Aubrey beneath a large fern bank, the lower and upper Cabret Falls, colourful flowers at the coffee plantation.

Log #40F Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is a department of France, with French as the spoken language (other than Creole), the Euro as the currency, and the French tricolour as the national flag. Its economy seems buoyant for a population of 330,000, including those on the outlying islands of Marie Gallant and Les Saintes.

We anchored off the major city of Point À Pitre at 0530, and after a couple more hours sleep we dinghied about a half mile over to the Port de Plaisance, Marina Bas du Fort, to do our check-in procedures. No problem, as the marina had both Customs and Immigration side by side next to the marina office. There was no charge for the check-in and only a single sheet (two sided with three carbon copies) to be filled out with the usual details of ship's registry, characteristics, crew (plus passports), cargo or supplies (liquor, cigarettes, weapons, ammunition, drugs, pets) last and next destinations. This marina caters to many yachts, cruisers and racers, and has good facilities for repairs, chandleries, fuel dock (with duty free diesel upon departure from the island), and an adjacent shopping mall for the marina and nearby condominiums with restaurants, pizza parlours, post office, internet, large grocery store, tourist boutiques, business services and bank machines.

On our way back to Veleda we stopped off at Draco, a neighbouring boat from New York, to say "Hi" to Frank Fitzpatrick who was singlehanding as his wife was off visiting family. He had been there for a while and gave us some good information about the town and sites to see on Guadeloupe. This is one of the benefits of meeting other cruisers: to share information, not only about the local location, but about other destinations one of us has visited.

The Market

The main harbour (La Darse) was a short dinghy ride away. There we secured Sprite to a crumbling concrete dock in front of a defunct yacht club. We wondered if we could get outside the wrought iron gates until we noticed a small section ripped or cut open through which we could manipulate ourselves. It was right beside a busy central market, but no one was in the yacht club compound. We secured Sprite with a locked wire cable just in case.

The market was vibrant! Fruit, vegetable and spice stalls were spread hodgepodge all over the area, with heavy or skinny black ladies wearing aprons and dresses in outrageously colourful prints and plaids, with matching bandanas and head scarves, presiding over their produce. In addition to the exotic fruits and vegetables (mangoes, papayas, bananas, plantains, coconuts, pineapples, figs {another banana relative}, local apricots, custard apples, sugarcane, breadfruit, limes, strawberry shaped "apples", christophenes [also known as chayote squash] and several others we could not identify, there were the many spice stalls. These provided an additional visual feast with sensory input of intriguing aromas and gnarled shapes; not only the ground products in open bins and packages; but also the raw stalks, branches and bushes; as well as the leaves, nuts and shells of the native herbs and spices. Along the base of the harbour were fishing boats with stalls on the wall layered with mostly smaller fish, eels, crabs, mussels and cockles.

As we wandered about, Judy had to have a coconut drink from a vendor who sliced the top off each coconut with a machete, and inserted a straw for the purchaser to enjoy the coconut water. He would then hack a couple of slices from the outer shell, and split the shell; the outer slices served as primitive spoons to scoop the soft coconut jelly from the husk. Judy enjoyed it, but I was neutral. Mixing it in a rum drink would have been nicer. There were also all kinds of liquors available with exotic fruit mixes to drink at the stalls or to buy bottles of these concoctions. Their rum punches were delicious. Judy bought a bottle of coconut liqueur which was delicious straight or mixed with water, or with rum. Rums and other liquors were cheaper than wines, as vineyards are not common in the Caribbean.

Touring Guadeloupe

Wandering around the old part of town we found the Tourist Bureau beside the large Place de la Victoire quite helpful. The Museum Schoelcher that we visited is dedicated to his life, in which he is described as a "Humaniste et fervent republican". He was a prime mover for the Abolition movement in post revolutionary France. He spent much time in Guadeloupe, finally achieving abolition of slavery in the French colonies by 1840. The museum had a reasonable display of what slavery was like in the colonies, and the slave ships which transported them.

We went to lunch at Chez Roger, a small downtown restaurant recommended by the Doyle's Leeward Islands Pilot as a bargain if one is not fussy about surroundings. Don't go. We bought a Plat du Jour of entrecote (9.50 Euros each) with a salad, a small bottle of water and a beer, the total coming to an unanticipated 28.50 Euros (about $40.00 Canadian) for a supposed light cheap lunch. The surroundings were OK, as it was now a semi buffet with relatively clean (we saw only one cockroach) and brightly lit eating areas. We learned our lesson and did not go to another restaurant on Guadeloupe.

We arranged to pick up a rental car next day for 37 Euros (about $55.00 Canadian). Over here, insurance and taxes are included with the price, and unlimited mileage. Just bring the car back with whatever fuel level was in to start with. After a false start we found our way across the bridge to the mountains of Basse Terre.

Going up into the Guadeloupe National Park we went through tropical rain forest as we walked the well constructed paths through the ravines to the base of the lower Carbet Falls. The forest was quite dense with monstrous cedars (a completely different tree from our North American cedar) dripping with vine-like air roots, towering palm trees with coconuts clustered high up (we heard of one area where people were advised to wear safety helmets because of the falling coconuts), stands of graceful swaying bamboo, foliage with gigantic green leaves (called elephant ears), flamboyant trees (that is their local name) with bright red hibiscus-like flowers in their upper branches, and elongated fronds of fern two to three metres in length covering exposed hillsides (see my picture beneath some of them). The trail down into the gorge was laced with several small waterfalls and quickly flowing streams. The lower falls were quite dramatic, a slender chute of white water cascading from the middle plateau into the gorge into which we had descended. However, we could not go directly to the base or up the trails to the upper falls as the ravines and cliffs were destabilized by recent earthquakes. (See the attached picture for the view of the lower falls with the upper falls visible above in the mountain mists.)

As we had a picnic lunch with us, we continued to the southern tip of the island to the beach at Vieux-Fort where we found a sheltered picnic table with a view through the overhanging palm trees of the sandy beach stretch washed by the curling surf of the Caribbean, the archipelago of The Saintes beyond. Apparently this area is a favourite of surfers, but seeing the wind and waves bashing on the rocks further down gave us a twinge of anxiety for the welfare of Veleda at anchor up in Pointe-à-Pitre in these heavier conditions.

After lunch we motored up to La Soufriere, the 1467 metre volcanic mountain dominating the southern part of Basse Terre, to see more rain forest, more rushing streams, dramatic panoramas across the valleys out to sea, and a mountain lake. We didn't hike any of the mountain trails as we wanted to get to a coffee plantation before it closed. The plantation was up a southwestern slope of La Soufriere, again through tropical rain forest. It had a good display of a coffee plantation and of the processing of not only coffee beans but also cocoa beans. Another highlight for us was the botanical garden the plantation maintained, an extravagant display of the lush tropical vegetation, flowering plants and bushes of herbs and spices.

We came back to Pointe-à-Pitre through the central mountain road, a pleasant drive across the island, getting back in time to hand the car back by 1730, thus freeing us from having to come back next morning to do so, and allowing us to get an earlier start on our way down to Les Saintes, the southern islands belonging to Guadeloupe, and the topic of my next log.

next log