Sunday 20th March, Sainte Anne, Martinique.
We are currently luxuriating in the
lovely anchorage off the village of Sainte Anne in southeast
Martinique (a French island, oui oui oui, so a little slice of the EU in the
Caribbean). In the huge, shallow bay there's loads of room for the
loads of boats that are attracted to this very pleasant little corner
of the world. You can even hear churchbells ringing ashore. When you
do get ashore you walk straight off the dinghy dock into a cute
little square with a pretty little church. It's a delightful little
French Caribbean village. And that's even before we get into the
baguettes, the amazing cheese and the good wine! We've been here just
over a week now and it looks like we'll be here longer than planned
thanks to a wee issue with our toilet plumbing. But there are worse
places to be stranded.
|
View of a pretty full dinghy dock from a local bar. |
We had quite the lively day sail up
from St. Lucia: 20 to 25 knots of wind on the nose, bashing into at
least 2m seas and yet still flying (for us anyway) along at over 6
knots the whole way. It was not a day for preparing a fancy lunch
though, it was all I could manage to wrestle the leftover pizza out
of the fridge, onto a plate and up to the cockpit. We got soaked by
waves on the way across and then re-soaked by a couple of big squalls
just as we arrived. Fun times!
|
Another boat enjoying the the lumpy conditions |
Then we experienced the wonderfully
down to earth French way of checking in. You go to a local cafe that
has a DIY Customs computer, you fill in the online forms yourself (a slight challenge with the letters in the wrong places on a french keyboard),
print out the clearance form, get the cafe owner to sign and stamp it
and magic!, you're in. No messing about with passports or people
checking your PCR results or any of that nonsense. And later that day
we unexpectedly bumped into another St. Helena veteran, Aurore, at
the dinghy dock so were able to catch up and reminisce over
sundowners.
|
DIY check in, how very civilised.
|
|
Another St. Helena reunion. |
Our time here so far has been divided
between touristy exploration and unadulterated gluttony. And
marvelling, open-mouthed, at such things as motorways, full-sized
buses and enormous shopping centres. And public toilets! FREE public
toilets. Free, CLEAN, public toilets. Free, clean, public toilets
with TOILET PAPER. It truly is a wonder of the modern age.
|
Another wonder of the modern age: a supermarket in the nearby town of Le Marin has its own dinghy dock so you can wheel your trolley full (and I mean full) of French wine right to your dinghy. For those of you who are land-based just imagine never usually being able to park your car any closer than a kilometre or two from the supermarket and having to carry your shopping bags all the way there. |
So we went about exploring, we wandered around the village, walked
the Stations of the Cross up the hill behind the church (it is Lent
after all), walked south along the coast past a series of pretty bays
and walked north along the main beach.
|
Very pretty coast walk south of Ste. Anne |
|
One of the bays south of Ste. Anne |
|
More of the coast walk. |
|
There were even scary jungle cats, just for Karl. |
Then we decided perhaps a car
was in order to see more of the island. One day we drove north along
the east coast to a pretty peninsula and visited the remains of an
old coffee and sugar plantation. Another day we drove up the west
coast to Mont Pelée, the island's active volcano, and back down the
hilly centre of the island. It's a beautiful island. The flattish
bits are covered in banana plantations and cane fields. Bananas and
cane as far as the eye can see. The mountainous bits are covered in
gloriously lush, green rainforest with clouds caressing the peaks.
|
Remains of a late 18th century plantation with a mill on the left, a distillery beyond it and a sugar factory on the right. A French business family arrived with enslaved workers, planted sugar cane and coffee, built the factories and built a big house for themselves. Then hurricanes two years in a row, the French Revolution and the American War of Independence destabilised things and impacted the sugar market and they went broke and abandoned the plantation. |
|
Mont Pelée. Still active, it destroyed the old Capital of St. Pierre back in 1902. |
When not engaged in tourism we've been
conducting a scientific investigation into just how much cheese is
too much cheese. The current answer seems to be the amount of cheese
we ate yesterday while enjoying watching Ireland win the rugby Triple
Crown.
|
And we had Paddy's Day! Not exactly Guinness but at least the cans are green. |
And Karl has also been trying out his French with pretty good
results. He does like to keep me close by as a security blanket
though and the conversations usually go a little bit like: Karl says
something to the victim in French, the victim replies to Karl, Karl
turns and looks pleadingly at me, I either repeat it in clearer
French or translate it into English, Karl then replies to the victim
in French and it continues on like that with the victim becoming more
and more confused about the complicated pattern of interaction. But
it's been working well so far! Karl bought a SIM. Karl hired a car.
Karl has ordered some meals. Tomorrow Karl will try to find a spare
part for our toilet.
Easter Monday 18th April, St. Pierre.
