Morgane and Isabella on the boat to Les Saintes
Today we planned to visit Les Saintes, the small islands located just south of Basse Terre. They are also part of Guadeloupe. As we wanted to get onto the first boat, we did not have time to each breakfast at the bungalows. We had planned to leave at 7 sharp to be down there in Trois Rivieres on time. There was a misunderstanding regarding us waking up dad and Sophy. He came walking out of their bungalow at 6:50 and looked stressed. He said that they had decided to not come because they woke up late and did not feel they had enough time to prepare for the trip. I tried to convince him, but to no avail. He felt there were plenty of things to see on the island anyway. So all of us, except dad and Sophy, left the bungalows around 7.
We arrived in Trois Rivieres with plenty of time to get to the boat. The parking is just next door to the docks. We unloaded our cars and walked over to the dock where the boat was standing. I started looking for the tickets and realized that I only had one single kid ticket even though I had paid for three. I rushed up to the little cabin where I had bought the tickets yesterday and fortunately the same lady was working there as yesterday. I explained to her what had happened. She looked at me in sort of disbelief. Another man, presumably working for the boat company, came up to me and asked me to explain. Without hesitation, he flipped out two more kid tickets and gave them to me.
We embarked on a boat named Antoinette. We took seats in the open air tail section, even though I knew it would spray a little bit. The ride over is not long. It takes about 30 minutes to reach Terre-de-Haut, the main town of Les Saintes. It is located on the largest of the many little islands that make up that is technically called Les Saintes. The bay where we pulled in was beautiful and filled with anchored sailing boats. The water is crystal clear around the dock where the boat let us off. You can see the supporting pillars all the way down to the white sand.
Morgane and Isabella on the boat to Les Saintes
Terre-de-Haut is a quaint little town with small houses, narrow and windy roads. The first thing on our agenda was to rent scooters. We found an outlet about 50m (150ft) up the street towards the church. He had a bunch of orange scooters for 180FR per day. Not a bad deal (about $25 per day). We rented enough so that we were able to double up. As we waited to perform our paperwork we ate a rushed breakfast. We had brought assorted things with us from the bungalows. We took a few test rides with the scooters before we completely teamed up and left. Big smiles on everyone's faces! Thierry had read up a little bit about Les Saintes and had found that the Napoleonic fort on top of the cliff was only open in the morning.. We decided to visit that first. Here the scooters really showed their power. It was nice to not have to walk up the long road to the fort. It was a bit tricky to meet cars and vans along the road because the road is about 10 feet wide. We stopped just before we got up to the fort on a little bend with a beautiful view of the bay and of Guadeloupe. As with last time we visited Les Saintes, the island is full of goats wandering around. Some of them came up and begged for food. Isabella was very amused. She got a bunch of bananas from another tourist that she then fed to the goats.
Isabella feeding the goats near the Fort
We continued up the road a little bit and parked the scooters just below the fort. At this point it had become rather hot outside and there was almost no shade up here. We walked up the last part of the road and into the fort. We had to pay a minor entrance fee of about $8 for our entire family. We walked up to the fort wall where you have a great view and where they have planted lots of different types of cactuses. One of the big attractions with the fort is all the iguanas that freely roam around. They are quite big, about 3 feet or so. I briefly talked to one of the caretakers of the garden and learned that they numbered in the 100s.
One of many large (3ft) Iguanas inside the Fort. They are
not captive.
Even though the views around the Fort wall are stunning, the heat was intense this sunny day. I filmed a little bit while Lillemor had the still camera. After a while I walked into the Fort. It is a museum now with lots of artifacts from Guadeloupe's history. Plaques on the wall told us about Guadeloupe's history and how the British and French had fought back and forth a number of times over them. There were all sorts of other things in the fort too, like dried fish, sand samples, paintings, etc. It was also very nice a cool in the fort. When we got ready to leave the fort Isabella had disappeared. We thought we knew what she was up to but we could not see her. I strolled around the fort wall one more time in the heat until I found her, trying to pet an iguana! She was completely unaware of that she had been separated from the group and that everyone was now waiting for her... The scooter seats were hot when we got down to pick them up from the parking.
