The Spice Basket

On Trip Advisor it lists the Spice Basket as a site to visit and we have wanted to it is just hard to do. It mainly caters to the cruise ship crowd and that means shows are usually during the day and when I am working. We took a visit out in December to see if we could find a time o catch the show. There was one today, perfect! We marked it on our calendar and hen broke the news to Aiden that he would be missing his technical drawing class to go. It was a very hard sell, since he just got Auto CAD and wants to learn how to use it. But he agreed on a family trip- and he was really glad he did.

Junior Murray's Blazer

Typical of me, we arrived 30 minutes before the cruise passengers. Owen has a project on Junior Murray a Grenadian Cricket player and The Spice Basket happens to have the only cricket museum in the West Indies. So we headed down to the museum with our guide Keron.

The museum is much more than a museum on cricket. We went through exhibits on the soil of Grenada 99% volcanic 1% limestone. They had samples of the sand from different parts of the island. We didn't realize there was a beach that was pure black sand, so now that is on our to do list.

They also had an exhibit on the slave trade that was fascinating as they also had a "book of Negroes" like Canada did. Amazing to see entries indicating whether they had any marks, their age and only first name. The youngest 1, probably the one that hurt the most was a 7 year old. Old enough to be scared out his mind. Just sickening what people are capable of doing to each other. There was a great exhibit on the revolution and I saw tons and tons of photos that are certainly not captured anywhere on the web. So it was fascinating.

Th cricket part of the museum was quiet large with lots of displays, blazers, sweaters and Keron I believe may have known everything there is to know about cricket! He was really helpful to Owen in learning about Junior Murray and we got some photos with his memorabilia. By 11:30 we could hear the steel drums and another worker was coming to collect us.

Since we were not part of the cruise we needed to pay. While the boys and I listened to steel pan drums Brent sorted things out. It turns out this cruise was full of German tourists, so parts of the show would be in German! The manager was very sweet and, as is so typical of Grenadians, made his best effort to accommodate us. It was actually really interesting to watch the crowd who barely grooved to the steel drums. We were all given yummy fruit punches and we relaxed to the melodies and the beautiful sunny day.

Next it was time to go to the theatre where there was a short 10 minute movie on the history of the Grenada. Before it started the manager told us he had arranged to have his staff replay the video in English after the German tourists left- so kind!! The narrator was our cultural interpreter for Cuso Mr. Peters!

Then came the singing and dancing. It was wonderful. Lovely costumes and two of the songs the boys were learning in school for Independence Day. While the crowd remained reserved we loved the beat and Aiden got in on the limbo dance. Then all of us got in on the Congo line with the carnival inspired dancers.

Aiden told us that he was glad he missed his lessons to come, so that is about the best endorsement I have heard from him. We will definitely recommend it on Tripadvisor.

I have also got a plan to introduced the Mt. Zion Library to the Cricket museum as they have a huge library on cricket that could perhaps be shared or loaned. I know boys and men would love to read those books on cricket. I can just see waiting lists to read books about West Indies Cricket. Here is hoping there can be a partnership that benefits both organisations.

Jab Jab

La Diabless

Aiden limbo

Our private video screening