Still in Martinique! Didn't plan to be
here this long but it's been a strange month. Sadly Karl's father
passed away in late March so he went back to Ireland for the funeral
leaving me and Gráinne to have a girls' week. Before he left we
decided to move from Sainte Anne closer to the capital, Fort de
France, on the west coast. Gráinne and I set up camp at Anse Mitan
which is on the southern side of the Baie de Fort de France. It's a
lovely little seaside town with some low key tourism and a regular
ferry across to Fort de France on the opposite side of the bay. Most
importantly it had a fabulous roped off swimming area where I didn't
need to worry about being mangled by speeding fishing boats. The
visibility was perfect and the starfish numerous which really didn't
help me focus on going in a straight line.
|
The anchorage at Anse Mitan with Fort de France across the bay in the background. |
This was the first time I'd been on
the boat by myself at anchor so I was a little bit nervous at first.
The biggest challenges were figuring out how to haul and drop the
dinghy by myself (we haul it out of the water overnight for safety -
usually a two person job) and making sure I could get ashore at the
dinghy dock (also usually a team effort coordinating managing the
engine/steering from the back of the dinghy and the getting a line
ashore from the front). And I coped!
(Note: the below images are recreations of my life without Karl, photographed by Karl on his return. Just so you don't get too confused.)
|
Securing our Enzo to the dinghy dock. |
And Gráinne and I even enjoyed
some little freedoms like not being quite as stingy with power as
Karl and actually draining the battery under 90% (he'd faint!). I
spent my time exploring Fort de France and the two other little towns
beside Anse Mitan: Trois Ilets and Anse a L'Ane.
|
Fort St. Louis in Fort de France. During WWII the Banque de France moved its gold to Martinique (clever!) so the Baie de Fort de France remained heavily fortified from both the north and south. |
|
Street in Fort de France |
|
The market in Fort de France |
|
Church in the town of Trois Ilets |
|
Attacking the trail from Anse Mitan to the next bay over - Anse a L'Ane |
|
Anse a L'Ane, whose supermarket has all the good cheese and beer. |
By the time Karl got
back I had a full report ready for him of all worthwhile sights to
see and exactly which goodies he could get hold of in which
supermarket. And also while he was away I played the now
annual game of Kara Australia Job Roulette. Options of Gold Coast,
Toowoomba, Bundaberg and Darwin flew by before we ended up
with......Perth! So if anyone fancies a visit between July and
mid-October...
|
Karl's plane coming in to land over the bay. |
|
Karl's back! Alas it's not possible to explore inside Fort St. Louis which is still a working barracks. |
Once Karl got back and I gave him the
pre-prepared tour we sailed up here to St. Pierre on the northwest
coast. Another very lovely town, nestled under the slopes of the Mt.
Pelée volcano, no real tourism, pleasant shady square, good market,
some pretty, old buildings and narrow streets. It was the largest
town/city in the Eastern Caribbean back at the beginning of the 20th
century just before it was buried when Mont Pelée erupted in 1902.
Probably around 20,000 people left in the months before the main
eruption and probably about 10,000 died in the eruption, only a
handful survived. People didn't return to rebuild until the 1920s but
it has never again overtaken Fort de France as the big smoke around
here. We've really just been hanging out chilling. We came up with a
couple of excuses for nice long french lunches in a couple of very
nice restaurants and now we're soaking up the atmosphere of the
Easter long weekend.
|
Gráinne at St. Pierre with Mont Pelée just peeking out from behind the clouds. |
|
The very impressive steps up to the ruins of the theatre. |
|
This is what a pyroclastic flow will do to your average church bell. |
|
A very large Vierge des Marins watches over the anchorage. At night the rather harsh floodlighting makes her look alot like a penguin. |
Interesting fact. Lots of Caribbean islands were swapped back and forth between the British and French over the years depending on the outcome of the most recent European war. After the French defeat in the Seven Years War (I think) they agreed in the post-war treaty to give Canada to Britain in return for being able to keep Martinique. Well, it is quite a nice island.
Two random thoughts I've been
pondering while in Martinique:
Where are all the english
speakers? It seems only francophones go on holiday to french
speaking islands. I've overheard one group of Brazilians, one dinghy
of spanish speakers and one German family. That's it. The entire
time. The Caribbean is absolutely crawling with north Americans but
only the Quebecois come here. Weird.
Why are only the British
ex-colonies angry? There's been a lot of talk lately about the
ongoing impact of colonisation and slavery and the need for
apologies and reparations. Places like Barbados have just ditched
the Queen as head of state and Jamaica and Antigua are making similar threats.
Meanwhile Martinique is merrily voting in the French presidential
election and the Dutch islands keep voting to remain part of the
Netherlands even though the Netherlands keep politely offering to
let them leave. Why?
I don't have answers, just been
pondering.
|
Karl's dad, Damien, visiting us in Mooloolaba before we left. |
Comments
Post a Comment