On this trip we are extremely lucky in that we get to experience all these really amazing places but the added bonus is that we get to do it all with Sam and Calley. Today has been one of those amazing days.
We left Deshaies yesterday (Saturday 1st Jun) and had a quick sail down the coast about 8NM in gusty conditions to a bay south of a place called Pt Malendure. There are two small islands only about half a mile offshore of the bay, the larger one being Pidgeon Island and the smaller one predictably being Petit Ilet. The islands are nothing special to look at - fairly low lying, volcano shaped with scrub covering and very steep rocky shorelines. From the islands to the mainland and then up the coast for a couple of miles is the Cousteau Marine Park with some great snorkelling and diving. Ashore on the mainland there are a couple of beaches fringing the bay and then onshore directly opposite the islands are a number of dive tour operators. Further south are a few restaurants and shops although there does not seem to be any real town.
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| Pidgeon Island |
We anchored up in the bay. Pete and Claire took Calley into shore while the rest of us stayed on the boat to get some schooling done.
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| Reality bites |
In the evening Scott, Nicole and kids went ashore and gave the newly weds some time on their own on the boat.
The next day we got up early and took the dinghy across to the islands for a snorkel. The marine life was fantastic. There were only one or two other small boats when we arrived so we had no problem finding a mooring buoy to tie up the dinghy to. We were in about 2.5m of water. Everyone got their mask and fins on in the dinghy and then dropped over the edge into what seemed like an aquarium - The bottom is rock with boulders and crags and small caves or crevices everywhere. Corals, every conceivable colour, shape and texture cover the rocks so it looks like a multicouloured carpet has been laid on the seabed. There are fern like corals and soft tube corals waving in the currents, hard staghorn and brain corals growing out from the rocks and everywhere there are thousands of fish moving around the coral or drifting in schools over the seabed. The visibility was perfect and limited only by the schools of fish or moon jellies. The water temperature here is also perfect and so you feel completely at ease in the water. Even Calley is now comfortable snorkelling on her own. She still gets freaked a bit if a big fish is spotted but otherwise she is good. Sam is turning into a little Aquaboy and could probably stay in the water all day if we let him.
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| Sam in his element |
At the seaward edges of the islands the seabed drops away sheer and the rock walls are lined with coral. This is probably better suited to diving but the top part of the walls are spectacular to snorkel also. If you look down or out to sea you just see dark blue with the occasional shadow moving around.
We reluctantly returned to the dinghy and back to Dulcinea but another treat lay in store. There are lots and lots of turtles in the bay and as you sit on the boat you see them surfacing all around to get a breath. We jumped in and snorkelled around the boat and within seconds the first turtle had been spotted. The turtles here are not as skittish as ones we have previously come across and so you can dive down close to them and even touch them. Sam managed to get a ride off one of them by grabbing both sides of the shell. It is awesome swimming with the turtles - they are such graceful and docile creatures and the patterns on their shells are amazing. They move kind of slow so it is easy to keep up with them as they move over the bottom grazing or slowly surface for air.
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| Turtle grazing |
We finished off the day with a Danish open table. We had been collecting bits and pieces for it since Charlotte Amelie. Claire had never experienced one before and so was a novice with the schnapps but she ended up doing very well. We took it pretty easy as there is no telling what kind of trouble we could get into if something went wrong onboard. All in all a good day.
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| The West Coast of Guadeloupe |
We have now moved further south to a place called Iles des Saintes. These are a group of islands off the south coast of Guadeloupe. We were going to try and have one more stop in Guadeloupe in a place called Basse Terre and get ashore but the anchorage was a bit exposed for our liking so we pushed on to the Saintes.
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| First Views of the Saintes |
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