These pages tell the story of our winter vacation 2001 to Guadeloupe in the French West Indies. The trip took place from Monday the 19th of February through the 3rd of March. Think of it as a diary, although it does not represent the experiences of everyone that took part in this trip.
Why Guadeloupe? Last year (2000) we organized a joint group trip there with three families from up here in the northeast and Lillemor's sister (Anna) and her friend. This was such a gratifying experience that we decided to try it again, but perhaps not this soon. By the time Olivier and Marie-Flur held the going away party for Vincent and Andree Lacasse, who joined us during the 2000 Guadeloupe trip, we started talking about doing this again in 2001. One thing led to another and after a lot of changes to the group, we firmed up tickets in December of 2000.
Guadeloupe is actually located in a very convenient spot for those of us with some European heritage and especially a French connection, living up in the cold north eastern United States. We can get there in less time than it takes to go to Hawaii and yet enjoy a rich culture. Better yet, it costs less to get there! You can leave Boston at 7AM and be in Point-a-Pitre by 3PM the same day, using regular flights with American Airlines. Guadeloupe does not feel especially exploited and you are left alone as a tourist. You can do your thing without feeling taken advantage of. Cutting the winter in two helps to deal with the snow an the cold. By the time we're back the days have started to get longer and we're not far from melting snow.
So who decided to come with us this year? Besides ourselves, the Hamnqvist family, we were joined by our close friends from France: Brigitte Fontaine and Thierry Ciot with their kids Morgane and Gaetan. A friend from Thierry's job at CompuWare, Susan Giusto, took one of our vacant airplane seats. She was joined with two friends from her project at CompuWare, Barry Tannenbaum and Naveed Ihsanullah. My dad, CG Hamnqvist, joined us from Sweden with his wife Sophy Rath.
Where did we end up staying? We decided to go back to the same place we stayed last year. We rented bungalows from Jean-Jacques and Pepita Nesty, at Domaine de la Glaciere in Vernou. Vernou is not in the main drag of the two islands Grand Terre and Basse Terre. Rather, it is located in the middle of the "rain forest" of Basse Terre, up the hills along the traverse that takes you from Point-a-Pitre over to the west side of Basse Terre. This location is nice because it means nice and comfortable nights.
In the weeks leading up to the trip, Lilly, myself and Isabella decided to take scuba diving lessons. We went to a place in Merrimack (Aquatic Specialties), which is affiliated with a national organization (SSI) and their training program (NASDS). During the diving lessons we were joined by Barry. We worked it out such that we would get a so called referral to a diving outfit in Guadeloupe (Les Heures Saines) for the open water portion of the training program; we did not exactly feel like ice diving at this time of year in Lake Winnipesaukee. The program consisted of 6 classroom lessons, followed by the exam. On the Sunday prior to our departure we had our final exams minus the open water dives. We had a one hour class room test which all of us passed. I was especially pleased that Isabella passed the theoretical part, because it did require (for her) a fair amount of preparation. The pool exam did not go as smooth as we had hoped, in part because our regular teacher Barb was not there, in part because we had left some of our gear at home (so we did not have to pack wet gear) and also because the substitute teacher wanted all four of us to be down at the bottom of the narrow pool at the same time for tests. It was packed and not very comfortable. Some of us were leaning sideways due to weights not being in the right place. On top of things, Erik called from the house a 3rd time (while I was underwater) and I had to get with my head above water to grab the phone from Ben only to find out that Erik was bored! But we did pass and that was a sigh of relief.
We got most of our things packed during the weekend before the trip. Even though we wanted to leave on a Saturday, leaving on a Monday was not such a bad idea. It gave us a little bit of extra time to get things packed. We got a few hours of sleep before the limo picked us up at 4 o'clock in the morning.
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