Itinerary · Caribbean · 9 days · Easy
Nutmeg, Cocoa and Carriacou
St George’s→Fort George→Molinere Bay→Gouyave→Grand Etang→Belmont Estate+3 stops
The only country with a spice on its flag: a nutmeg processing station you walk through, a tree-to-bar chocolate factory that kept the value on the island, an underwater sculpture park, and a boat-building island to the north.
St George’s
A drowned volcanic crater forming a horseshoe harbour, with pastel warehouses stacked up the slope and forts above - generally rated the most attractive harbour town in the Caribbean, and it earns it. Walk the Carenage and up to Fort George.
Fort George, and 1983
The fort is where Maurice Bishop and several colleagues were killed in October 1983, days before the United States invaded. The site is marked. Grenadians hold genuinely divided views about all of it and will tell you so if asked directly.
The underwater sculptures
Molinere Bay holds the first underwater sculpture park in the world, installed in 2006 - concrete figures that have colonised with coral and function as an artificial reef, drawing diving pressure off the natural ones. Snorkel or dive.
Gouyave
The nutmeg processing station on the west coast is one of the more enjoyable industrial visits anywhere: nutmegs graded by hand and by water - the floaters are separated - and mace peeled and dried on trays. The smell arrives before the building.
Grand Etang
A crater lake at 530 metres in rainforest, with a national park around it and mona monkeys brought from West Africa during the slave trade. Seven Sisters and Concord falls are short walks off the same road.
Cocoa, end to end
Belmont Estate is a working cocoa plantation that runs the whole chain in front of you; the Grenada Chocolate Company at Hermitage was among the first tree-to-bar operations anywhere, processing on the island rather than exporting raw beans.
To Carriacou
The ferry north takes about ninety minutes across an open channel that can be rough. Carriacou is quieter, drier and smaller, with Hillsborough as its single town.
Boat building at Windward
Scottish shipwrights brought wooden boat building here in the nineteenth century and families at Windward still lay keels on the beach by eye, without plans. The regatta at the start of August races the results.
Sandy Island, and out
A sandbar with a few palms inside a marine protected area, ten minutes offshore, for the last snorkel. Then the ferry or the small plane back to Grenada for the flight home.
Good to know
The Carriacou ferry crosses open water and is regularly uncomfortable. The small plane takes twenty minutes and costs little more.
Grenada sits at the southern edge of the hurricane belt and is hit less often than islands further north - but Ivan in 2004 destroyed most of the housing and around ninety per cent of the nutmeg trees, which take seven to nine years to bear.
Carnival here is in August, not before Lent, and Carriacou’s regatta falls at the same time.
Shorter or longer?
Grenada only - town, spice, forest and the sculpture park.
Continue north by boat through Petite Martinique and Union Island into Saint Vincent’s chain.
The Bianca C - a 180-metre liner that sank in 1961 - is one of the largest wreck dives in the Caribbean, for experienced divers only.
Practical guide
Visa check for this route
Budget
Mid-range · per person · sharing a double room. Excludes international flights - they depend on where you fly from.
Editorial estimates · checked August 2026
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