The LaSagesse Hotel

Having visited LaSagesse Hotel in St Davids parish in Grenada, under very trying circumstances, for myself, a very close friend, and the owners and staff at La Sagesse, I thought to capture here a sense of the spirit and extraordinary character of this place.

Nestled in a cove against LaSagesse Beach, facing south toward the Atlantic Ocean, on the eastern side of Grenada, perhaps 25 minutes and a hundred roaming turns from the airport in St. Georges this family operated hotel has been a favorite of Europeans since its founding approximately thirty years ago. It’s may actually not be a hundred turns but when you’re not used to quick-paced island driving on incredibly curvy roads, it seems like it, or maybe more if you count the swerving our driver (Boney) effortlessly executed to avoid potholes and other vehicles. Someday maybe Boney will actually count how many curves there are, since I asked him, “How many curves there were between the airport and the hotel?” And I also asked, “How many trips have you made taking people to and from LaSagesse in the 25 years he’s been making this drive?” A question to which he laughed out loud.

After 10 minutes of watching the ease with which Boney navigated through and around, I stopped reacting by trying to jamb on the brakes every so often and actually relaxed. It was clear I was safe and would arrive in one piece.

Boney is probably the first person, those staying at LaSagesse, will meet on their journey to the hotel, and is representative of the treat in store for one during their experience there; as I discovered when I suddenly visited to support a friend, who was staying at the hotel, and who had lost a loved one in a tragedy. 

La Sagesse is known as an boutique eco-hotel. It’s a small 12 room facility built out of a British “manor house” originally built and owned by British Lord Brownlow and operated as a banana plantation until it was attacked and looted during the communist takeover on the island beginning in 1979.

Locals then resented the plantations’ blockage of passage to the beach on which the manor home had been built as it was one of the nicest beaches in this part of Grenada and had been openly accessible to the population right up until the plantation blocked access.

A few years after the communist overthrow of the government in 1983, the US government sent troops to the island to oust the communist government after being implored to do so by other island governments in the region. A few readers may remember that the reason offered at the time, was ostensibly to free approximately 240 US students, who were attending St Georges medical school on the island.

Anyway sometime after the reestablishment of democratic government on Grenada, which by-the-way I was told by any number of local folks, they considered as a blessing for the island, their independence, and their current national psyche, Mike Moranski came visiting to Grenada casting about to find his future.

Now you need a bit of background on Mike as he qualifies as what I call a “character”, a character in the best sense of the word. Without going into too much detail, it seems Mike had lived a little before coming to Grenada. He’d been married and divorced, taught at the collegiate level in the U.S. and after his first divorce, traveled the world as a wandering explorer for a few years. While all that I recall is that he spent some decent time in India, and on a Kibbutz in Israel, I believe there were several other countries through which he traipsed during his walk-about.

So Mike is at once, an intelligent, educated, thoughtful, and funny man. Add to that his genuine enjoyment of people, his completely authentic humanity and caring nature, and you begin to get some measure of the man who has founded this little almost-secret favorite get-away nestled in this cove in southeast Grenada. Mike’s current – number 3 – wife, Lynn Kelly, I would add, shares the ubiquitous caring nature and enjoyment of people with Mike and the rest of the LaSagesse staff. Those who own and maintain this establishment are a big reason why guests come here.

I refer to LaSagesse as almost-secret-favorite-getaway because, although it is well-known on Grenada, it is not so in the larger noisy tourist vacation market, and certainly not in the U.S., which you could think of as unfortunate, or perhaps, as a condition that contributes to the special nature of this delightful little get-away.

I’m guessing that maybe half of the visitors who stay at LaSagesse are from the UK, at least, during my unexpected stay in late January 2016, it seemed, that was the case. There were also guests from other European countries staying there, from, I was told, Germany, France, and some of the Scandinavian countries.

My American friends were there almost by chance, having booked their stay for just two nights as a stop to a longer stay on a cocoa plantation elsewhere on Grenada. They had found LaSagesse’s web site after some substantial online searching and were attracted to its home grown cuisine and off-the-beaten-path location.

