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.
[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!
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