Moving on.

It's time to change venues today, and it's a full-day excursion, just because of mis-matched timings between checking out from Joëlle's place in the jungle or Marie-Galante, the ferry crossing and subsequent rental vehicle collection in Point-à-Pitre, and then the check in at our favorite case créole in Trois Rivières, on the south end of Basse-Terre. 

We interject as much local flavour into our transit as we can. We stop one last time at the Soleil Levant bakery in Grand-Bourg for some of that delicious judfwi, orange-grapefruit and orange-ginger, both so naturally sweet, we wonder if they actually contain real citrus juice. While waiting in line for our drinks, I entertain a rather wriggly toddler with some flyer origami, much to the relief of his overwhelmed grandmother. We take our juice and head out to the port, to walk along the marina walls and take in a last view oof this charming, sleepy little island that has us fully under its spell. 

The ferry crossing is one of the smoothest we've ever taken. The waves were non-existent, the surface of the water almost like glass. It allowed us to fully enjoy the first half of a French-dubbed, zoomed in version of Home Alone 2 : the one where Kevin is livin' large in New York City.

Of course, we are now too early to check in at our next destination, so we instead head to the nearby black sand beach, Grande Anse, for lunch and a nap in the sand. All of our stuff is packed tightly into our suitcases in the trunk of our car, and we really don't want an explosion of dirty clothes all over the car, so no swimming this time around. 

We meet up with Marie-Odile, the caretaker for our Airbnb in Trois Rivières, trade stories of past check-ins(if you don't know about the one with the spider, here's the scoop), and away she goes, leaving the cute little 2-storey wooden bungalow in our care for the week. We fill the cupboards with clothes, the fridge with groceries, the washing machine with so much stinky laundry, it's scary. Nothing was drying in the jungle cabin on Marie-Galante, so we have been carrying around entire wardrobes of damp clothes. It's amazing how good properly clean clothes can smell!

Last but not least, we fill our bellies with tasty, tasty poulet boucané from Kaza Manjé, THE place to get take-out in town. It has been since our very first trip here, and we are so glad that they are doing good business, and that the quality of their food has not changed is all that time. Half a chicken, drowning in spicy-savory sauce Chien, with a box of accras (codfish fritters) to soak up all the leftover sauce, some fresh cucumber, a glass of Vival orange soda and a guava juice planteur - this is our happy place in Trois Rivières.

And that is a travel day in Guadeloupe.