Guadeloupe 2015: in which the Laskins Encounter a Great Deal of Grilled Fish, and Many Roosters that Should Meet that Same Fate

I'm going to try something a little different with the posting of this latest journal in the Laskin Family Adventures series.  I'll make separate posts for separate days, so one doesn't have to read 19 pages worth of text in one very very long post.  I'll post the last first so that they appear in order on the site.  At least, I hope that will work, tell me if it doesn't!

Guadeloupe 2015: April 18

If you want to know where all the people in Boston are on the first Saturday morning of April break week, look no further than any departure terminal at Logan International Airport.  The streets at 5 am were deserted but that joint was jumping with families looking to run away from our winter-blighted city. 

Another way you can tell that this flight is the Spring Break Express:  all the connecting destinations are tropical, like Cancun, St. Kitts, San Juan, and of course, our destination, the verbally-mangled Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe.  It is pretty exciting to fly over the Caribbean because you can see all kinds of islands, little and big, inhabited and not, surrounded by that turquoise water that you see in all the pictures. 

To get to Gwada, as the locals call it, just fly straight south from the volcano that was Montserrat.  The brown desolate sides are compelling evidence of its relatively recent massive eruption (1997).  Our captain tells us we are about to land in Port-o-Petree, and we imagine his French co-captain gritting his teeth before telling us in French that we are about to land in Pointe-a-Pitre. 

We revel in the steamy heat when we arrive, where have you been sweaty hotness and tropicality?  That was the winter of our discontent, now made glorious summer by this sun of Guadeloupe.  We may have rented the only black car on this entire island, but we pile in and set our compass for Deshaies, on the northwestern coast of Basse-Terre.

We know immediately that we are not in Kansas anymore as right out of the airport we start seeing cows by the side of the road, and great tall trucks swaying precariously from their massive loads of sugarcane.  While we pass lots of cane fields at first, the half of Guadeloupe upon which we are staying, Basse-Terre, is not a place of plantations.  Geography lesson time!  Guadeloupe (that is a long word to type correctly.  This is going to take all day unless I use the local.) is in fact two islands, with a narrow canal between them.  One, Grande-Terre, is low and scrubby and dry, and basically the bottom of a chain of coral-based islands including Anguilla and Antigua.  It connects to the other, larger chain of islands, which are geologically much younger and are mostly volcanic – Nevis, Montserrat, Martinique, and so on.  So, the other half of Gwada is Basse-Terre, which is green and lush and has a mountainous interior, culminating with the 3000+ foot high Grande Soufriere volcano.  While G-T has the white sand beaches for which much of the Caribbean is famous, that also means it has the larger resorts and is more focused on tourists.  B-T is the more interesting island, from a naturalist perspective, less geared toward tourists (although that is relative, tourism drives a lot of this economy, along with bananas but no longer just sugar), and has smaller, but more tropical looking golden beaches at the north, becoming black volcanic sand at the bottom of the island.  The biggest town, Pointe-a-Pitre, is on G-T; the capital, the eponymous Basse Terre, is on B-T.  Driving between them is not hard but there is a lot of traffic here and the roads, once off the main highways, are narrow and twisty, so it takes almost an hour to get from the airport to the northwestern shore of B-T and the charming little town of Deshaies. 

You might, if you’ve studied some French, think is pronounced Day-eye, or even Dayz-eye, but you would be wrong.  Day, or maybe Day-ay is the way.  All the town signs helpfully say the name in both French and Kreole.[1]

More on Deshaies in a bit, because there is a reason we chose this town as our base, beyond the Lonely Planet guide’s recommendation that if you like a charming town and good food this is the place to be.  Our villa for the week is a few klicks outside of the town, past the wee village of Ferry and across the road from what we think at first are just picturesque but will soon come to despise, roosters.  Villa Anoli, found on HomeAway.com, is owned by a very nice and very fortunate French couple named Denise et Jean-Jacques Faujanet, who spend six months of the year here and six months in Normandy.  They tell us that it takes about the same time to fly here from Paris.  Between their broken English and my broken French we are shown around our fabulous island nest.  The house is a slam dunk, just like it looked on the internets except bigger and better.  It is built in an L-shape, around a small infinity pool, set in a garden that someone has a good time maintaining.  There are palms and orchids everywhere, and a couple of little fountains and some bamboo chimes and a humongous birdcage with four parakeets in it!  It all lights up fancifully at night.  After a brief inspection, Peter announces that the infinity pool works like a toilet, with a float, that when it gets high enough, triggers a drain of the water out of the cachement trough.  Izzy thinks it should be called a toilet pool. 

