uk_grenada

Indeed it was a day off a boat. I went on the island tour, saw the derelict US base and was educated on the claim to fame john glenn story. I think we worked out it was one jewellery shop per 750 inhabitants?

Certainly the above water view / appearance was rather dreary. I guess drinking water is imported, certainly apart from salt i couldnt see farming happening but i do understand other islands are greener. The underwater scene was significantly more interesting.

We have no cases now, population is 130k, about 25 in total but mostly imported with returning nationals put straight. into quarantine for 2 weeks.

skip84

it must have changed a lot since then! GT has around 2,500 people but last few times i have been i haven't noticed many jewellery shops, except in the cruise port. water is produced by reverse osmosis, same as the sister islands. Salt production is a big part of the history of the islands as seen in the salina's on GT. North / Middle Caicos are the greener farming islands.

congratulations on Grenada's prudent approach, 130K population and zero cases is commendable, most of ours have been reports of returning residents not quarantining properly, the government just passed a law imposing stricter fines which should stop this in future.

Gordon Barlow

This was post #10 of this thread. Grenada, I apologise for not commenting before now. I didn't mean to be rude; I just don't get to BE much these days. To answer your question... I don't know whether your island is being discouraged, but it may well be true. Cayman is certainly encouraged. When Nassau went t*ts up in the 1970s because of the Black Power movement there, Cayman became Britain's base in the region - HQ of MI6 and all that - and the tax-haven business has always been a useful cover for that sort of thing. There's no way of knowing how many of Nassau's tax-haven clients came to Cayman, but for a few years there we got all the new business, and that was the foundation of our present prosperity.

I may have mentioned before, that I lived in Nassau 1967-70 - a blissful period of my life - and I well remember our banker-bosses preparing to shift their "offshore" business to Cayman. As it happens, I ended up in Cayman in '78, after a few years in what is now Vanuatu.

Like all the other regional destinations, we are suffering from the absence of tourists these days, but the tax-haven is keeping our government in the money. To answer your next question... No, there's no way Cayman would ever become politically independent, unless our politicians go insane. (Which is always on the cards, of course, but where would MI6 go then?)

uk_grenada

Thank you, hope you are keeping well... We are I guess in a controlled reopening here, welcoming thoroughly tested Canadian and uk tourists but America - not this year I think.

The testing seems to be working, not hearing of any upsets so far.