Big touring day today!
Bill is determined to get us out and about, and as usual, he has Good
Ideas that live up to their billing.[1] The island
is not that large, but it is extremely hilly so all the roads are narrow and
twisty, and only down south near the big towns is there anything approaching an
actual highway. There are also no stoplights, only roundabouts. Ever. Maybe in the big towns, but I’m not sure we
saw a stoplight the entire week.
Here’s something we do
see: sometimes by the side of the road
there is a big sign which is a sort of cartoon motorcyclist, with a kind of
softly zig-zagged lightning bolt coming down across his helmet and mask. What could this mean? Bill says it is probably warning motorcyclists
about the twisty road ahead. But we
think it may also be telling us to watch out for Harry Potter on a
motorcycle.
And something else, we
also see a number of extremely fit souls on bicycles, even way up in the
mountainous part. Those are some serious
riders. Maybe they are training for the
Tour de France.
Anyway, we traverse the
Route de la Traversée again, this time coming out the other end, taking a brief
detour into a high-rent district in search of abandoned planter mansions.
We realize a few things pretty quickly: 1) that our 20-year-old
Fodor’s may have translated maison as mansion, because there are a few maisons
abandonées here but there are no old mansions. 2) There are plenty of big
houses, behind bigger walls. I read somewhere that the beké, which is
what they call the descendent of white settlers, live in a little enclave up
there.[2]
That would explain the walls and lack of people.
Black and white live
together here, and there are a lot more black than white, given the history,
but it is not always a harmonious relationship. Slaves in the Caribbean
were the worst-treated of all in the Americas, considered completely disposable
given the plentiful and ready supply from Africa. Sugar was just too
profitable for any planter to pass up, but it was a difficult crop to grow and
you needed a lot of bodies to harvest and process it. The combination of
hard physical labor, proximity to African slave markets, and potential for
profits meant that slaves were here from the early 1600s on. The poor
conditions did not endear the masters to their slaves, so when the opportunity
arose to fight back, such as during the French Revolution, which abolished
slavery, the slaves did just that. During the French Revolution, the
planters here were strong monarchists but I was surprised to learn that they resisted
the Rev to the point of declaring independence and throwing in their lot with
the British! (What would Monty Python, those originators of the Taunting
French, have done with that? Reverse
taunting?) The Brits actually ruled Guadeloupe for a bit in 1794, until the Revolutionary
government got tired of this situation and sent a new man, Victor Hughes (not
to be confused with Victor Hugo) to take over. Hughes was a strict
Revolutionary, to the point of freeing the slaves and arming them, and he even brought
along his own guillotine, so Gwada had its own little Reign of Terror.
Now, I'm a little fuzzy
on the next part. Once Napoleon comes in, all that business about liberté
equalité fraternité goes out the window, at least where black people are
concerned, because he wants to re-establish slavery. Hughes has been sent
elsewhere, so I'm not sure who is in charge but it is someone loyal to NB (who,
you may recall, is married to Josephine from Martinique!). But rather
than just telling the Guadaloupeans to get on with it and put those slaves back
to work, and perhaps sensing that the white:black ratio did not work in favor
of just re-shackling, he sends armed forces. This upsets the free black
Frenchmen in the army, loyal to the Revolution, like one Louis Delgrés (also of
Martinique). He brings an armed force of several hundred from Martinique
and somehow manages to fight his way on to the island, and get to the big fort
outside of Pointe-a-Pitre. Once there, he and his followers, which now
include more local slaves and free people, realize they can't beat the French
army so they somehow escape the fort – hundreds of them – and lure the Frenchies
up the side of La Soufrière to the town of Matouba, where they blow themselves
and the soldiers up with dynamite. Needless to say, Delgrés is a local
hero, his bust is everywhere on the island, and he is in the French Panthéon.
The fort in Pointe-a-Pitre is named after him.
But while we will also
ascend the volcano partway this morning, we will not blow ourselves up on its slopes.
Our destination today is the Chutes de Carbet, high up on the slopes of
la Grande Soufriére, the still-active volcano that dominates the island.
You can hike up to the summit of Soufriére, which gets trois etoiles in
the Guide Vert but is also about three hours of tough climbing, so we opt out.
But everyone goes to see the magnificent Chutes, and once there you see
why. There are three falls on the Carbet river, which comes down the side
of the volcano. The middle one is the easiest
to reach, about a 30 minute walk on a stone path up and down through the steep
rain forest valleys along with an awful lot of French people (bonjour, bonjour,
bonjour), until you reach a teeny viewing platform to see the magnificent, 110
m. high falls.[3] It
is a beautiful sight, and you used to be able to get closer, but torrential
rains in 2004 apparently loosed thousands of tons of rock under the falls, and
made the paths impassable beyond the current viewpoint. If you are hardy,
you can hike another hour and a half up to the first chutes, which are even
higher than the second, or down to the third. We can see the first from a
distance and it looks as good as the second, but we're told that the third is
quite smaller.