The Faujanet disappear (for where?  They are still in Gwada but that is all we know.  Do they have a fabulous escape pad in the hills?)  and we immediately jump in the pool and then luxuriate on the shaded terrace as the sun sinks into the Caribbean in the distance.  Oh those funny roosters, listen to them, don’t know they know the sun is setting, not rising?  No, ha ha ha.

The only thing that is NOT mentioned in the web listing is that this place is right on the road.  My father-in-law would have left immediately, but we just turn the AC on at night and the beds are great so we are happy as can be.  

Have I mentioned that this is France?  The license plates say F, the currency is euro, every town has a Hotel de Ville and Mairie and flies the tricolore.  And the supermarkets are all French and carry French stuff in addition to locally made products for the tourist trade (chocos, coffee, etc.)  So you get your good French yogurt and butter and your local passionfruit jam for the croissant that you might buy tomorrow morning at the boulangerie.  Parfait, oui? 

I find myself becoming a bit like Eloise in Paris, inserting French phrases here and there as the mood warrants. 

Pour le diner we choose Le Coin des Pecheurs which apparently means either the corner of fishermen or the corner of sinners, depending on how you say it.  Last night it meant mostly French people, and some locals, and us.  Isabel discovered accras, a salt-cod fritter that is ubiquitous here, and on which she may survive for the next week.  Peter enjoyed crabes farcies and blaff, which is a kind of whole fish (whatever of the day) poached in an aromatic broth.  I have read that it is called blaff because that is the sound the fish makes when it hits the hot broth and dies.  "blaaaaaff"  It was tasty.  Peter has also determined that if he orders any dessert with coco (that would be coconut), I will not make him share it.  That kid is getting too smart.  

Sinner or fisherperson, at Le Coin des Pecheurs, you sit on a deck so close to the water that the sound of the waves becomes almost intrusive.  The night here in the Caribbean is very very black, but even a cloudy night has stars – the lights on the tops of all the masts of the sailboats at anchor in the harbor (this is a big sailing destination).  Everyone is convivially eating and talking around, and it feels very nice to be a little too hot at dinner.

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[1] Creole, Kreole?  Not sure, I’ve seen both.  It is kind of Afro-French, but as Peter noted, it is an imagined language (I don’t know where he got that term, but I think it works) and was never written so what is written now is entirely phonetic.  That actually makes it easy to pronounce!

Guadeloupe 2015: April 19

Le wifi est un peu lentement, like everything else here.  Dinner, for example, takes an age.  Izzy is going to have to come up with some coping strategies.  And the water pressure in this house is next to nothing!  At least when you want a shower, that is.  When you are leaving to go to the beach, and you are filling your bottle, water comes out of the tap with gusto.   

There are three ways you drink rum here on Gwada.  (Well you can drink it however you damn please but these seem to be the standard fare.)  Before dinner you can have a 'ti-punch, which is shorthand for a petit-punch which is actually in inverse relation to the punch it gives you.  That is just a healthy shot of rum, with some cane sugar or simple syrup, and a squeeze of lime.

Or you can have a planteur, which is what we would call planter's punch, which is fruit juice with a healthy shot of rum.  Goes down a little too easily.  Often comes with doodads to signify its status as a tropical beverage.  

Finally, you can have vieux rhum, which is the good stuff, and you have it in a snifter after dinner.  

We haven't had the third yet, but we've only been here a day.  

This morning I felt a bit like Richard Poole as I sent a very large bug away out of the kitchen, and got spooked by a friendly bird who whooshed in and sat above the sink, because all I really wanted was a bloody cup of tea.  