Now of course, LaSagesse didn’t just pop into being. Its twelve rooms came into existence over time in piecemeal fashion as Mike and his 2^nd wife, Nancy – a Grenadian – started by renting rooms in their manor home, the 2^nd floor of which they used (and still use) as their home. Over time, as a core of visitors found and repeat-visited, they added an addition here and a small building there, until they, and their regular staff, settled on twelve as the maximum number of rooms which they wished to provide whilst maintaining the family flavor of this establishment. And so thirty-some years later they thrive - through the ups and downs of Caribbean economies and vicissitudes of the region, including, not insignificantly, Hurricane Ivan in 1985.

I know it seems like I’m wandering around in my story, but I need to give you the fullness of this special little place from its history along with my personal experiences during six nights of what seemed like a lifetime there.

I came to LaSagesse on a moment’s notice responding to an anguished call to support a friend whose wife was tragically killed the 2^nd day of his and her visit to Grenada. I came with no knowledge or expectations of the people or the place, knowing only that once I arrived, “there would be a room for me”.

It took two tortured days to get there from my home in NC, not because it’s difficult to get there, but because I was booking last minute from Raleigh which had been almost closed down by a snow storm and because many of the flights going into Grenada were heavily booked with hundreds of US students headed down to begin their 2^nd semester at St. Georges University – a 6000 student university best known as a medical school. Oh, and did I say that my beloved “character” Mike, is also a faculty member at the university, teaching comparative religion and art history, and probably an assortment of other eclectic subjects in the humanities department? How could I have missed that?

My harrowing trip down, through Fort Lauderdale, then overnight in Trinidad, and finally into Grenada on the evening of the second day, was almost worth another article in itself. Ordinarily getting there is fairly direct, through any of several one-stop routes for most people. But when I finally arrived at the St. Georges airport my travel woes evaporated and I was welcomed into a completely unexpected experience.

Here I was arriving to hug, comfort, and support my dear friend through his grief, only to find Boney-the-driver consoling my friend when I exited the airport building. And while my purpose in being in Grenada seemed singular, that is, supporting my friend, I came unknowingly to my forthcoming and amazing experience with this La Sagesse “family”.

While I had expected to be met by my friend and immediately begin supportive conversations with him on the trip to whatever hotel we were going to in the dark at 10 PM at night, I did not expect to discover Boney-the-driver consoling my friend as they stood outside the airport waiting for me to exit through customs. 

And while our conversation in the van/bus as we headed to the hotel was focused on the events leading to my friend’s wife’s death and the implications that followed, there were a smattering of references to the LaSagesse Hotel sprinkled throughout his relating the recent events and his experiences to me. The references regarding the hotel, however weren’t to the facilities, but were more about the people who worked there, and the guests my friend had met in the four days since he’d arrived with his wife.

Upon arrival I was greeted by Mike and Lynn who immediately set about having some food brought to me, even though most of the staff had already finished serving the evening mean and left work. They had my bags taken to my room and set about making me feel like I was an old friend, while also telling me how things operated, and sharing their anguish regarding my friend’s tragedy. It certainly was NOT a normal, belly-up-to-the check-in-desk sort of experience. When I asked if they wanted my credit card numbers, they said, “Oh we’ll take care of all that later. Right now you just focus on (my friend) and what you need to do for him. If there’s anything you need from us, just let us know.”

When I eventually got to my room I was impressed by its cleanliness and an obvious not-hotelish sort of decor. I more felt like I had entered someone’s private bedroom. It just happened it was mine. There was no air-conditioning, although it seemed cool enough. There were lots of windows, all open, and all allowing a constant gentle sea breeze to flow through the room aided by an overhead fan over the queen sized bed. And did I mention the constant sound of gently breaking waves from somewhere nearby?

The next morning I arose around seven, finished unpacking and headed out to survey the facility and get some food. And bingo, as I walked around the manor house looking for the restaurant, there was Lynn headed back toward the house, telling me she had just made coffee at the restuarant, and I should go and have some.

Lynn also explained that all the food, the vegetables, the meats, the eggs and the fish served at La Sagesse was locally grown, raised, or caught on the island and bought from farmers and suppliers and farmers markets in the region, and fresh-cooked daily by their regular staff cooks. She said, “that’s why I’d be noticing daily changes to the menus as they reflected additions and deletions according to what was available during their daily shopping excursions.” It reminded a bit of the way it so often occurs in Italian and French villages.

I asked Lynn where I should go to register and check in and she said, “that had all been taken care of and I didn’t need to worry about it.” Sound odd? It did to me, but I didn’t challenge it and went off to find the coffee.

