Martinique

 


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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.






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