Dad and Sophy enjoying a breakfast view before the hike
We woke up early, hoping that we would hear good news from the mountain guide. We ate breakfast on our porch. It was nice. The weather was just great. Actually, we have been very lucky so far with the weather. We called the guide at 8:30, as agreed upon last night, but there was not even an answer. Sigh! They went from being very interested and engaged to not even returning a phone call. We decided to salvage the day by hiking up a trail that is very local to the bungalows: Trace Merwart. We had heard good words about it from Jean Jacques, the owner of the bungalows.
Dad and Sophy enjoying a breakfast view before the
hike
It starts along the same road as Saut de la Lezarde but you have to continue it to the very end and go onto what appears to be property belonging to a house at the end of the road. Thierry and I had scouted that out earlier in the morning. Everyone of the group, except Barry and Susan, decided to come up with us. We had no particular plan for how far (in distance) we wanted to go, although we wanted to see some of the clearings with a view. We parked the cars at the end of the road and started the hike at 10. The kids were a bit cranky as we started, but they moved along quite well.
Dad at a clearing along the trail. In the beginning there
were not many clearings.
We continued until about 12 o'clock when we stopped for lunch. We had not moved that fast, but given that we had kids it was not too bad. The trail climbed upwards most of the time. It follows a ridge along the mountains.
Seated for lunch with Thierry and his big knife!
Lilly had prepared sandwiches for our family. We shared 4 oranges with the group and ate some coco cookies from the local bakery. Very good. During the hike we hoped the vegetation would get lower so we could see the valleys beneath, but they did not. We talked about that over lunch. Some of the people wanted to return back but were willing to continue for a little while longer with the hope that we would get the chance to enjoy a clearing with a view. After about another 1/2 hour we stopped and the kids wanted to return down. It was now 1 o'clock. Naveed, Thierry and myself decided to continue up the path.
Morgane and Isabella posing in the trail just before we
broke up.
The trail gradually got worse in terms of how it was maintained. We walked through many ankle deep mud pools and tried our best to walk around them. We met one solo hiker on his way down and we stopped for a brief moment to chat with him. After a while the trail narrowed and we got into hip high vegetation that had not been cleared for a while. In it we ran into razor sharp grass and dried hard bushes. We got lots of bruises and cuts on our legs that burned with all the sweat. At one point, when we stopped for a liquid break, Naveed decided to tie big leaves around his legs to protect them a little bit. Looked pretty silly, but it worked.
Naveed is tying leaves to his legs
We continued up and cursed as we cut our hands, arms and legs. More mud pools. They were bad but the nice thing with them was that there was no sharp grass or dried bushes around them.
Navigating one of many mud pools in the trail
We soon reached a point in the trail where we could see really well. This is what made the trail worth the hike. This was also a spectacular day to make the hike.
A spectacular view of Point-a-Pitre from the
trail.
After a little further we reached a road fork. We had now also come very close to the time we had set for ourselves as our return time. Basically, we had decided to start going back at 3 o'clock even if we did not reach any uppermost ridge. We sat down for a brief liquid break and looked at our topological map for guidance. The trail to the left would take us to a spot a little bit higher than the trail straight ahead. We decided to take the trail to the left as it looked nice and clear towards the peaks ahead of us. Alas, while it took us upwards for a while we reached a point where we would have to climb down quite a bit before we would get back upwards again. We were tired enough that we were not up for that. We also concluded that it would take too long to reach any reasonable vantage point and also be able to return in time. So we walked back to the road fork again and took the other trail. It started nicely by going upwards, too. But it soon became clear that this was the least travelled path and it had lots of vegetation that bruised our legs and arms. Very, very painful. On top of this, the vegetation also got a bit taller so we lost our view of the sea. We continued in agony for a while and then decided that this trail definitely got us nowhere. Somewhat defeated we turned around after about 20 minutes in this trail. We made a quick stop and ate a little bit.
The bushes along the trail had small berries in
them.
It was even more painful to return back down. Our legs were very sore. The pain was much more pronounced. My hands had swollen up considerably since this morning. I do not know why, but I decided to take off my rings this morning. Now I was glad I had done that because my hands looked bad. We reached the road fork again. There the sign said it would take three hours to get back down to Vernou. We looked at our watch and decided we would have to rush a little bit to avoid it getting too dark. Much of the trail further down is in the middle of the forest so it'll get really dark once the sun gets low. We rushed/walked our way down. We managed to make it back to the car in 2 hours. I was limping the last bit. One car was left behind for us. We got to the car around 5 o'clock. 9 hours in the trail, in other words. We drove back to the bungalows. I felt completely toasted and longed for a bath in the pool to get my swellings down a bit. On Naveed's advise I also ate some salt. It hurt really bad to get into the chlorinated water. After a shower I felt better, but I started to get cold instead. My hands began to return to normal shape. I took a few rum drinks and was feeling better again.
For this evening we had decided to head down and eat dinner at a local restaurant in Vernou. We took everyone with us. It was nice. Surprising how they can prepare so complex meals at a place like this. But then again, this is France. I ate grilled fish and so did Lilly. Some at duck breast. The kids got pizza; probably their first one since we left the US. The restaurant had a table with assorted fruits in rum.
 Morgane is ready for dinner. |
Barry biting into the very good food. |
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 Everyone seated for dinner |
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You were allowed to serve yourself from the Rum table. I tried a number of different ones and they were really good. Karl was so tired that he went off and took a nap in the couch by the restaurant. Perhaps he was anticipating this, because he had his pajama under his regular clothes and quickly changed over before going there. Isabella managed to earn a long time-out in the car because she was a pest with Morgane and then did not want to listen to us. Either way, the meal was very nice. It turns out that this is the restaurant where Pepita had ordered the meat from for our first night. Thierry proposed that we would order prepared meals from them for two more nights in the week, given that it is not that expensive. It could save us a bit of time. So we hashed out two dinner meals with the lady and decided to pick up the first one tomorrow night. Tired from the hike I went to bed and fell asleep immediately.