Who is Richard Poole?  One of the lead characters in a British dramedy that I enjoy, called Death in Paradise.  The premise is that an uptight, typically British detective is sent to an island holding of the Crown, where he has to solve crimes and learn to live with the locals, who are a lot more laid back than he.  It is formulaic, but fun, and most important to our story, it is filmed just a few clicks down the road in Deshaies, which is another reason we based ourselves here.  Poole spends much of the early episodes pining for a good cup of tea, which you would think he could get if it is indeed a British holding.  But everyone speaks French, or has a French or island accent, except for the white people who are all rich, apparently murderous transplants.  And the island is called Saint Marie.  We know that the British and French fought each other ferociously over these rocky piles back in the 18th and 19th c. day, but abolition pretty much ended the islands' value to anyone and they haven't traded off in a couple of hundred years so who knows where Death in Paradise' particular Creole blend comes from.  You can catch Death in Paradise on BBC America.  

In Deshaies, and I think probably any town of any size on the water, the street that runs right along the sea is dotted with restaurants.  Last night, four of them had clientele, the rest - totally empty.  Qu'est-ce que c'est la difference?  

There is tropical wildlife even at our very house.  Just sitting on the terrasse, the following birds have been spotted:  

-       Lesser Antillean Bullfinch.  These are pretty ubiquitous and completely unafraid - they just fly right into the kitchen.

-       Possibly a Green-Throated Carib hummingbird, or maybe an Antillian Crested Hummingbird.  I think the latter.  Actually, dozens of hummingbirds, called Colibri locally. 

-       Bananaquits.  They look like kind of a cross between a goldfinch and hummingbird, and they are quite charming. 

There is also a giant, ornate gazebo-birdcage in the garden.  It is about eight feel tall, four or five feet wide.  In it, we have discovered four parakeets, whom Isabel has named Phyllis, Barbara, Louis (Lou-ISS not Lou-ee), and Bobby.  She says hello to them every day and at the end of our stay will bid them a sad adieu.

Finally, there are those tiny and utterly charming little lizards which dash about.  Izzy adores them, too.  She is a friend of nature in all its forms.

Today we went to la Grande Anse, which is considered by many beach aficionados and guidebooks to be one of the best in the world.  (Really, google it if you don’t believe me.)  It is indeed a stunner:  a long, long crescent of golden sand, backed by lush green forest and hills on either end.  The beach has a steep slope to the water, which is relatively calm except that every now and then a giant wave rears up and sends everyone bobbing and crashing on to the beach itself.  The trick is to stay just a little beyond the break, which is rather too close to shore for complete comfort.  A rogue wave caught me and Izzy taking a break and sitting at water's edge, dragging us back in, and mashing my toes on a rock.  This generated some colorful language (en anglais, je regrette but my French isn't that good) and has resulted in quite a hobble and surely some spectacular bruising in a day or two.  

Still, the water is about perfect temperature, and everyone is bobbing and laughing and shrieking – tout en francais, of course, we are clearly the only Anglais around.  Down the beach, a girl dance troupe is filmed doing their big routine.  They are pretty good.  We wonder if they are auditioning for Guadeloupe's Got Talent, or maybe even Eurovision?  

They say this beach gets crowded on weekends, but if that is crowded, these people haven't seen Crane's Beach in August.  Although the parking lot is a big jumble of tiny cars just kind of parked every which way among the trees and restaurants.  

Lunch, like dinner, is a leisurely affair if you have it at a beach-side restaurant, which people do.  But who cares, what else do you have to do?  Peter has been afflicted with Caribbean sickness, which seems to involve complete exhaustion and an inability to communicate in anything except monosyllables.  He rallies when faced with some good swimming or food on a plate right in front of him.  

It is wicked hot and sticky after the beach so it is pretty nice to come back to the Villa Anoli and have a refreshing dip in the pool and then a nap sur la terrasse.  I probably do not have to tell you that Isabel is working hard on her cannonball.

One just feels compelled to practice one's French, and it mostly goes OK.  At the beach today, I had a whole conversation with a lady in the parking area, which I think was about whether we were leaving our space and in how long, etc.  She kept talking to me, so I must have been answering correctly.  Peter is doing pretty well!  He orders his own meals, and says bonjour and merci to everyone, which gets you pretty far here.  Isabel on the other hand, keeps saying "What?" every time one of us reads something in French.  That girl has to catch up, tout de suite.  

I think that Bill was secretly delighted about getting a car with a stick shift, so that he could unleash his inner Mario Andretti.  But Mario Andretti never had to drive a Chevy Cruze.  That thing has about five ponies under the hood, so we putt rather than zip around these hilly curves.  

