Mom & Dad Haines Visit Grenada: Part II / III

 On Thursday morning we went to the most famous of the Grenadian beaches: Grand Anse. None of these pictures do it an ounce of justice, but they do show how much fun we were having! The water was calm as glass. My parents snorkeled and saw a few colorful fish, as well as a big starfish. I just sat there and floated on my boogie board, soaking in the moment. My favorite thing to do in the Caribbean Sea, other than boogie board, is to just float on something and stare at the island, soaking it all in.

Once we'd received our fair share of sun, we popped into Umbrella's Beach Bar for lunch. This may be my favorite restaurant here. The sandwiches are (usually) amazing (it's common for our favorite dishes at each Grenadian restaurant to taste completely different every time we go). The drinks are phenomenal. And expensive. I got artsy in the picture above and put each of our sunglasses in front of our drinks. On the left is my frozen lemonade. In the middle is Mom's mango smoothie. And on the right is Dad's nutmeg milkshake. The waitress was so sweet and when my mom asked her what kind of tree we were sitting by, she told us and brought us some nuts from the tree to crack open later and try. They tasted kind of like Brazilian nuts. The best part of Umbrella's is the ambiance. It's got a great breeze and the best view.

On Friday we made the long drive up to Mt. Carmel falls. We went here with my brothers when they came, too. You can see more pictures of it in that post. These two dogs met us at the entrance and followed us all the way there. They were so adorable! They had some trust issues (many locals are really abusive to dogs, and there are stray dogs eeeeeeverywhere), but we eventually got them to come close enough that we could share some snacks with them, and then they were content to walk by our ankles. Jared loves rough-housing with dogs, so on the way back he got down on his knees and growled at them, and I have never seen two dogs yelp louder or bolt away faster. Poor things were terrified! They must've had some bad experiences with humans in the past. It was so sad. Jared felt bad.

You'll see more of this in the video I made, but we slid down the falls just like we did when my brothers came. My mom is such a champ! My dad and I were both chicken our first time going down. Mom wanted to slide down so badly, but it turned out that her arm really was broken, and every time my dad went down he'd go over this one bump where he'd have to catch himself with his right arm to keep his balance, and that's the arm that my mom had broken so she was nervous to do it. But even though we kept telling her that she didn't have to and that she should keep her arm safe, she totally slid down anyway! She'd come all the way to Grenada for this experience, and nothin' was gonna stop her. I'm not going to lie, I was terrified when she went down. She did fall to her right side when she went over the bump, and it looked like she nearly fell onto her arm. You'll see it in the video. But apparently it didn't hurt her at all and she was so excited at the bottom! Proud of her.

We stopped at La Sagesse beach on the way home just to show them. I was hoping to swim here, but Jared needed to get back to class for a lab. So we just went home and napped instead. I think I've finally figured out the best way to host visitors in Grenada, now that we've had our last ones. The correct formula is as follows: sleep in, breakfast together, swim/fun morning activity, lunch, afternoon relaxation, fun late afternoon activity or dinner out, fun evening activity or movie/board game in. We get a lot of sun when visitors come, so this was the perfect balance. We felt busy and like we were seeing a lot, but just when we started getting tired out we'd come home and just relax all afternoon. Shower, read, nap, whatever. And I think we all slept great at night, too. I would like to thank the Lambert family for being our guinnea pigs as our first visitors. Looking back at their trip compared to my parents' trip, I'm pretty sure we ran Jared's family completely into the ground with activities all day everyday. And they got way sunburned too. Good thing those Lamberts are tough cookies!

 ^^THIS SUNSET on their last evening here. I wish we'd been able to see it without the fence in the way, but it was amazing. The sun was bright red and we caught it right as it was dipping into the sea.

^^An accurate portrayal of how people who live in "tropical paradises" really look like. Dad's hair is completely just flat in the wind, mom's is so fluffy in the humidity, and mine is just a fuzzy mess. Also, jumpsuit and no makeup again. And you can tell we're all a little pink and look a bit wiped out after a week in the sun. 

We had our last dinner at a local place I'd always wanted to eat at: Patrick's. This is the place to go if you want to eat what local Grenadians eat. I'm not going to say all the food was amazing and I'm going to try to cook it when we get back to America (I won't), but it was a super cool cultural experience! I'd already had oil down and fried plantains, but our waiter (you'll see him in the video) served us lots of things I'd never tried before. The meal was "tapas style," which means we had small portions of like 16 different dishes. I can't even begin to remember all of them. Garlicky fatty chicken, polenta, a green banana salad, callaloo soup (so good--I might actually try that one in America), crabcake, some kind of green bean, something breadfruity, parmesany eggplant...a bunch of other stuff...and we finished up with nutmeg ice-cream.

After a quick trip to the grocery store on Saturday morning to pick up some of Grenada's famous local dark chocolate and chocolate balls, we dropped my parents off at the airport to fly home. It was so weird to come back to the apartment without them. Visitor weeks go by too quickly! I was surprised that I started crying after I waved goodbye to them in the airport and as Jared and I drove home. I mean, I was literally going to be seeing them again in less than a month since we're living with them this summer? It was just so nice to have my mom and dad around, experiencing this crazy corner of the world that's been our whole world for a while. Also it was kind of weird (in a good way) to have them come visit us at our home and stay with us as our visitors for the week. It made me feel too adultish. We've lived with my parents for two summers in a row now and for a month last Christmas, and they came and visited our apartment many times when we lived in Provo, but they've never been our guests before now. The first of many times, I'm sure. Thanks for coming out and giving us an excuse to visit all our favorite spots one last time, Mom and Dad! We'll see you in two weeks.