We drove down into town. It is a bit scary to use the scooter's breaks on the steep downward sloping roads. If those breaks every give up, you'd be in deep trouble because there is nowhere comfortable to drop the scooter towards! I made sure we went slowly. I had Isabella on my scooter. We drove over to a beach that we had visited last time (Plage de Pompierre). This time they charged an entrance. We did not think that the beach was all that super last time so we thought we ought to look around a little bit now that we had the scooters. We drove back to town. Lilly and I lost the others and we ended up driving around a bit without them. We then drove back to the church and the place where we had rented the scooters to get a map. While we were looking at the map Thierry found us!
I was now feeling exhausted from the heat and I think the others were too. We first needed to buy something we could eat on the beach. We parked the scooters and walked into Terre-de-Haut. We found a place where they sold sandwiches and walked into the shade. They had a covered terrace on the side of their shop with tables. I sat down and enjoyed the breeze. Even though the plan was to just pick up food here and move on, more and more members of our group joined me at the tables for the same reasons. So we decided to eat the takeout food right here. It was a well needed stop. Once we were done we headed out to the beach on the scooters.
The Hamnqvist "gang" posing on their scooters in
front of Terre-de-Haute.
The beach we went to had no name, but was next to a landmark called Pain de Sucre. There are lots of buildings on the hillside towards that beach and the beach is a narrow band of darker sand. The only access was down through driveways and a hotel that was next to the beach. I went out snorkeling with Isabella, Thierry and Brigitte towards Pain de Sucre. At first there was not much to see, but as we approached the cliffs the water became crystal clear and we could see lots of different types of fishes. There were also all sorts of plants on the sea floor. The place was also full of fire corals so we had to make sure not to touch any cliffs. I dare say that this was the best snorkeling we've done on Guadeloupe so far. Once back on the beach we ate a fresh pineapple that we had brought with us. The kids played in the sand. Isabella built a "hotel". Erik, Morgane, Gaetan and Karl worked on a sand castle. They looked the same to me...
Around 3 o'clock we got ready to leave the beach. We wanted a bit of time in town before the boat would return back to Trois Rivieres. As we drove down, we got caught in the beginnings of a Carnival parade. We stopped for a little while and admired their outfits and the loud music they were rehearsing.
A local group gets ready to join the Carnival train on Les
Saintes
We had to hurry back to town now. We bumped into yet more groups of people dressed for Carnival. The sun was shining and it was just a perfect day. More loud music. Some of the local streets had parents walking with their kids almost like Trick or Treating on Halloween up in the US. We hurried down to town and returned our scooters. Only caveat was that both me and Brigitte were told we had broken an indicator light. I am not actually sure it was broken before we gave it back to him. When Brigitte pointed out that her indicator light was barely lose, he snapped it off with his hand just to make a gesture to prove it was indeed broken off. It was just the mounting pole that had cracked a bit, but everything else worked. All you needed to fix it was a screw and a washer. But the rental guy insisted on charging us 218FR each for this! After some debating I decided that the best was to deal with this was through a VISA dispute so I just signed and told Brigitte to do the same. It is really only $30 each, but it feels wrong to be stiffed for money like this. Especially after a nice day!
We now had about 15 minutes left on the dock to wait for the boat. Lots of other people had gathered down at the square by the dock. I only wish we could have stayed there longer. Oh, well. This gives us a good reason to come back. Trip back was relaxing. The weather was cloudy as we came back. Karl fell asleep in the car on the way back and did not want to get out of the car. When we got back to the bungalows Thierry and I headed back to the little restaurant (where we ate two nights ago) and picked up half prepared dinner food: two big fishes that had been marinated.
Susan is tending the charcoal BBQ with our fish
We prepared them on the grill at home. Erik did not want to complete his diary work and conveniently fell asleep again, diary in hand. When I went back to talk to him he just cried. Sophy went to bed before eating dinner as she did not feel too well. Unfortunately I could not drink too much for dinner because we are going diving tomorrow.