A Gorgeous Day in Les Saintes

What a beautiful day in the French Antilles - gorgeous sun, brilliant blue skies and clear turquoise water - all the things you see on the picture-perfect postcards, and we found it on the archipelago of Les Saintes! We hopped the ferry that leaves from the dock in lower Trois-Rivieres early this morning, and the fast, exciting, 15-minute crossing dropped us smack in the middle of this quaint little caribbean village on Terre-de-Haut, the largest of the 8 islands.

Terre-de-Haut is a charming little place - 1.5 km across its smallest point, and about 4 km long, it is made for exploring on foot. In fact, there are very few cars here at all, and rental places can offer you only scooters, or what I like to call glorified golf carts. So our trek up the hill to Fort Napoleon was interrupted by the slow dodging of all these carts - it was funny.

The views on the way up make the trek definitely worthwhile, but the climb is steep, and tiring, so imagine our elation when, just before the fort, we find a guy in a trailer, selling fresh fruit juices! With ice! And so refreshing - he was even mixing up his own combination of different fruits to impress his customers. It was delicious and refreshing and the perfect pick-me-up after the long walk in the blaring sun.

Fort Napoleon is the main place to visit on this island - a must-see according to the guidebooks - though I'm not really sure it deserves THAT much credit. Sure, it's a nice little fort, with some naval battle history attached to it. Sure, there are some pretty gardens now growing along the tops of the wall and ramparts to explore, and sometimes, there are even iguanas out sunning themselves, Sure, there are some spectacular views of the island and surrounding ocean, including views all the way to Dominica. Generally, we found it to be ordinary in the scope of forts we had already seen, with not a lot of wow factor. In fact, Mario claimed that the best things were the lizards we saw climbing in the trees, and the Tourment d'Amour pastries we bought from the gift shop!

Back down the hill, we turned left instead of right, and headed to the back end of the island, to the Pompierre beach, known for its calm, sheltered waters and large, sprawling beach. We picked up a couple of bokit sandwiches en route to enjoy in the sand, and plunked down under a tree to lunch. There is a family living not too far down the beach, so we found ourselves joined for lunch by a couple of naughty goats and a handful of chickens, looking for scraps. One of the goats  may have been so persistent that he received a shoe to the side of the head, but I digress. I got in the warm water for a bit, relaxing in the waves while Mario napped in the shade. And since it was noon, most people were in town, eating, so the beach was very quiet and enjoyable.

We made our way back across the island, back into town, shopping in some of the boutiques along the dock. Here, I found there to be more artisan boutiques, and very few cheezy souvenir shops, which was a nice change. We also bought more of the Tourment d'Amour pastries, a specialty of Les Saintes, to bring back, and a cup of sorbet coco to cool off while waiting for the ferry back. Finally, as we made our way back across the bay to the big island of Guadeloupe, I reflected on how quintessentially tropical the day on Les Sainted had been - and the good amount of sun I got reminded me of that, too!








We capped off the evening with another great meal from our local BBQ place, chicken and rice this time, with a tasty rum-guava punch, and a few episodes of "Murder in Paradise", as it has been suggested as viewing material for our trip!