Our last day in Guadeloupe so we make for the town beach and enjoy our last decent french coffee and croissant for a while. Even early at 9am it's heaving but with the bathers doing an unusual "promenade" in the sea, walking up and down in groups, cheek kissing each other in welcome, no actual swimming to be seen. Turns out there is a strong cross current which can be used as effective exercise if you walk against it. Given the age and nationality profile here Ant (rather uncharitably I thought......) likened it to a Saga Speedo photo shoot for Health & Efficiency magazine... And no, that is not Ant in the pic, just a Euro Speedo-er whose Speedo's shrunk in the wash.
With relief, we leave the Hotel Rotabas and head into the capital, Pointe a Pitre before our flight home. We had heard the place was a bit rough, but weren't prepared for feeling that we might just have run into our own version of "Bonfire of the Vanities". Even though there was a huge cruise ship in, nowhere was open - this is still France after all, so we guess even the opportunity of making a living when your economy is f****d and unemployment is almost 25% doesn't get in the way of Sunday at home....
The fact that the shops were boarded up and no one else was around probably made the crack addicts more visible than they would normally be.... We found one dingy cafe, where a few crew from the cruise ship, any port in a storm I guess, were eating, desperate for a change from cruise ship food.
And the local KFC, busy with Phillipino crew from the ship all skypeing home on the free wifi on their Macs, looks like cruisees' tip well. We decide to eat here, the only place we could find open and also attended by two burly security guards.... It's such a shame for the place, apart from the awful graffitied boxlike apartment blocks, there is some quite nice old colonial architecture in the centre, but no one would want to linger here. A couple of locals were trying their best to stop the local druggies from begging and hassling any nearby tourist but they were fighting a losing battle. So on this occasion, even Ant was happy to get to the airport early. A lovely modern airport, more EU money, I hear you cry..... Full to the brim of people arriving and departing today's Costa cruise. We wait patiently in the departure lounge, unable even to shop. Duty free here is tiny as most passengers are on Air France or Euro charters travelling from one EU country to the next, so can't buy any duty free at all..
We take our 16 minute flight on Liat, who were only slightly late, and arrive in Antigua. We stopped here for two reasons, Ant to get a pin (Gill has already claimed this one...), and to go over to Montserrat, yes new pins for both but also to see such an interesting post volcano island. But the Caribbean economy has thwarted our efforts, no ferries timed to get there and back in a day, and the only flight, WinAir have just gone bust...
We check in at the Wind Chimes Inn, near the airport, and again the cheapest we could find, a steal at $100US. The place itself is lovely, nice clean rooms and small but modern bathrooms, but yet again a hotelier forgets location, location, location. It's situated about 50 metres from the beginning of the runway here where everything from small private Cessna's to BA777's take off and land. Great for a plane buff but last night we both thought that either the world had ended or the neighbouring volcano had had one hell of a vent as a jumbo roared into life and took of outside the bedroom windows...
No restaurant or bar here either so we get a lift to the nearest, Food Fantasy, over the local supermarket. And yes, most of the menu was a fantasy, pizza oven broken, soup off......
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
