Fun, Sun & Music!

One of the reasons we travel is to expose ourselves and our kids to different environments and experiences.  Not every day offers a new magical experience but on some days you hit it out of the park.  Yesterday was one of those days...

The sun burned into our skins, reflecting diamonds of light off the rippling waves, our dinghy rocked and bounced in those same waves.  The shore was a riot of emerald greenery, trees, shrubs, and grasses blending into a carpet of tropical lushness.  The sand, stark white broken by occasional reefs and rocks.  And the sound, the incredible sound of the laughter of children floating up, barely heard above the pounding thrum of a live local band.  This was one of the amazing Grenada dinghy concerts we had been told about, and it was living up to its billing.

We had been planning to attend for the past week, making sure all our friends knew the concert was happening and hoping there would be lots of kids attending.  We loaded the dinghy with a borrowed YETI cooler (only the best cooler I've ever used) well stocked with beverages and snacks, stopped to pick up friends from Aphrodite (4 more kids) and with our dinghy loaded to the brim made off from Clarkes Court bay on the Southern coast of Grenada.  Along the way we met the gang from Ketchy Shuby and together navigated through a small reef to the neighbouring cove where a barge sat waiting to play host to a local band.  Dinghys were rafted up like the kelp forests we have back in BC and we added our dinghy to the mix. 

Like most local events, things started off slowly, and late.  A 3:00 start time stretched to 4:00, the kids had devoured most of the snacks but the crowd was complacent, renewing old friendships and creating new ones.

Cy from the sailboat Magic had captivated the imagination with the help of his two dogs, Jupiter and Cinco.  The kids adored the pups and all told spent more time in his boat or the water than in ours.

Finally the band started to play and delivered a determinedly local lineup of soca music and freestyle beats.  They were good and more than effectively backed up by the environment they were playing in.

After a few hours of music, dancing, sun, swimming and socializing things began to break up.  Dinghys were untied and engines fired up for the short trip back to the boats or shore.  Every face was scarred by smiles from ear to ear that were not eased in the least by the short rain shower in the middle of festivities.

We capped off the night in the company of the whole crew from Aphrodite (including adults) who hosted us for dinner on their St. Francis 50 catamaran - on the whole it was another fantastic day in Grenada and a decidedly different experience than we have every enjoyed in Vancouver.