Guadeloupe 2015: April 20

The energetic rooster nearby knows not the concept of time of day.  And there is more than one.  

France has ten national parks, and four of them are not in France.  One of them is in Guadeloupe, however, and takes up much of the island of Basse-Terre.  Today we left the coast, and drove up into the Parc Nationale de Guadeloupe for a little rainforest time.  The road is called the Route de la Traversée, because it, yes, traverses the island.  You go up up up and twisting back and around hairpins and all on a very narrow two-lane road.  Bill feels emasculated by our pokey car, as he constantly has to downshift into second just to keep moving.  We wonder if we must get out and push.

Anyway, one goes to the Parc for many reasons, but the major one is because you get to spend some time in a cool and misty tropical rainforest, a couple thousand feet above the coast among the lovely mountain peaks.  Of course, la Grande Soufrière is the centerpiece of this dramatic landscape, and you can take a hard, three-hour hike up to its summit.  Or you can take one of the many marked trails up here among the Mamelles, which are named because of their resemblance to, well, a lady’s mamelles.  We drive through the cleavage, so to speak, on our way to a short walk through the forest where we see many amazing trees and discuss fairies, which is our standard walking-through-nature topic when Professor Isabel Laskin, FhD (Doctor of Fairieology) is on the trail.  You might want to look up at the trees and vines and leaves and ferns but you would better served to look down so as to avoid tripping or stubbing your toes on the many roots and rocks in the path.  Because the last thing you want to do to your already-very-painful foot is to whack it again.

Someone seems to be blowing leaves off the paths with a leaf blower, which seems like a Sisyphean task if ever there was one.  Another such task is that of the leaf-cutter ant, who trudges in an endless parade with his fellow ants, taking bits of leaves to and fro.  Where are they going?  What will they do with the leaf bits?  Who will ever know?  Not us.

After a kind of sticky rainforest walk a really good place to stop is the Cascade aux Ecrevisses, which is a beautiful falls into a cool forest pool where you can clamber in for a refreshing dip.  Bill even swims Izzy right under the pounding falls.  We did not see any ecrevisses.  

After we make our way back down the Traversée we stop to organize tomorrow's snorkeling expedition and purchase some test gear.  The saleslady lavishes me with compliments for my French which is, in her opinion, as good as hers.  How can that be, she asks in wonderment?  Although she thinks at first we are German, which also happened to me and Bill on Crete.  We have come across no Germans here yet, and only see our first Americans at dinner tonight.  

Cap Créole is the Net Result of Basse Terre, purveyor of treats from the sea such as fine fresh and smoked fish like marlin and tuna.  As we enter a very beautiful lady in a tight fancy dress and sky-high heels emerges with her goodies, hops on to an ATV and putters off into the interior.  What will she do with her smoked fish?  How will she walk anywhere in those shoes?  How can she drive the ATV in that dress?  These questions occupy us momentarily, then recede like a gentle Caribbean wave.

Inspired by the Uncommon Caribbean blog, we search for the Plage Leroux, which the author claims is a small piece of paradise and we may or may not have found it but regardless, we spend a pleasant hour or two at a small beach near our house.  Izzy announces that she loves her new swimsuit, loves this place, and loves life.  Except for the MCAS, she does not love that. [1]  

Today, at long last, Bill and I see a 8 á Huit!  This is the 7-11 of the Caribbean, and we have fond memories of the one that was next to our hotel in Martinique.  We take a look at one in Pointe Noir, and find it even better stocked than the Spar in Deshaies, but no spearguns like in Martinique.  Of course, that was 25 years ago, so maybe the speargun market has crashed or something.

It has become the habit that, upon our return to the house, the children throw themselves into the pool for an hour and then silence falls as books come out.

It always smells like burning here, all day.  Yard waste, mostly.  Except at the beach, where it smells like grilled fish.  Which just makes the whole scene kind of fabulous as you lounge under the shade of a palm gazing at the sea, and contemplating your poisson grillée and perhaps a chilled rosé for lunch in an hour or two.  C’est vrai, the French do this part of the tropics pretty well.    

