Karen and Lindsay arrived - Guadeloupe!

Our friends arrived again - 3rd time in a year! They must like their ship's "crew"!

We are currently in Ile des Saintes, and had a wonderfull walk across to the North and East end of the island to walk along the beach. What a great hike, followed by much needed cold beers at the waterfront.

More later, we currently enjoy a couple of glasses of red wine, together with French cheeses and salamies.

'til later ...

Leaving Dominica …at last, we had had a quiet night for our last day in Portsmouth. It is definitely not a quiet anchorage when the SE winds are blowing…NEVER have we had such rolly conditions since we left in 2008! On our last night, we moved the boat to the Coconut Beach anchorage – which we had not dared to do before because of safety issues. But there are priorities! We just could not stand it anymore and moving was a necessity. Luckily, the security patrol moved with us and the other many boats to this part of the anchorage! Ellen and Jim of s/y Boldly Go joined us on La Buena Vida where Ellen treated us to delicious pizza on pita bread. It was a great evening and we left early morning for Marie Galante island!

While in Roseau, we were not very successful at gathering information regarding hikes in Dominica. Information is geered to the cruise ships passengers and guided tours! But........we met our friends Ellen and Jim on Boldly Go who had managed to find a good map...(expensive too!) and thanks to our sense of adventure and the good map, we found a path leading along the famous Indian River from Portsmouth. Wow, we were amazed by the beauty of this forest! Enchanted forest ...we finished our 4 hours tour with drinks at the Bush Bar!

>

We are in Dominica since Sunday..unfortunately, the winds are from the south- southeast and the anchorage is very rolly...very rolly. We have set our Danforth to keep us facing the waves and it has made it more comfortable...We went to Roseau on Monday and we were very surprised by the charm of this town: so many old houses, all over town!

There are places that one never tires of seeing...we have been often in Saint-Pierre and almost as often to its Despaz Distillery. The setting of this Rum Distillery at the feet of Mount Pelee is breathtaking and we love sitting under the giant rubber tree to sip sugar cane juice....fresh from the mills. The collecting of sugar cane began last week, with Lent..and will last 5 months...there was intense activity at our last visit. 25,000 of rum are produced every day!

Nous revenons avec tellement de plaisir a Saint-Pierre, a cause de son marche du samedi, de son poulet boucane, de la gentillesse des Saint-Pierrois, et de la Distillerie Despaz! Cette Distillerie aux pieds de la Pelée est tout simplement enchanteresse et invite aux rêveries malgré l’intensité des travaux puisque la récolte de la canne a débuté le jour du commencement du Carême! Elle durera encore 5 mois...et chaque jour, 25,000 litres de rhum y seront produits! Comme dans nos visites précédentes, nous avons deguste du jus de canne frais avant d’aller goûter les ti-punchs offerts aux visiteurs!

The King is dead! Vaval is being burned on that day..Ash Wednesday!Le Roi est mort! Vive le Roi!

We moved from Fort De France to Saint-Pierre, north end of Martinique and joined the crowds here for the burning of Vaval!

Red and Black...just imagine streets crowded with EVERYBODY dressed in red and black! And paraders in red and black...it was just amazing! The best of parades!

Stendhal avait bien raison...le rouge et le noir, couleurs passion! Quelle parade...quand tous et toutes sont habilles de ces couleurs, l`effet est incroyable!

Hike to the Canal de Beauregard, also called Canal des esclaves. Last time we were in Martinique, I read about it in my guidebook and we were sorry not to have had time to do it. This in addition to a short article published in a Fort De France magazine really motivated us to do the hike. Jay, despite her fear of heigths, nevertheless joined us: indeed, all guidebooks or articles related to that canal hike warn people with fear of heights to abstain!

This canal was probably built at the end of the 18th century. Its construction was a major endeavour for the time and necessitated the labour of numerous slaves and good money capital! The water of this canal fed 5 water mills used in the sugar industry. Today, it is still useful as it brings water to cultivated fields and plantations. The canal consists of a stone wall of about 30 to 40 cm width and sinuates among the tropical forest...at times bordering precipices of 400 feet deep. It was an amazing experience to follow it to its end, in a peaceful and lush setting with only birds to disturb the silence. We were warned to be careful of snakes: Martinique is home to a venomous trigonocephalic snake ...whose bites cause the death of several people each year. But we did not see any...nor did we see the venomous spider referred to as Matoutou!

