Driving on the Caribbean island of Grenada is a lesson in controlled terror.  Roads are barely wide enough for two cars and the mountainous, winding “highways” feature dozens of slippery scare-pin turns per every mile.

That fact doesn’t seem to bother the locals one bit, because they roar around the bends as if they were competing in a rally car race, unmindful of drivers like us who aren’t used to left side driving or other motorists who take their half out of the middle.

We whip around the little country narrowly missing other cars by inches or coming dangerously close to drainage gullies that threaten to high center our little rental car.  Every time a truck or van passes us, we scream terrible obscenities and feel our palms grow sweaty with white knuckles.

And then, just when you think you’ve had enough of the whole thing, you come upon a delightful little fruit stand, or someone building a wooden boat in their front yard.

Suddenly you realize why you’re taking all that risk.  Such is the life of an independent traveler.  The tradeoff to stepping out of your overly-controlled, sanitized society is a glimpse of another lifestyle entirely.  And within those glimpses you find buried nuggets of delight.

In Grenada (not to be confused with the Granada in Spain – this one is a tiny island nation near Venezuela) the sugar sand beaches on the coast surround a lush jungle interior.  We spent our first day hiking some of the rainforest trails where the jungle is so thick it blots out the midday light to the point where it feels like you’re hiking at dusk.

We navigate slippery muddy trails using tree roots and vines as hand holds and arrive at the Seven Sisters Waterfall, where families  have hiked in beer and barbeques.  They grill delicious smelling chicken while their children frolic and leap from ledges into the cool, refreshing water.

If we were in the developed world, there would be barriers, warning signs, rangers and other means to deter everyone’s fun.  But here, there’s a sense of freedom to scramble where you please and put your life at risk if you so choose.

Roaring around on crazy roads perhaps isn’t the safest thing we can do on our vacation.  But the chance to encounter little scenes like these, make the risk a reasonable proposition.