At dinner tonight, Isabel was felled by two of her demons:  Exhaustion Syndrome and PDD.  The first manifests when dinner is too late for her, and sleep threatens to overcome.  She bravely fought it off with help from an icon of early 20th c. children's literature, Freddy the Pig (this time, in Freddy and Simon the Dictator).  PDD (Pasta Deficit Disorder) is known by the victim's inability to decide on what she wants to eat for dinner, but can be remedied by a dose of les pates, followed by some glace au chocolat.  

The rest of us enjoyed our fancy dinner at La Savane, particularly Bill's dessert of emulsion de maracuja, which is not chocolate-hazelnut mousse as I so confidently announced, but passion fruit!  Peter and I made do with lime crème brulée.  

On the way home we passed a truck ablaze behind a shed.  No one seemed particularly concerned about this so we drove on. 

You see the occasional small group of young men hanging out in towns in the evening, although never ever women.  They drink beer and talk, and you might think it a bit sketchy but that is your cultural filter talking, because it is not.  There is a lot of poverty on this island, and I can’t decide if it is a sense of aimlessness or just a more relaxed approach to life than my East Coast uptight sensibilities can handle.  Houses are small, simple (well, except for the rich people’s houses), concrete mostly but lots of older wood in traditional Creole style:  tall narrow windows opening on to a veranda, even on the tiniest structure.  Where no one lives, or even where one does, the shutters are closed tight against the sun.  It is hard to imagine that anyone lives in some of these, and maybe they don’t but some are definitely homes.  You see a lot more of this on Basse-Terre than on the other side. 

This is also a talk-y culture.  You do see young people with devices, but those groups of young men at night are just sitting around talking, and that is a good thing.  Dignified old ladies, toutes avec les chapeaux, stand and chat by the side of the road while waiting for the bus, or in the street, or at a window.  There is something very appealing about having the time to just have a conversation because you are not dashing off to the next thing, or because that is just a better way to engage with your fellow humans.  I’m sure if we were hanging out in one of the big towns on the island, cities really, we’d see a lifestyle closer to our own.  And I’m also sure that I couldn’t handle it after a few months, and like Richard Poole, I would be screaming for home.  But the sight of so many people, just engaging face-to-face, makes one think. 

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[1] The MCAS is the state test that all public school students in Massachusetts have to take.  Testing, boo!  But that is another story.

Guadeloupe 2015: April 21

When the lights go off on a moonless night in the Caribbean, it is about as dark as dark can be.  I awoke around 2 a.m. this morning to black, and silence, and hot, and determined that there was a power outage.  Bill pulled down the mosquito netting on all the beds and opened the shutters, and then we lay there listening to the roosters, who, yes, know no night.  They'll go for ten or 15 crows, and all the other roosters near and far will answer, and then they'll quiet down for a while.  Now I can even identify the different ones.  There are dogs that bark regardless of light, and cats that caterwaul, too.  And peepers and other buggy things of course.  It is a veritable symphony in the darkness.

I find myself thinking about what it must have been like here, say, three hundred years ago, if you were a planter or a slave.  Planters lived in fear of slave uprisings on such nights, and the way French planters treated their slaves, they had good cause to be afraid.  And this would have been a good night for a slave to run, but to where?  The only place to hide here is the jungle, and you can’t live there indefinitely although I have a vague recollection of something about maroon communities in the lower rainforest.  But the only thing creeping around here tonight are a few teeny lizards.  Everything came back on in a couple of hours of course and woke us up all over again.

Izzy has a marvelous picture book about Jacques Cousteau, called “Manfish,” in which one learns about JC’s youth and love of the sea and invention of SCUBA and of course his red cap.  Today we pay homage to Cousteau, with a snorkel at the Ilet Pigeon marine reserve, part of the Parc Nationale.  Cousteau apparently called this one of the best places in the world to dive, and while we don’t know from diving, we do know that it was a wonderful and memorable experience.  The Ilets Pigeon, named for some old sugar planter, are two barren coral specks just barely off the coast at Malendure.  Seriously, it takes about five minutes on a boat, and many folks kayak there.  There are a whole bunch of companies that will take you out.  We just picked one that had snorkeling prominently advertised among its features, as we were not ready for our baptême, as a first-time scuba dive is called.[1]

We booked our plonge a day in advance, tout en francais with a comical mime until we figure out that we are supposed to bring towels (serviettes, which is also what you call a napkin, so therein lies the confusion). 

