I think we saved the busiest day for last, which is really saying something because we really had some busy days!
For Christmas Santa brought Rissa and Ross massage gift certificates! Monday morning ended up being #treatyoself Monday.
In honor of this day, we started with some donuts from Nick's Donut World in Lance aux Epines and had a picnic at Grand Anse. Eating donuts and looking out at the sea? Yes please. Rissa got her massage and said that it was amazing! Yay (go Santa!).
Then we headed up to the north side of the island through Grand Etang.
Ross was the master navigator and we somehow lucked out and avoided going through Grenville. Grenville is the second largest town in the country. It is located on the west coast and is the capital of the most populous parish. The Ross Route (TM) probably saved us at least 30 minutes and a massive headache trying to figure out how to get through the one-way route through town. Ross: 1.
Eventually and with a little uncertainty, we made it over to Belmont Estate. Aka The Chocolate Factory!
I have been here just once before with my friend Tammy on an around the island tour. I thought Rissa would like to visit because she is a big dark chocolate fan.
You can pay for a tour, we got a student discount and it was about $10 or $13 EC. Ever wonder where chocolate comes from?
I have blogged about the cocoa fruit before. It comes from pods like these. They are yellow or red-ish, like our tour guide is holding below.
The cocoa fruit is actually pretty delicious. You just suck on the gooey white stuff, and the chocolate comes from the seed. During the tour they show you all about the process of collecting the beans, fermenting them, drying them, polishing them, processing them, the whole shebang, tree to bar!
In the olden days especially they would "walk de beans" throughout the day. Workers shuffle through the beans to turn them so they dry evenly. On the tour you get to try it out (not on real beans of course, you aren't that cool).
It is an interesting little tour, can't say I knew any of that beforehand. In my humble opinion, the best part is when they pull out these fancy dishes with CHOCOLATE (Brigette, you know what I am talking about). They let you sample some of their chocolate bars, 60% cocoa and 70% cocoa.
The woman also brewed us up some cocoa tea. It's a Grenadian drink, they mix up they chocolate balls ( cocoa + spices) with water or milk. Much like hot chocolate. It is absolutely delicious! After that tour we decided to go for the grand slam and do the Garden Tour as well. #treatyoself
It started with this display of local spices. How many can you name?
Hopefully you at least got #8. The garden tour was awesome!! I love plants and flowers. We got to go all over around and down the grounds of the Belmont Estate. We saw the herb garden, vanilla garden, vegetable garden, cocoa trees, and of course tons more. Top left is a stinky noni fruit, the middle right is a bunch of cocoa fruit blossoms, and the bottom left is a bunch of vanilla
Belmont Estate also houses the Grenada Goat Dairy Project. It's a non-profit organization that helps local farmers transition to "sustainable income-generating production."
I think the Garden tour was better than the Chocolate Tour, and it lasted quite a bit longer. They have a mini tiny zoo area. Just some monkeys, and parrots and such.
Just a few more collages! Rissa is modeling some lovely local fruit. The five-finger fruit (starfuit) and one-finger fruit. Can you see the sea in the bottom picture?
Our guide knew everything. She was really fun and nice. She takes care of the gardens on the estate and does the floral arrangements. Just the evening before they had a wedding so the arrangements were still up.
At the end of the tour we got a big sampler of fresh fruit, straight from the garden! #treatyoself
It was so delicious. Definitely glad we took the garden tour.
Since it was Treat Yo' Self day. I spoiled Rissa with some chocolate, truffles, and cocoa balls.
It was a very eventful visit to the Belmont Estate. It's funny because I didn't much care for dark chocolate before Grenada, but now I love it! The dark chocolate is really that good. You can eat as much as you want because dark chocolate makes you happy right?!
All dark chocolat'd up, we look pretty happy.
There is actually a documentary that was made about the Belmont Chocolate Company, the trailer is only a few minutes you can watch it here.
Since we were already so far north, we decided that we would head to a close-by windward beach.
To be continued...
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