(We took the bus from Saint-Pierre to Fonds Mascret and were let out at the entrance of the canal at the maison rousse for 2 euros per person. On the way back, we walked on a small road through banana and sugar cane plantations to Anse Turin and then Saint-Pierre.)

Dans un article paru dans une revue de Fort de France le week-end auparavant, la randonnée longeant le Canal de Beauregard dit des Esclaves nous a donne envie d’en faire autant. Nous n’avions pas eu le temps d’y aller au printemps dernier...cette fois, nous étions déterminés et notre jeune amie Jay a décidé de se joindre a nous malgré sa peur des hauteurs. En effet, chaque fois que cette randonnée est mentionnée, il y a une mise en garde pour ceux qui souffrent de vertige!! Et avec raison...Ce canal de 4 km de long est fait de murets de 30 a 40 cm de largeur et longe des gouffres qui peuvent avoir 400 pieds de profondeur!

Ce canal fût construit vers 1777 par de riches propriétaires et par des centaines d’esclaves! C’était tout un projet de construire ce canal au milieu de la foret tropicale et a des hauteurs vertigineuses. Mais heureusement, il aura bien servi...des la fin des travaux, ses eaux alimentent pas moins de 5 moulins de l’industrie sucrière de la région. Même encore, il sert a irriguer des maraîchers et des cultures fruitières...C’est le seul canal de la Martinique qui est encore utilisable, les autres n’ayant pas été bien entretenus ou tout simplement détruits par les ouragans. Cette randonnée fut sûrement un de nos coup de coeur martiniquais, je dirais même antillais!

The next theme of the carnaval was the marriage burlesque...inverse roles and powers, men and women change places!!!! Our friend Jay, the 15 years old girl on Seawarrior,had a Masterplan for costumes! Her dad Scott and Heinz went along...as for Jay's mom and myself, we drew a moustache and kept our old cruising shorts on...not much of a costume! But the guys were a hit!!!! As we came back to the boat, Heinz and I let a bit of chain out and cruisers around us, Laurie and Dawn from Cat tales, took a picture of the two of us on deck!!! Still to come...
Le prochain theme des parades du carnaval etait le mariage burlesque..hommes et femmes devaient se travestir...et notre amie Jay du bateau Seawarrior avait envie de costumer les 2 captiaines! Son pere, scott et Heinz se sont promenes dans les rues de Fort de France et furent l'objet de plusieurs photos!!!

The first big parade united all the most important groups of Martinique and started around 15h00 until...18h00. The groups made at least 3 or 4 turns of the boulevards of the city and were quite tired by the end...there was a nice atmosphere on the waterfront with music until late that evening. We liked it a lot, found it wonderful that participants of all ages celebrated in the streets...there was no troublesome behaviours although people could drink and smoke in the complete absence of police!

The excitement is growing as today is THE big parade downtown...there are impromptus groups that parade in te streets, drums playing that invite to dancing, and kids and adults get make-up and masks to their suiting for being at the parade...

Our young friend from Seawarrior had her carnaval look today and she was really pretty!

Fort de France is a fun place to be although its anchorage is often rolly and bumpy, especially if the winds are from the south east and above 15 knots. Nevertheless, we were here for the Carnival and between celebrations and parades, we escaped the boat and visited areas where we had not been during our previous visits...This time, we visited the Bibliothec Schoelcher - a little gem in the city. The building, erected in the late 1800 in the Jardins des Tuileries in Paris, was dismantled and transported here, in the “colonie” after the universal exposition of 1889. Since then, it has become a touristic sight in addition to have very imposing collections of books for a Caribbean library! Victor Schoelcher is an important personality here in the French Antilles because he stood for the rights of blacks and slaves!