All the dive companies and glass-bottomed-boat excursions and kayak rentals are lined up near the pier and it is a bustling scene first thing as lots of folks have been out for early morning dives and many more are gearing up to go out.   We're helped into our gear by a Liverpudlian, which is actually a relief because there really are pas d’Anglais here and while it is not hard to figure out what to do, my diving French is thin.  I am pleased that I have some French because there is not a lot of Anglais here.  But it is kind of exhausting trying to keep up and so once on the boat I just kind of stopped trying to translate for my family and hoped that we would somehow absorb whatever he was telling everyone else.   

We are advised to wear wetsuits so we all stuff ourselves into damp neoprene (that will leave mildew on our new suits dammit).  I think I look like Joan Harris from Mad Men in mine but it is the thing to do, so zip zip but make sure you pee first!  French men often wear bikini-style bathing suits at an age when perhaps they shouldn't, so seeing some of them half-in their wetsuits is really quite a site.[2]

Isabel, a little nervous at managing flippers, mask, and snorkel but looking pretty cute in her little wetsuit, gamely jumps in, and immediately bobs up shrieking “FISH!  I SEE FISH!”  She keeps squealing through her snorkel every time she sees a parrotfish or an angelfish or a blue tang or any of the many other brilliant tropical fish in the coral reef that surrounds these two little rocky piles.  

The water got a bit choppy, some weather came through at first, and we were glad of our wetsuits because after a while it was not super warm (except for Peter, who claimed he was hot).  But it was truly amazing, and even without the sun (which did come out, making it even more Finding Nemo-like), it was amazing.  We only stay in the little narrows between the Ilets, because we are advised by the guide (we think) that farther out is too deep for snorkelers.  But if we had gotten out there, we might have seen the underwater statue of JC, the head of which divers touch for luck.  We imagine that there is a shiny spot on his head, like John Harvard’s left toe.

Here is a partial list of the fish we think we saw:

-       Peacock Flounder

-       Bluehead Wrasse, actually there are many kind of wrasse and we saw several

kinds of Parrotfish

-       Angelfish

-       Foureye Butterflyfish (or maybe a spotfin or a reef but definitely butterflyfish)

-       Damselfishes, including the Sargeant Major (clearly a cross-dresser)

-       Triggerfish

-       Porcupinefish (a.k.a. pufferfish)

-       Grunts

-       Groupers?

-       Tangs

-       Surgeonfish and Doctorfish (the former obviously have more training)

-       Some Boxfishes, including trunk and cowfishes

-       Hamlets

-       Urchin

-       Needlefish

Peter thinks he saw a puddingwife.  Even if he didn’t that is a fun fish name to consider.

We are doing this by looking at pictures of fish online and saying “I think I saw that!”  It is an imperfect science but the point is that there were many interesting creatures down there and we got to swim with them.

Starting your snorkeling career at the Cousteau Reserve around the Ilets Pigeon is a bit like starting your ski career in Telluride:  you will be spoiled for snorkeling anywhere else.  

Later today we did, in fact, find the unnamed Plage Leroux, and it is pretty good but it is no Ilets Pigeon.  We did see a big ol’ iguana, though.

Adding notches to our Death in Paradise belt:  dined at La Kaz, which was the outer setting for Katherine's bar in the series.  Here we met some local cats, practiced in the art of getting fishy bits from tourists like us.  All the local animals here are friendly, but old, with eyes clouded by cataracts.  It is a little unsettling, but we also wonder if maybe they pop in the cataract lens before going out for the evening, the better to work on the tourist sympathies.  

You know that very popular book, written by a frustrated parent, Go the F**k to Sleep!?  I am going to write one for the roosters on Guadeloupe, called Shut the F**k Up!

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[1] Some in our party were tempted by the company that advertised a kayak-snorkel-banana boat combo, mostly because we think the brochure said that you could accost the islands from your kayak!  And then get towed back on a banana.  Pirate imagery was involved.  The leader of our party chose a more sober route.

[2] Also, I am routinely the only woman on any beach in a one-piece bathing suit.  Or maybe one of two.  And most women look pretty great.  No Gabrielle Reece, but just great.  I note again that they are all French.  Clearly they are on to something.