Diversions aside, we have travelled around Grand Terre today, the other big island of Guadeloupe. A civilised start at a boulangerie in St Anne, where, whilst enjoying a pain au chocolate and a cafe au lait, we pondered on the status of this Caribbean island's tourist trade, whilst listening to a couple of drug crazed locals spouting off.... Our pre conceived notion of a stylish, cosmopolitan, French sophisticated playground have been shattered. From what we have seen the tourist trade seems to be low end, older French people complete with their own beach chairs. We have seen very few decent hotels, even Club Med looks a bit past its sell by date (although difficult to get close as the beach, Caravelle Beach, one of the best in Guadeloupe, is closed due to the Presidential visit). Lots of places are shut down and there is an air of emptiness around, especially considering this is high season.
We visit St Francois, another small coastal town, very seasidey, with bucket and spade shops, in fact on reflection, this coast is more a bucket and spade coast than the buckets of champagne coast we had envisaged. And the Pres is visiting a farm here hence the diversions all over the place.
We find another great small farmer's market situated alongside the fishermen gutting their catches. Luckily the pleasant smell of the various spices on sale drowned that out. Ant buys some vanilla after a tortuous conversation in Gill's bad French about how long it would keep and how best to store it. We also spotted a turtle swimming about in the bay. Poor soul, it had probably swum trillions of miles to get back to it's birth beach only to find it had been washed away......
We drive along to the extreme east of the island to Pointe de Chateaux, which, being on the Atlantic, has impressive big rollers crashing in.
And then onto Le Moule for lunch, a small coastal town, complete with a French church, square and mairie, definitely for locals with no obvious tourist attraction apart from the rum distillery. We dine in the boulangerie, making the most of the bread and pastries We move on and are sad to find the distillery closed, but of course we are in France and everything is now closed till Monday.....But Ant still managed to climb up the windmill....
So back to the beach by our hotel, and we look out over the blue sea at the windsurfers and dingy sailors enjoying their Saturday afternoon. Ant has a beach nod as security helicopters buzz overhead.
Security around the Sarkozy's is tight, but after the riots in Feb 2009 where 20% of the whites fleed from the island amidst chaos and burning cars, we guess he is taking no chances. This evening,so far, so peaceful except for the loud blues being played as we dine yet again at The Americano Cafe in St Anne. And for a nation that " no speak a de english" we are surprised to find they are singing in it..... English is still obviously the "lingua franca"!
But St Anne is livlier tonight (all relative.......) with fire magicians on the beach and music to entertain the business types down here for the weekend. We have however been able to acquire a couple of Ecuadorian panamas!
We are ready to leave Guadeloupe, it isn't special at all, but we will miss coffee and baguettes. We did however earn a pin, so is worth every euro, Little else.....
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