Nevertheless, the Grenadines were, in the past, plantation areas settled by the French.
Idle plantation lands and past plantation-era investments in irrigation and other infrastructure have created opportunities for other types of agriculture, despite rising land values, new and existing tropical diseases, and other challenges.
Such disasters are not just consigned to the past - plantations of one of our most familiar fruits are now in danger of being decimated.
The road winds past date plantations and small villages that extend back into wadis, deep limestone valleys carved by seasonal floods over millenniums.
They would fish and hunt together, and before they knew it, three weeks would be gone and they would be rolling past the plantations and chemical plants on Highway 1 on the way back to Houma.
It's one of the engineering feats of the world, zig-zagging past tea plantations and through forests on its spectacular eight-hour journey, reaching Ghum, at 2,226 metres, before descending to its final destination.
The China he is preparing to rule is becoming cynical and anxious as growth slows and social and political stresses mount.Mr Xi's trips to Xiajiang, a long and tortuous journey past tea plantations and paddy fields in a backward pocket of the booming coastal province, were part of his prolonged apprenticeship for China's most powerful posts.
Farther on, the dirt road led past pine plantations, their loblolly and slash pines growing in rows; Mayer told me how wild hogs can rip up many acres of newly planted pine seedlings in a night, eating only the cambium-rich taproot and leaving the rest.
The driver, in cheap shades and playing music full-blast, will take you through mist, under rainbows, over mountains, past coffee plantations, flower farms and haciendas, the towns of Volcán and Concepcion, and back to a rougher world, the town of David – the hub for all onward journeys.
