Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Back in Les Saintes

We have made it as far as Les Saintes arriving last week.  Last time we were here was in June 2013 and we were saying goodbye to Pete and Claire.  The place is a bit busier with more yachts and a couple of large vessels anchored off.  We were always planning on staying here for a week on the way up as it is such a nice place.

We left Sainte Pierre and sailed north on Saturday (1st Feb) across to Dominica making an overnight stop at Prince Rupert Bay in the north.  Then the next day we crossed the Dominica passage and made for Marie Gallante dropping anchor in a bay of a small town called St Louis.  I think every French Island over here has a Louis something place and every British island has a George something place.  St Louis is not a clearance port so first thing next day Scott and Calley went ashore and caught a local bus down to Grand Bourg and cleared us in.

Marie Gallante is a small round island, I guess about 10 miles in diameter.  It looks very flat from a distance which is in stark contrast to other islands which you can see from here such as Dominica, Les Saintes and half of Guadeloupe.  In fact it does have hills, very green hills, but they are smaller and more reminiscent of rolling south of England countryside than of tropical rainforest.  Marie Gallante is an upwind sail from the run down the leeward side of the Caribbean island chain and so not as visited as many of the islands.  As a result its a bit quieter but there are still visiting yachts around and there are ferries which bring tourists from the mainland (which in this case is the island of Guadeloupe).

Enjoying Marie gallante
Main event here apart from schooling was to rent some scooters and have a look at the island.  We went ashore one day that looked pretty promising weather wise and hired a couple of small scooters and then took off.  The island roads are really well maintained and very quiet and the distances are small so it makes for fantastic scootering country.  Everybody loved getting off the boat and onto land transport for a change and we spent the day circumnavigating the island, seeing the sights and stopping every now and then for lunch, coffee or snacks.

On the road again
Natural Arch on North Shore

One of the old windmills
Old cane cart
Marie Gallante has a lot of old windmills dotted around the island which were used for the power to crush sugar cane in the day.  They are in various states of decay but look very picturesque.  One of them is at a rum factory we visited where an old steam plant still runs the crushing equipment.  The rum factory was really interesting as the machinery was running and they were crushing cane while we were there.  The rules of plant safety were not stringently applied as in Australia which meant that we could get up close and personal to the workings and so we saw the whole process from crushing to the cane juice filling gleaming stainless steel vats.  If anyone saw the original mucky coloured fluid that rum starts as they may think twice about the finished product which of course we had to try in the course of the tour.

Sugar cane ready to get crushed

Thats the first look of Rum
The cane juice in vats
Rum is obviously synonymous with the Caribbean.  Before we arrived last year I think we would have tried rum only once or twice in our entire lives and one of the main uses for it was to stun any fish we caught.  Now however, slowly and surely we are getting a taste for it.  There are now a few bottles stashed on the boat and apart from the use of it in our favourite cocktails we have found other rum based drinks which are very pleasant.  The latest one called Schrub is a rum infused with orange - very nice.  The drinking of neat rum however is still a bridge too far.

After our tour of the island we sailed west about 20NM to Les Saintes and picked up a mooring.

As mentioned earlier Les Saintes is a fantastic group  of islands with a small town which has everything you need including a Carrefour supermarket, a French Post Office, some shops and a couple of boulangeries.  It really is a small piece of France in the Caribbean.  Scott and Sam hooked up with a local dive outfit called Pisquettes and managed to spend a couple of days diving at two of the local spots.  Even the diving with the French is a lot more relaxing.  After each dive we were given a shot of rum flavoured with Grenadine - well Scott was as we are not yet French enough to let Sam try it.


Today its onto Guadeloupe where we will have a look at Pointe de Pitre and then move around to the west side before heading to the island of Montserrat. 


1 comment:

  1. It all sounds so relaxing - what a life! I feel quite envious especially when we are still having so much rain; however we are much luckier than the south of England where there is so much flooding. Enjoy the next stage.

    ReplyDelete