Grand Etang is a lake cradled in the crater of a long-dormant volcano at the heart of Grenada, 530 metres up where the mountains snag cloud all year. An eruption blasted the bowl open, and rain slowly filled it — the lake is fed almost entirely by rainfall rather than rivers, which is why islanders long swore it had no bottom. In truth it is barely six metres deep, a shallow mirror ringed by steep rainforest walls of giant ferns, epiphytes and mahogany, like the inside of an amphitheatre. The forest and the water together form Grand Etang National Park and Forest Reserve, set aside in 1906 as the oldest and largest protected area in the country. Mist hangs over the surface for much of the day, and at this altitude the sky can clear in minutes, turning the lake from leaden grey to a still, bright green.
A short wooden jetty and a shoreline path lead down to the water, the best place to watch the wall of forest doubled in the lake. This is also the easiest place in Grenada to meet its mona monkeys. They are quick, sociable and thoroughly used to people: wait near the visitor centre and one may drop out of the branches to look you over. More than forty kinds of bird move through the canopy too, among them the broad-winged hawk that locals call the gree-gree. From the shore, trails climb the ridge of Mount Qua Qua and drop the other way toward the Seven Sisters waterfalls. Come early, before the mist burns off, and the crater holds a hushed stillness that feels far from anywhere on an island only twenty miles long.