We are not particularly
hardy so we opt out of the longer walk but we would recommend this to hiking
types.
Bill learns that
Columbus, who landed here in 1493 and named the island, apparently saw the
chutes from sea, and decided this would be a good island to check out, given a
clear source of fresh water. I get that, but I'm also thinking that
pretty much any incredibly green, lush island would probably have a good water
source, so why don't you just circumnavigate until you find a river mouth?
I guess the reefs all around preclude close-in navigation of the big
boats, but it still makes sense to me.
The road up to the parc
for the Chutes is another incredibly twisty and turny and narrow route and we
cannot imagine how they get those busses up here, which apparently they do,
given the bus spaces in the parking lot. This whole island makes the Hana
Highway look like Memorial Drive.
Being on the south side
of the island, Bill wants to check out the Parc Archéologique des Roches
Gravées in Trois-Rivières which apparently has ancient Amerindian pictographs.
The tour is, bien sur, tout en Francais, so I try very hard but really
only get about 10% of what our deep-voiced and locally-accented guide is
saying. There are few faint pictographs and lots of volcanic rocks amid a
lovely garden, and I think we learned a lot about the plants as well. I
did get the first part, where he told us that the first pictograph we'd see is
called something to do with a turtle. You may see a turtle, or you may
see something else, that's kind of the idea with these. And depending on
when you are there, the light, if it has rained recently, you may see more or
less of the carving. So much is in the eye of the beholder. And, we
don't know a lot about how to date them, but we think they are from sometime in
the early CE (which, Peter informs us, is NOT the Christian Era but the Common
Era. AD is completely done.). This, per the brochure, which is a lot
easier to translate than the series, is the biggest group of engravings in all
the Antilles, and of such importance that some are even in the Museum of
Natural History in New York. (I think our guide made an extended joke
about just jetting over there to see it, spend the weekend, yes? Or maybe
he said something entirely different.)
There is also a trail
into the woods where there are apparently more engravings to be seen, but some
event (an earthquake, those rains?) caused so much damage, rockfalls, etc.,
that it is too dangerous to go up there anymore. You would have to rappel
down into a grotto or something, to see them. At least, I think that is
what he said. We get to smell cinnamon branches, and allspice, and
frangipani, and feel some cotton. It is very pretty, but I'm glad it is
free because I'm not sure I learned a whole lot.
I feel like my French is
deteriorating a bit, as we get to the end of our stay here. It is pretty
easy for me to keep up with a one-on-one conversation, if the person goes
slowly and I have some idea what we're talking about. But following a presentation,
although I start with great determination, usually ends up with my hoping to
just sort of absorb some information by osmosis.
Dinner tonight at Chez
Lelette, which is very good but lives up to its TripAdvisor comments as the
slowest service ever. Peter is pretty much comatose by the end of the
night (because you guys don't have anything interesting to talk about!) and
Isabel goes downhill quickly once she has finished her book. She even
skips dessert, so tired is she from toodling all about the island today.
Her poisson grillé comes with a quite delicious onion sauce, which I
eat. Bill is delighted with his blaff, and we think the accras here may
be the best yet. It is very convivial at Chez Lelette, but for all we
know some of those people may still be there.
Have I mentioned the lime
issue yet? Every 'ti-punch you get has a slice of lime in it. That is an
absolute requirement. Upon their departure, our hosts indicated their rum
set up, and said we should be sure to have some. The bottle has a little
straw hat, and is right next to a jar of cane sugar, essential to the punch.
But you have to have a lime to have a ‘ti-punch, and while you get one in
every restaurant, you cannot find one in a store to save your life. Anywhere,
anytime. We think there is a lime cartel that is controlling distribution
of the citron vert; it is likely some kind of organized crime
situation. They’ll only sell to the
restaurants. At one point I think I see
some men selling some by the side of the road – you see people selling all
kinds of produce by the side of the road, everywhere – but we don’t stop
because we don’t want to incur the anger of le Mafia du Citron Vert.
[2] I really dislike having to use
the phrase “I read somewhere.” It is
indicative of lazy research. But I have
searched and searched and cannot find where I read that so “somewhere” will
have to do. Apologies, WG.
[3] When is a falls a chute and when
it is it a cascade? Per Google Translate, a chute is a drop or plunge,
and a cascade is, well, a cascade, or falls. Bill theorizes that a chute
is longer and narrower. So you might have the Chutes D'Anges in Venezuela
but perhaps La Cascade de Niagara in the US. Except that they call
Niagara a chutes, as well. So, maybe it is just height.
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