We walked to Fort-De-France first popular neighbourhood, Terres Sainvilles. Indeed, Fort de France was at first a military town, built around Fort Louis. There were only mangroves in that bay, surrounding the fort...but peu a peu, the area was filled and behind the administrative and military quartes, Terres Sainvilles became the first popular quarter of Martinique. Today, there are only few remaining buildings of that time..wooden houses were not painted so that the age of wood was visible and a sign of solidity! Other neighbourhood have attached themselves to Terres sainvilles, such a Sainte-Therese, whose houses literally climb the surrounding hills...These areas are not the wealthiest of Fort de France and are today mostly populated by Haitians and people from Dominican Republic...nights visits were not recommenced by the tourist office!

Ash Wednesday..a bit too early! Yep, when we got up this morning we were shocked to find a fine layer of ashes all over the boat...damm big city pollution???? NO! not at all...vulcanic ashes! The newspaper had a first page photo of people in Guadeloupe walking around with umbrella to protect themselves from falling ashes of the nearby Montserrat vulcano. Martinique not being very far also found itself under a very fine layer of ashes...It has covered the inside and outside of the boat and we try to clean up as much as we can but the cloud of ashes is at about 50,000 feet altitude and may remain over the Montserrat surrounding islands for a while...

MVO Director, Dr. Paul Cole confirmed this afternoon that the activity at the Soufriere Hills Volcano, which began at about 12.35 p.m. peaking at about 13.04 hrs. with pyroclastic flows. “What has actually happened today, was a ‘major’ event,” Dr. Cole said.
He noted that part of the significance of today’s event is that the dome which has a mass “in the region of 250 million cubic feet,” lost in the region of 20 per cent or 50 million cubic feet of dome material.”
No inhabited areas on Montserrat were affected by the resulting ash clouds from this event which travelled out towards Antigua and this drew an urgent release from LIAT which advised, “that it has been forced to suspend flights into and out of Antigua because of airborne ash clouds from the Soufriere Hills Volcano in Montserrat.”

The release said: “Passengers on LIAT services, particularly to and from Antigua, Anguilla, Dominica, St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Maarten, and Guadeloupe are advised to expect a disruption in services,” as they apologized for any inconvenience caused.

At about 6:00 p.m. the scientist was reported as saying that there was still a lot of ash being generated from rock falls and from the scar made in the dome by the activity. He said that it was still possible that there could be decompression explosions following the event.

Cendres Sur La Martinique
Vendredi, 12 Février 2010 21:24
Le nuage de cendres, issu de la Souffrière de Montserrat, a vogué jusqu'à nous porté par le vent. Ce matin, une fine
couche de cendres recouvrait pratiquement tout en Martinique. Végétaux, voitures, maisons.

Voila la raison pour laquelle notre bateau est recouvert de cendres...nous avions blame la pollution de Fort de France mais c'est en voyant la premiere page du journal FRANCE ANTILLES que nous avons "clique": le volcan de Monserrat! L'eruption n'a heureusement pas fait de victimes ...meme si le phenomene a dure une heure et a vu le dome du volcan s'effondrer...trop de pression! Nous esperons que ce nuage de cendres qui se trouve a 50,000 pied de hauteur se fasse tres bientot balyer par les vents car l'interieur et l'exterieur du bateau sont extremement sales...on a pense a recueillir la poussiere, question d'avoir un souvenir !

Encore des photos de la Grande Parade...

We are in Fort de France for Carnaval...

As we arrived in Fort De France, we strolled in the main street of the town and caught this impromtpu dance at the sound of the drums....Des le premier jour a Fort de France , nous avons ete temoin des premiers souffles carnavalesques au son des tambours qui ont entraine cette doudou a la dance!

After an hour, we arrived to this pretty little village. Typical architecture, attractive malecon, and interesting sites...such as the oldest movie theater of South Martinique!!!

It was enjoyable to chat with an elderly man – 85 years old – who was too happy to recount stories of his life as a fisherman and post carrier in the “metropole” . He knew very well the path that we just hiked and used to do it twice a day !

Apres avoir marche sur le sentier contournant le Morne Champagne, nous sommes enfin arrives au bourg des Anses d'Arlet...mignon comme tout avec ses petites maisons creoles, son eglise au bout du quai, et son Cinema Atlas, le plus vieux du sud de la Martinique! J'ai fait une jasette avec un arlesien de 85 ans qui s'est fait un plaisir de me raconter ses tribulations de marin pecheur et sa carriere de facteur!