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