It didn’t take long before other guests began to trickle in to what I had delightfully discovered was a beach front restaurant, sitting not more than maybe 40 or 50 yards from the breaking waves rolling onto the a clean and beautiful LaSagesse Beach that stretched off in a horseshoe shape toward the south east.

Breakfast was the first that I realized I was in for a gastronomical treat, both in selection and in freshness. The service was both unobtrusive and attentive. And although I had only then begun to learn the names of the staff, it seemed they all knew me, or about me. And in fact throughout my stay, I never once received a check, or was asked for a credit card or a tip. Somehow the only experience I had was one of being completely taken care of.

As I went about attending to the welfare of my friend and the many pressing things that constantly needed his attention, I discovered over time, that the other guests, the staff and the owners of LaSagesse were also attending to taking care of both my friend in his grief, myself, and family uncle Hal who flew in to also support my friend, a day or so after I arrived.

As the three of us dealt with the aftermath of the tragedy and the legalities of it, I had the experience that the “hotel” surrounded and held us, not just as staff and servers, but as a close friend-back-home might do. Every day Mike and/or Lynn would visit our table to sit with us and talk, to tell us a little about themselves, and the history of LaSagesse and of Grenada. And of course Lynn would tell us what she had baked that morning for desert that evening.

Now I don’t want to make it sound like their visits were about proselytizing themselves or the hotel. It was more like sitting down for coffee or maybe and evening cocktail with a good friend. Nor do I want to make it seem like their visits with us were exclusive. I many times witnessed them doing the same with the other guests, both in their warm welcomes of new arrivals and in their attentiveness throughout the day.

Then there’s the environment. Normal daytime temperatures seemed to edge up into the mid to upper 80’s. There were almost daily tropical showers that would pop up from nowhere, wet everything down, and leave as fast as they came. It turns out the water supply for the hotel is from collected rain water, while the hot water is provided by solar heating.

The nicely groomed tropical grounds of the hotel are shared by the guests with two cats and two dogs, One of which, Ziggy-the-cat visited me in my room one morning to demonstrate her obvious fondness for me – or probably more truthfully for the scratching I was enjoying giving her behind her ears in order to hear her purr. And I mean a purr!

Aside from my fondness for cats, another of my liking's was satisfied when I discovered, growing from the palm trees planted next to the restaurant, a half dozen different species of tropical orchids – all there in full and glorious bloom, displaying their beautiful yellow and white and purple and red color mixtures – a feast for the eyes.

It wasn’t long before I was invited by Mike and a group of guests and local neighbors to join a morning swim in the ocean. This little group exercise is, weather permitting, an almost daily event, wandering off the beach a hundred or so yards, then sliding south along the beach for about 45 minutes to an hour of easy swimming and healthy exercise.

Now of course there’s a limit to what I can tell you about LaSagesse because most of the guests at the hotel, being there on “holiday” as the Brits say, means they had different concerns and activities than my friend, myself, and Uncle Hal. While I did get to do a half-day visit into St. Georges, the beautiful Caribbean waterfront capital of Grenada, as well as a quick tour of St Georges University, other guests were off on other tours, visiting other sites, and/or engaging in other walk-about’s.

Lynn would sometimes invite folks to come along with her in a morning hike up the hill behind the hotel to see the ocean views from up high, one-of-which I joined. It seems that in addition to running the hotel with her husband, Lynn is also training to do “another” marathon, and so, goes off on daily treks up and down the hills for maybe 8 or so miles each day.

I could labor on some more about my experience at LaSagesse, but I’ll end here with my departure, as I sat down with Mike to settle up my bill for the week. He went over the cost for my accommodations, showed me, and added up the restaurant checks for my meals for the week (the staff had identified me as “big Brian”) and totaled up my bill which he handed to me and said to give to the staff at the bar after I’d had my last meal, and they would take care of posting it to my credit card. Nothing stuffy about this checkout procedure.

Early the next morning Boney-the-driver, knocked on my door before 6 AM to be sure I was up and getting ready to drive to the airport to catch my flight home. On the way to the airport he told me his version of the history of LaSagesse and Mike, and his, and the staff’s, fondness for Mike and Lynn and what the hotel meant to them - this little local Grenadian community – not your ordinary taxi ride to the airport. The best way to describe it is to say "everything".

I guess you can tell by now, I'd absolutely recommend the LaSagesse Hotel in Grenada, only if however, you want a special non-typical experience at a  Caribbean “holiday” spot.