Belmont Estate Visit

​EOD Location:  Port Louis Marina, St. George's, Grenada
Miles Traveled:  0
Weather:  Sunny, occasional brief showers, windy (20-25), high 84
Highlights: Visited the Belmont Estate today with Deb and Dennis from XYZZY and Amy and Steve from Harmony.  The 400-acre estate is located in the parish of Saint Patrick, about an hour's drive northeast from St. George's.  The plantation was built in the late 1600s by the Bernago family of France, and passed through several owners before the Nyack family purchased it in 1944.  The original crops were coffee and sugar, and chattel slaves provided the labor.  Today, the main crops are cocoa and nutmeg, with wage earners doing the work.  We arrived in time for lunch in the large open-air restaurant overlooking the grounds and surrounding area, then got the "tree to bar" tour and education on how chocolate is made, starting with the harvesting of the beans, progressing through the various stages of sweating, drying, sorting and walking, before finally blended into delectable chocolate bars of various sweetness and flavor.  Our return trip included a visit with monkeys in the national forest, and we arrived safe but very tired after a wonderful day.  More history and details of the estate can be found at https://belmontestate.net/.