't peel the banana, keep the goods in plain sight, wait patiently.

I held on tight and the monkey totally crawled up my legs!

The evolutionary brain of these animals is phenomenal. After he took my banana, he went over to Rissa's and instead of doing something cute like crawling up her legs, the straight up snatched the banana!

I think I speak for all of us when I say we were ecstatic to have such a wonderful run in with a monkey. Haha. We were laughing about his attitude long after he stalked off into the jungle.

It is tourist high season right now, so we wandered around and played the part.

We wandered over to the visitor's center, where there is a nice view of the lake.

The view is clearly marked, in case you forget, or didn't notice.

I think Grand Etang is Ross's favorite place in Grenada. The air up there is so nice and cool and fresh. All that green isn't bad either. After educating ourselves on the Grand Etang Lake Ecosystem at the visitor's center, we headed to the lake.

Looking back, I guess I never blogged about hand fishing with Katie and Cece... But it's a thing folks. I didn't think anyone would want to try, so I didn't bring bread, but that didn't stop them.



It is really freaky to see all the fish swarming your hands. I didn't get a great picture, but you can see the yellows and oranges of the huge koi that live in the lake.



Ross actually caught a fish! But I was too busy taking bad pictures to get one of his victory.

Not to be vain, but I really like this picture of me because I think I look a lot like my mom. And my mom is really beautiful, so I will just go ahead and hand myself this one. ;)

I grew up the desert, and every once in a while I am reminded how how stunning the deep greens are here. Look at that blue sky!

Sadly, we couldn't fish all day. We had a measly piece of bread that was quickly disintegrating. So we decided to head down to the close by Annandale Falls.