A Brief Visit to St. George's

Fort George at the mouth of St. George's Harbour

On Thursday morning, bright and early, we left our anchorage and motor sailed to St. George’s, dropping our anchor in the Lagoon.

The beautiful Carenage area of St. George's harbour...
one of the most photographed in the Caribbean, and you can see why

This was to be a brief stop for provisions and to find Roots Rock, the music store Lennox had recommended.

We left Boffo at the Grenada Yacht Club dinghy dock and walked over to the Carenage and along Wharf Road. Then we cut over and up (mainly up), to arrive on the steep road dropping down to the market. I had wanted to buy a pair of leather sandals from a craftsman there, but he wasn’t in his shack.

We headed back to the produce stalls where WW tried to find a pawpaw. The first woman we asked pointed us to the inner area, crowded with stalls and stall keepers. We prowled the rows, asking for pawpaw and being pointed in first one direction, then another. The last set of directions had us emerge at approximately our point of entry and about six feet away from what must have been the only pawpaw in the market. With it, limes, bluggoes, green bananas, and sugar apples (we’d never had them before), we left the market and started asking the way to Roots Rock.

Up the hill, turn left, ask again. Along the road, turn right, up a flight of stairs and into a room lined with racks of CDs...reggae, calypso, soca. Stacks of vinyl in the back, and stacks of burned CDs of one sort or another on every remaining surface.

Following Caribbean etiquette, we said good morning to everyone in the place. This consisted of a man leaning in the doorway, a woman at a computer, and a thin man, his braided hair wrapped in a halo around his head, who was standing behind the counter. He turned, smiled cheerfully and returned our greeting. His left eye was white opaque and presumably blind, but the other was bright, brown and alert. I gave him the names of the artists Lennox had recommended. His eye lit up and he trotted over immediately to get a CD from across the room.

“Yes, Morgan Heritage are very good,” he said. Then he started to pull down CDs from near and far. He’d play a track or two, then bring on another. His knowledge was extensive, and his greatest pleasure seemed to be in sharing this music he knows and loves so well. He agreed with Lennox that soca—locally known as jump-and-wave—probably wouldn’t be our style. He played “his” reggae, by which he meant the stuff we’d grown up with: Jimmy Cliff, Desmond Dekker, Toots and the Maytals, Bob Marley (of course). He played a new star Duane Stephenson: “He’s smooth, he’s mellow.” He played Beres Hammond, a reggae eminence grise. He played Third World. He played a Jamaican saxophonist doing Marley, Dean Plays Bob. He played a reggae Christmas album.

WW sagged in a corner as the beat went on. We finally chose five CDs, but our friend had decided we needed more. The woman at the computer was instructed to burn us several compilation CDs. While she did so, the music went on. It was great. Loaded with wonderful sounds, we promised to come back. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.