Guadeloupe

Anchorage

Our stateroom window has been cleaned, just in time for us to watch all the goings-on in the anchorage.

Our window has been cleaned

We ate breakfast in the dining room this morning. Bob had his usual - hot cocoa, half a grapefruit, and oatmeal with no milk but with brown sugar and raisins. Every morning they have one or two specials and one of them is usually some kind of eggs. I had todays special which was scrambled eggs with asparagus and Swiss cheese and potatoes au gratin and I didn't order anything else.

Asparagus scrambled eggs and Potatoes au gratin

Terre de Haut is a very tiny island. It is less than two and a half square miles. It has most of the population of the archipelago, but this population is less than 2000 souls. Terre-de-Haut is separated from Terre-de-Bas by a narrow half mile channel. The island is mostly vertical. That is there is not much flat land and there is only about 40 inches a rain a year. Historically, this means that there was no big sugar cane plantations and therefore slavery never took hold here. But the island has lots of beaches and good food so it is a magnet for French tourists. It is the sort of island where some hotels don’t even bother with room keys. Terre-de-Haut has only one village, which goes by the same name as the island. It consists of just two streets that run parallel to the water,

Terre de Haut village from the ship

We got a tender about 8:45 - there were only 8 of us. Three of us on the tender were a man and his wife and a little boy of about five years. They were going take the challenging hike up to Fort Napoléon des Saintes. As we came in, I thought I saw a fountain on the waterfront, but there was a man in the water next to the dock where the tender was heading and he was splashing water up into the air. Perhaps he was afraid that the tender would run over him.

I had intended to go to the Tourist Office and ask about a taxi, but Bob was too impatient for me to find it on the map. He insisted on going in a different direction than I wanted to go up to the street for vehicles that was parallel to the water, and when we asked about a taxi, we were redirected to the pedestrian street going up the hill to an area in front of the Les Saintes de Terre-de-Haut (Catholic Church).

Les Saintes de Terre-de-Haut

There were some taxis there and one of the men tried to explain to me in broken English that to get to one of the cemeteries on my list I would have to take the 45 minute ferry to the other island. I was being very stupid and he gave up. I figured out what he was trying to tell me about 15 minutes later. The one cemetery on the island was up a steep hill which was probably too steep for the scooter.

People were renting motorbikes and mopeds and we saw them being fitted with helmets and the man explaining to them how to turn them on. There were also little electric cars or golf cart type things for rent and there were regular and motorized electric bikes zipping around.

Motorcycle

Motorcycle rental area and No Parking sign for cars and bikes

I saw one fashionable lady in strappy sandals and a nice outfit which displayed her pretty legs on one of the motorized bikes going up the hill by the church, and then 10 minutes later she came down the hill, whizzing along - I'm sure at least 40 mph. Taxis that were parked there did not appear to be manned - they had no drivers. The ferry seemed to run about every half hour. There were a lot of people with suitcases which were not from our ship.

Motorcycle rental on the right and ferry passenger with suitcase

Street corner opposite the church with statue

An ambulance went down to the docks. Finally I saw an actual taxi which had a driver and some people in it and I said "Taxi", and the lady driver said she had to take those people to the beach but she would come back for us. And she did. She said it would be 15 Euros to take us to the cemetery, wait 10 minutes and then come back.

Town square

Some kind of little all terrain vehicle

Street going to the cemetery

When she got back, we followed the ambulance and she said they were taking whoever it was in the ambulance to the airport to be flown out because there was no hospital on the island.

Following the ambulance

She drove down the Impasse de la Plage (Impass Beach?)

Impasse de la Plage Beach

Street near the cemetery

and then turned around and backed into the cemetery gate.

Entrance to the cemetery

Cemetery gate

Bob and I got out and took over 100 photos. I observed that they used conch shells as edging

Conch shells around a grave

Cemetery main 'street'

I could not go off the main path so I just went down to the end where there was a

Memoire des Marins

Bob observed that they used artificial turf over the sand.

Road back to town from the cemetery

She took us back to the church and I accidentally gave her more euros than I had intended to do - I think instead of 15 euros, I gave her 40 or 50 euros. We went back down to the tender dock

Cafe with Ice Cream Cone

Kiosk selling jewelry

Side of the square at the ferry dock

Other side of square of ferry dock

Ferry dock

and got back on a tender. This time I sat in the center where the breeze goes through and I took photos of the scenery we passed.

View from the tender

Houses on the hillside from the tender

There was a red buoy which had two round things on top

Booby on a Buoy

and I took a photo of it as we went by and when I looked at the photo, there was a booby sitting on it.

Wind sailor

We were in time for morning trivia which was at 11:00. None of our regular group was there so we joined another group. (There were only two groups this morning). We did pretty well although none of us could remember the name of Roald Dahl's first book. Actually we could not remember the name of any of his books. The title that was wanted was "The Gremlins". In any case the other group and our group almost came to blows over two questions. One question was "What sport requires a fletcher for the equipment?" They said "Arrow point" and we thought that the point of the arrow was not the part that the fletcher had tp do anything with. The other question was "What sport awards the Stanley Cup" And we said NHL hockey. They said that only Ice Hockey was acceptable, that just hockey was not. But even though they disallowed our answer to the question, we still won. They gave us little books with blank paper inside to write on as a prize. I went out on deck afterward and took some more photos.

Island and yacht from the ship

Ferry

Cliffs from the ship

Ship tender going to town

While we were at trivia, a Silversea ship came in and anchored nearby.

Silverseas ship

We went to lunch at the Panorama Buffet.

Panorama Buffet

You could eat outside, but Bob does not like eating outside and we try to stay out of the sun. I had potato salad, chicken gumbo

Chicken gumbo

and a piece of pizza. I don't think the pizza was as good as the Star Princess because it wasn't as cheesy. (This ship does not have an International Cafe and lot of people miss that). I went and got apple crumble with vanilla sauce for dessert and I did it by myself because on this ship, they don't help people in wheelchairs or on scooters with your plate.

After that we went down to the cabin and I worked on the cemetery photos and email for a bit and Bob napped. Then he spend some time watching the antics of the sailboarders of a big French yacht (sailboat) with black topsides that was anchored across from us.

We went to tea at 3:30 - they had tea, little sandwiches, pastries, scones with clotted cream and jam and cookies.

Afternoon tea

I had one of each. Then we went to afternoon trivia, which we didn't win but we had a good time. We went out on the promenade deck but most of it was blocked off because the tenders were being used.

Promenade deck when the tenders were out

At dinner I had the

Asparagus appetizer

(which was good) and the

Cold borscht (no sour cream)

which I didn't care for. I like it better hot with sour cream. Bob had the

Watermelon fruit cocktail

and his usual salmon. I had

Herb roasted chicken

We both had ice cream for dessert.

Tomorrow is Martinque