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Deleon Forrester personifies the island of Grenada. She's full of life. Just ask the guests at Sandals Grenada who have been greeted by her smile. But what we're witnessing as she walks through the resort's lobby toward the horizon over the ocean reaches another level. This is beyond happiness. It's celebratory. Everyone at Sandals Grenada can feel it. You can hear it, too. The music subtly pouring through the tropical air at the South Seas pool … what is that? It's like a secret Grenadian recipe for the subconscious: high-energy Soca, which is its own subgenre of soca, mixed with fistfuls of pan beats and dashes of chanting. It's fun, fast, and of course, spicy.

It is perfectly fitting for this time of year and for this destination.

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“We're in the season of Spicemas,” Deleon says through a smile so genuine you can hear it. A ten-day festival with countless parades, Spicemas is central to Grenadian culture, celebrating long-held traditions that make up Grenada's extensive heritage. “The way Grenadians do Spicemas makes it easy and affordable to experience what we're all about,” Deleon says. “Wherever you are, you'll hear the music, smell the food, and know that you're not on just any island, you're in Grenada.”

The first lesson of a Happy Spicemas is that you do not pronounce it as a distant relative of Christmas. “It's Spice-mass,” Deleon says. The very mention of Spice-mass brings out from her the wisdom of an adult and the innocent fun of a child. To fully understand it, that's where she is about to deliver us: from the beachfront of Sandals Grenada to the memories of childhood. It's a curvy path through the island's delicious landscape, across pure rivers, and into villages that appear on a map as fantasies: Welcome Rock. Paradise. Happy Hill.

Deleon describes dreamy life in Grenada the way Sandals guests describe vacations here. “Friendly, homey, relaxing.” Her neighborhood was so familial that as a child, she'd come home from school, drop off her books, and let her nose lead the way to whichever home might be sending out the aroma of curry chicken, rice, and peas, or steamed fish.

“We lift each other up,” she says, referring to the island's secret to happiness and hospitality, and perhaps the heart of Spicemas. “Even our national dish — oil down — requires several sets of hands to cut and peel the breadfruit and green banana, chop the carrots, wash the greens, and prepare the fresh turmeric and coconut milk. It's a communal dish. You always make a big batch to be enjoyed by many, never just a platter for two.”

The way she explains it, Grenadians have taken liberties to remove all boundaries from Spicemas, including beginnings and ends. They do not limit the celebration the way we might confine active fun to a three-day weekend or to the length of a Thanksgiving parade. For example, on this weekend in July, Deleon will pack a beach bag and head over to Hog Island for an all-white, all-day music party. When she's reminded that Spicemas doesn't officially start until August 6, she responds with the most perfect suggestion to anything we long to do in life:
“Why wait?”

This is the Grenadian way. If it makes more people happy, do it. Almost everyone who works at Sandals Grenada is from the island. Virtually all celebrate Spicemas, but not necessarily in the same style.

“Each event of Spicemas touches people differently,” Deleon says.

Although the Spicemas season was officially launched in May the main events happen August 7 to 12. There are too many events to remember, even for her - “It's fete after fete, after fete. Yes, party, party, party. In every corner of the island, people are getting together simply to have fun. - As a teenager, we'd pile into a car and see where we wound up,” Deleon says. “No matter where we went, we heard the music and felt the freedom of Spicemas.”

The alluring rhythm she refers to has become the ribbon that ties together every location and every person. It's called jab jab. Deleon knows the music intimately because her father was one of the original creators of the genre. She'd hear his band, Moss International, practicing jab jab at home and then travel around the island to watch them perform at events.

“The music represents freedom and resilience, honoring those who came before us,” she says of the emotion that seeps from Jab Jab. “It has evolved since my father introduced it, but the social commentary is still embedded in the sounds and in the way we celebrate. It's an invitation to be free to be yourself. That's why you can sense the exhilaration of Spicemas weeks before it officially starts in August — and you sense it everywhere.”

Off the top of her head, she continues to name some traditional celebrations from the ever-growing list: Traditional Mas. Fancy Mas. Children's Carnival. Calypso Monarch. Soca Monarch. Steelpan competitions. (Pause to catch your breath … and continue …) There's J'ouvert, open to anyone who's awake at 5 a.m. and occurring on the second Monday of August. This is the most renowned parade of the festival, in which locals partake in jab jab— and from the looks of past J'ouverts, a lot of people either wake up early or stay up really late the night before. Then we have Monday Mas, Monday Night Mas, and the full-on Grenada Carnival Street Parade known as Pretty Mas in St. Georges, where enormous feathers, sparkles, and sequins make it impossible for curious visitors to stop themselves from dancing and shouting. The appropriate attire is just as eclectic as the events. People wear swimsuits and bodysuits, costumes and coiffures. They cover themselves in charcoal, powder, water, oil, and paint.

Deleon can sense this is a lot to comprehend, so she politely simplifies. “If you want conservative, go to the Panorama music festival or the Children's Carnival. If you want to be away from the city, go to a river jam. If you want to fully immerse yourself, do it all.”

At Sandals, Spicemas weaves its way right into the resort through the people, the callaloo and coconut soup, the braised oxtail with nutmeg plantain mash, the overproof rums, and the music gently pouring through the common areas.

It's just as easy for guests who, desiring fuller immersion, book a road trip through Island Routes to a rum estate or a cacao-to-chocolate bar farm on the opposite side of the island. It can be a clockwise route through Gouyave, where Deleon says, “there's always a fish fry,” or a counterclockwise route through Grenville, where “the vibe never ends.”

“If you are anywhere in Grenada during Spicemas, you will know it. You will hear it.”

Don't just visit Grenada, live it! Book your stay at Sandals Grenada. From beachfront fêtes to rum-filled adventures, your Spicemas story starts here.

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