CRUISE Ship tourism has been touted as the life blood of Grenada in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, which ravaged the Spice Isle in September, 2004.

Mere months after the hurricane destroyed the island’s economy, Prime Minister Keith Mitchell hoped the arrival of the cruise ships would have given a kick-start to the recovery process.

Shortly after Ivan -- with 90 per cent of the hotels and housing stock on the island damaged or destroyed, the ships started arriving on a daily basis.

Grenada celebrated the return of cruise ships when the Norwegian Spirit visited Grenada on November 9, 2004.

It was the first major cruise ship to visit Grenada in the aftermath of Ivan.

Thousands of tourists have passed through the Southern tip of the island in the past year and a half, and while the government’s hard-sell is that their presence indicates bustling tourism activity, all evidence points to the contrary.

After all, cruise ship tourists are on the low end of the scale when it comes to parting with money.

And when they are taken to the two-mile stretch of Grand Anse Beach, one of the finest in the Caribbean, it’s basically the people who rent chairs and the water taxis that share in the Yankee dollar.

So Grenadians have to hustle extremely hard to earn a Yankee dollar. That is what I found out last weekend.

It was just before seven o’clock in the morning, when I took the first stroll on the beach with my camera.

Two cruise ships had docked in the St. George’s Harbour a couple of hours earlier, and the people who hustle at Grand Anse started crawling out of their homes in anticipation of the arrival.

It was only the second visit for the week, as the winter season is coming to a close and fewer ships pass through.

But young men started sweeping the beach and laying out the chairs, cleaning them and putting up the umbrellas.

By the time they were finished with that, hundreds of tourists started arriving via the water taxis that hustled from Grand Anse to the St. George’s Harbour.

Man, the visitors did not get any peace.

They had barely stepped out on the beach when the “Beach Chair operators” -- as the jerseys printed by the Board of Tourism identified them -- began the hustle.

The Tourist Board has called for stiffer penalties for crimes against tourists when one cruise line threatened to stop calling at St. George’s because of passenger harassment by vendors.

It seems they, too, would excuse anything for the Yankee dollar.

Under normal circumstances it would be against the law to lie topless on any beach on the island.

But, as you can see by these photos, these two ladies did not have a care, and they were not stopped from breaking the law either.

At a cost of US$5 (EC$10), the cruise ship tourists could have rented a chair for a whole day of lying in the sun to get a tan.

If you had more than 20 chairs, then the hustle was good for the day.

But the rest of Grenadians had to work a lot harder for less than that.

People were selling everything -- beach wraps, spice necklaces, spice baskets, oranges, bananas and jewellery handcrafted from coconut shells and black coral, in some instances.

Because it was a Saturday, some children -- as young as eight years old -- were sent out to hustle on the beach, covering miles as they trekked the two-mile stretch over and again for the eight hours or so.

The Cruise Ship in St. George’s.

Tourists descend on the beach in droves.

Beach chairs operators start work early.

These 2 foreign women are topless and
illegal at Gran Anse beach.

This Rasta entertains tourists.

These 2 sellers walked for miles.

This teenager follows the crowd to sell
her goods.

But, from what I saw, the tourists were not buying -- or spending money, having already paid for an all-inclusive vacation.

In any event, whatever spending money they have must be shared at the five or six stops that the ship makes on its voyage.

So, for most, Grenada will be a welcome change if only because it’s a chance to get their legs on land once again and lie on a real beach.

They spend only a day and sometimes walk with their snacks from the boat, barely buying anything on land.

And that is the reality; it matters not how much it is dressed up by the government, which even in its Budget presentation two weeks ago made it appear that everything is almost back to normal.

Far from it.

Many people still do not have access to bank loans to get roofs over their houses.

And those who managed to get money to rebuild their houses and businesses are beholden to the banks.

Nowadays, it’s a straight case of people trying to dig out each other’s eyes and there is much less love and warmth in the air.

The trees have been growing back, but driving through the badly depleted rain forest you could see vines covering most of the trees, strangling their growth.

It’s just a green cover; the struggle is beneath that veneer.

Otherwise, the land of endless rolling hills and valleys and pristine beaches remain as mystically beautiful as it ever was!