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.
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