That’s “De-hay” to all of you.
We’re quite happy to have gotten back to France again! Guadeloupe is a French territory, so when you clear into customs there you fly a French tricolor courtesy flag. You may also hum “La Marseillaise” but that is optional.
We truly enjoyed our time in the French side of St. Martin but had some small amount of trepidation approaching Guadeloupe. Mostly because some friends of ours didn’t have a great experience there; but ours was quite different.
First of all, Guadeloupe is a whole lot more French than St. Martin. How so? Well…not a lot of people speak English. When I cleared into customs (an easy task, complicate only by the bizarre French keyboard on the computer) the woman in the gift shop where customs was located (yes…”Customs” is in a cute little gift shop called “Le Pelican”) didn’t speak a word of English. The whole stay in Deshaies really pushed our French to the limit.
The trip to Guadeloupe from St. Martin wasn’t too bad. It was plagued by shifting winds and rain squalls, but over all it was an easy trip. We arrived in the early afternoon and I cleared us in. That evening we went in for a nice dinner at a charming waterfront restaurant in town. The waiter, when he tried English, confused us more than when I tried French – but it all worked out. We also found a decent French Boulangerie (bakery) with good bread and Chausson Pommes (like an apple turnover) that were to die for. Add in a grocery with decent French cheese and wine and we were set, and glad to be back!
Around Deshaies there are a number of interesting things to do, including a nature walk up a creek to an alleged water fall and a botanical garden. We set off to the botanical garden on our second day with mixed enthusiasm…mixed in that only Kathy was really excited about it. My memories of “Botanical Gardens” were mostly of the duller sort back in the states where they were pretty limited by what could be grown in temperate climates. You know…green stuff. So we all waited patiently in the light rain (also not an excellent omen for a day outside) for the free shuttle from the Jardin Botanique to come pick us up.
After an afternoon walking around the Jardin looking at the stunning riot of colors and beauty there, I can freely admit I was completely, totally wrong about it. Being in the tropics means they can grow almost anything and everything, and they do. The gardens are packed full if colors from every bit of the visible spectrum. Masses of brilliant hues assault you from every direction, as you walk from one spectacular sight to another. From tiny flowers the size of your fingernail to massive trees and flowers bigger than your hand there was a little of everything. Also they had Lorakeets, Parrots, and Koi pools scattered around the grounds. The rain cleared up, and left everything fresh and vibrated with a delicate glisten to it.
We have a long photographic record of Lorakeet feeding in our family. These parrot like birds are brilliantly colored and feed on nectar. They are a popular attraction in many nature/animal type venues and our children have feed them in places from Sand Diego to Cincinnati and now to Guadeloupe. The Lorakeets are not at all shy and will be quite forward if they even suspect you have some nectar concealed on your person somewhere. Lorakeet feedings have varied from a five year old Danielle who simply had enough of the Lorakeets standing on her head, to a new teenaged Danielle who seems to have them all much more in control!
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| Proper Lorakeet technique |
In addition to the Botanical Gardens, we decided to take a hike up the river on the edge of town. According to the cruising guide this is a couple of hours hiking that eventually takes you to a scenic waterfall at the top.
For many more pictures from the Botanical Garden (and other places), please check out the Sail Evenstar Facebook Page.
A couple of days after the Botanical Garden we set off to see this waterfall. Clouds loomed a little as was set off, but this was nothing new. It had rained a little every day we’d been on Guadeloupe, but it never lasted.
We took the dinghy to the edge of town, up the river a bit, and set off. As we’ve learned from experience, we brought a bag along with water, bug spray and a few other supplies.
The “river” is rather small, what we would have called a “Creek” where I grew up in Ohio (or a “crick” if you were actually born there). The start to the trail is a small, rough road heading out of town into the forest/jungle. Reaching the end of the path, we headed into the river bed and began walking upstream.
Growing up in Ohio, living near woods with ravines and lots of “cricks” left me particular well prepared for rock hopping up stream – that and scrambling over ocean front rocks and tide pools. Much of my youth was spent doing just that, though I often had a fishing rod and tackle box in my hands as well. We made pretty quick progress up the stream bed, scuttling over boulders and rocks. The stream was full of small fish and crabs, and the vegetation got more and more jungle like as we got further out of town.
Unfortunately, the rain did not go away. Something that anyone has spent some time scrambling over rocks in a creek or at the beach – when they get wet it makes the whole thing a LOT harder. Not only doe the rocks get slippery, but it also makes it much more difficult to tell which rocks to step on. When dry, it’s fairly clear which rocks have slippery spots, or moss and slime that make them slick and dangerous.
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| The jungle closing in |
We were expecting a two hour walk up the river, it ended up taking more like three hours. When the rain starts halfway up the walk, it’s not like you can exactly turn around and go back – you’ve got the same walk either way. It didn’t pour rain the whole time of course, we had sunshine and breaks. But we definitely got a decent soaking downpour a few times – enough to make the footing more treacherous.
Close to the top of the river, before the waterfall, is a road that can be taken back down to Deshaies. We finally reached this road – wet, tired, muddy and some of us a little banged up but still in decent spirits. After all the walk of the river was very beautiful and we still felt it worthwhile. From this point it was supposed to be a twenty minute walk to the actual waterfall.
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| One of many quiet, shady pools good for resting near. |
Three of us decided to try to reach the falls, Danielle had some scrapes and wanted to sit out the walk up. So Will, Kathy, and I headed across the river one more time to make the final push.
The final path to the waterfall ran mostly through the jungle (I hesitate to say “forest” because this seems quite alien to what I grew up with as “forest”). We had to cross and re-cross the river a few times which wasn’t a problem. We didn’t really hit a problem until the trail got very steep.
Remember the rain? Well it got steep…and muddy and slippery. As we pushed up this steep hill we reached a spot where the trail blazes seemed to disappear. So we back tracked to the last blaze, and looked around carefully. We finally spotted another blaze…almost straight up the slippery, muddy hillside with no end in sight! Maybe it was around the next hill or vale, but we decided at this point that discretion was the better part of valor and turned back. We’d seen enough pretty for the day.
Certainly if we weren’t all pretty exhausted from the three hour scramble up the river we could have made it pretty easily. But when you are tired is when you start slipping and turning ankles, and the conditions weren’t exactly easy by this time. So we headed back for the “15 minute walk” back to town (more like 45). Which was also beautiful, we had no idea how high we’d actually climbed!
The best part of Deshaies is coming in the next post – when we get visited by a pod of friendly dolphins!
