Does this color...

make my foot look fat?



In answer to the next, and perhaps, most obvious question, yes, it hurts quite a lot.

But we'll talk about that later.

First, let me tell you of the pain of the Jager hangover. Ohhhhh I had no idea. I'm not a hangover girl. I'm a puke up the rum excess, go to sleep and feel basically all right girl, with the exception of some red wine madness but ohhhhh....

Let me specify, if I hadn't before, that the prior evening at Banana's (the subject of my last blog) had yielded precisely ONE Jagerblaster. Just one! Yes, it was in addition to beer, which doesn't do much to me, but ohhhhh.... I say again.

The warm Caribbean sun through the screen because a police spotlight of pain. There wasn't nausea; no... it was a deep seeded unwellness that pounded on my skull and fulfilled all sitcom stereotypes of the perfect hangover, short of not knowing where I was, which I unfortunately did... on an island virtually without guns, thus bringing me unable to shoot myself to escape the hangover.

Blargh. Never again, babies. Beware of Swedes bearing gifts.

This made next day's tours particularly exciting. To be fair, I still had an awesome time, and met a great guy, David, who will gain greater significance in being one half of my savior later in the day. But I digress.

First it was the walking tour of the capital (St. George's, duh) on market day, which was great. First stop was the fish market where they were carving up either megladons or tuna. The size made it hard to tell. Here's a woman with some of the BABIES:



Not too monstrous until you consider that these were the little ones. The biggest, which had been detailed and headed, I briefly mistook for a DOLPHIN when I walked in.

The town of St. George's is quite charming in a sense... Some shots:







So, for town, once we saw the fish market and the open air market, the latter of which has people selling largely locally grown fruits and veggies out of their cars. A very nice lady gave me a free banana, since I was trying to find something to soak up the Jager toxins.

We ventured through Esplanade mall, which is an overpriced cruise port. On the plus side, they had nutmeg ice cream! Yeah! Even the nutmeg factory didn't have nutmeg ice cream! That's some gooooooood shit.

Ice cream in hand, we left the mecca for vacationers who want to buy souveniers but not see a place, and headed up, at approxiately a 45 degree angle, to a church which had Ivan-provided ventilation.

EVERY blog about Grenada states this, so I suppose I will too for the three people on earth who read SGU blogs and don't know... hurricane Ivan... 2004 Category 4. Unprepared. Vroosh, swish, sucks.

That's the short version. The long version involves things like US Aid screwing up things like only providing funding for the rich who lived in hurricane proof housing since the poor could not qualify for aid since they couldn't afford to bring their board homes up to standard. Thanks guys! On the plus side, China seems to be building them a cricket stadium and Venezuela is building homes into the sides of the hills for squatters, since the government is 'relocating' them (Citation: ModernDayGilligan, aka tour guide. Get on it, US.

So it means there is still a lot of Ivan damage circling around. It damaged 90% of the structures on the island, leaving things like this eerie church:





Unfortunately, taking the deserted church pictures involved losing the tour group, looking around frantically, and running up the STEEPEST hill I've seen in a while to relocate a group that wasn't necessarily ours, but was with SGU, thus the promise of a bus ride back. So we got to see Fort George, or whatever it's called, which was quite cool:



After my first taste of the potato rotis at the Sugar Shack and meeting David, who got to see me in my sunglassed hangover glory (not helped at all by running up the hill to Fort George to find people), it was time for the next tour!!

First was a ride through Lance Aux Epines, otherwise known as poshville. It's where the university club is (for professors and administration!!!), the private houses, the reminders of a pretty significant class division once you've seen other parts of Grenada. It's also where a lot of students choose to live if they're willing to cough up for housing.

Then, off to Fort Frederick, which was not only cool in and of itself (and has inward facing cannons!) but affords a great panorama of the countryside and cool breezes.

Also a hike up the stairs to it!

As a part of the same tour, we went to La Sagesse beach, which is the Halmark card view of the island:




Coolest of all, we saw a tree that apparently grows loofahs. They look like cucumbers, drop off, you peel them, and there's a frigging loofah in there. Don't ask me.

Unfortunately, when attempting to leave said tropical paradise, we ended up with a situation:



You know the honeymoon's over when you have to push the bus home! Up! No, but it push-started, just in time for us to be late to the SGU BBQ.

And how do you run out of chicken at a BBQ?

Ah, but now it's late and roomie's trying to sleep, so guess you'll have to find out the ankle thing tomorrow! Ha!