Grenada Rainforest Hike

Thursday, May 2

We arranged to do a hike with our buddies from Virginia Dare, Bob & Christine.  They're always up for a challenging hike, and we have a blast with them every time we're with them, so we were so excited that they met up with us in Grenada.  Christine found a great hike in her book of "The Best Hikes in the Caribbean" that also was noted as one of the most difficult hikes in Grenada.  After the four of us hiked Petit Piton in St. Lucia, we have no fear of anything called a difficult hike!  After further investigation, Christine found a guide mentioned in her book that would take us on the hike that starts at the Grand Etang visitor center near the Grand Etang lake, hikes up to the top of Mount Qua Qua, then heads down through the rainforest ending in Concord Falls. 

We met up with Bob and Christine early in the morning and took the bus to St. George's, and then a second bus to Grand Etang where we met up with our guide, Cliffon.  

The hike was really beautiful, tons of waterfalls and streams through the rainforest.  It wasn't very difficult with just a few steep downhill areas.  The hike took all day and we calculated later that we covered 14 miles.

Here's Cliffon, our guide, chopping a couple of branches into hiking sticks for each of us.

View of the south west coast of Grenada, looking out over Cliffon's home town near Gouyave.

That's the trail through the break in the trees that leads to the top of Mount Qua Qua.

Grand Etang Lake - a high elevation lake in the middle of the Grenada rainforest.  The locals have told us that they do not swim in the lake because of the huge dangerous lake fish.

View of the east coast of Grenada towards the town of Grenville

Here we are on the top of Mount Qua Qua

Bob, Cliffon, and Christine under the boulder at the top of Mount Qua Qua

Rainforest streams.  We passed a bunch of these on the way down to Concord Falls.

Looking down from the top of one of the waterfalls in the rainforest

Here's Bob, admiring the waterfalls

Concord Falls

At the end of the trail, Concord Falls, we had a couple drinks and talked with the locals that live in the nearby village.

 

Sharing some trail mix with our buddy, Dawane.  Here he's sharing some of his Pringles with Bob in exchange for trail mix (just the M&Ms) and crackers.

 After the hike, we walked another 2 miles down to Black Point Bay where there's a beautiful black sand volcanic beach.  Gene and I spotted this beach as we were sailing south to the bottom of Grenada and decided we had to find a way to get there.