Another side of Port-Louis

 

Stories from a seasoned traveller : 

Sometimes, you have to go out of your way to discover new sides of a familiar place. We've stayed in the town of Port-Louis 4 times now, and we have our habits around here : we walk down the road from the Airbnb, past the bakery, to the centre of town facing the water. We pass the church, the grocery store, some brightly-painted creole cottages, all before arriving at the Souffleur Beach, where all the tourists coming from Saint-Francois and Sainte-Anne spend the day. It's always this route we take, so when I found a hiking trail leaving from the south side of town, an area we have visited very little, I immediately added it to our lists of things to check out. This morning, we discovered a new side of Port-Louis.

The trail starts just past the marina, already somewhere we don't often visit. Port-Louis still has quite a few fisherman heading out every day, and there is a small market here, but it is basically for the locals. I'll admit, visiting a fish market is something I rarely do on vacation, given that I rarely have the tools or equipment in a rental to do justice in preparing a meal of freshly-caught fish. This morning, we slept through the alarm, so the fish market was long closed up by the time we pass by. We also pass through what seems like a field where old boats go to die before we spot a small opening in the trees which seems just inviting enough to be a trail head. There is no map, nor information panel here, and we are initially greeted by a rather sketchy scramble over eroded banks littered with chunks of broken asphalt and rusted twists of rebar. But make it past this point, and we discover the real trail.

The trail winds its way between the crashing of the waves against the sand on our right, and the wall of creeping, crawling mangrove trees on our left. Our trail is like a sandy border wall, holding back the mangrove lagoons from spilling out into the salty Atlantic ocean. It's quite the special trail, twisting and turning around the tree trunks, as we duck under low-lying branches, trying to avoid the dangling mangrove "tentacles" that reach out to grab at anything passing by.

Pipers looking for snacks in the lagoon

Reflections of trunks in the mangrove lagoon

Towards the end of the trail, we begin to spot little hidden beaches peaking out from between the trees. We also spot a boat anchored here and there in the distance, becoming more and more frequent as we walk along. Turns out, these little hidden bays are well-protected from waves and wind, and so make ideal hidden spots for tour boats to stop for lunch and a swim. We bail out before getting too close to the tours, and claim our own little piece of paradise. Under the shade of flowering catalpa trees, we lay out our towels and our picnic, and we spend a couple of hours just relaxing and soaking in the water.

The return to town is just as interesting : We listen to the waves of the ocean crashing beside us. We can hear the scrambling of the hermit crabs in the underbrush of the dry littoral forest. We smell the sulfur-like scent of the brackish waters in the mangrove lagoon. We laugh at the way the mangrove trees remind us of Ents, slowly crawling their way our of the water, across the trail and towards the ocean. We can almost hear the stretching of their rubbery branches, long fingers reaching down to scoop us up. Hiking is fun.

Our day ends with a repeat visit to the woman who sells accras, those pillowy fritters of codfish and vegetables, just spicy enough, and particularly crispy today. We take our portion, tucked into a rolled leaf from a raisinier bord de mer tree, and a bottle of orange-maracuja juice(a local passion fruit), across the street from the church, and enjoy our snack while watching the waves crash up the retaining wall. What a way to end a great hike.