Saturday 12 May: Enough of maintenance, today we go on vacation with a hire car. In any case, with all the work this week, the tiny hole in Oana’s shorts is now gapping. While Glen quite likes it like that, Oana says “enough!”
We have just one job this morning, that is to go to Jacque, the electronics technician, and barter with him to swap our short arm Raymarine wind transducer for a long arm one. To our surprise, he says OK to a straight swap!
And even better, when we mention that our original transducer failed due to corrosion on the connection pins, he produces a new wiring loom with new pins to replace our corroded ones, for just 30 euros. Absolutely brilliant. Now we can repair the original transducer too, and have it as a spare. Raymarine had told us that it was impossible to replace the wire loom and we must buy a new one at 300GBP! Some you win, some you lose. We definitely won on this one.
We pick up the hire car, another Dacia, and head off to Saint-Pierre via Fort de France. It’s a beautiful day today, almost clear skies and an amazing brightness to the light. A perfect day for a road trip.
Transiting Fort de France is easy because there is a highway right through the middle of the town. It feels a bit like the Periferique in Paris …. Only the traffic is actually moving on this road. Once past the capital we take the coast road up the west side of the island, passing several small pretty fishing villages.
At Saint-Pierre we visit the volcano museum. Prior to 1902 this town was the capital of Martinique with over 30,000 inhabitants. But in 1902 Mount Pelee volcano erupted, sending a cloud of ultra-hot toxic gases over the town which fried every single person except one – a prisoner in a dungeon. The town was completely demolished.
The museum has many before and after photos; it was a true catastrophe indeed. In the middle of the display is a large bronze church bell that is literally melted into a contorted shape.
Following this event the capital was reestablished in Fort de France and Saint-Pierre never regained its former status. Today, only 5,000 people live there. Quite a story. We visit the remains of the jail where the only survivor was found, and also the remains of the famous theatre. They didn’t attempt to rebuild the town until 1930, some 20 years later. Now it’s a mixture of new buildings and remains of old ruins. In the bay there are 20-30 wrecks of ships from the same event, all sunk on that same day.
From Saint-Pierre we continue north to the top of the island. Same as in St.Vincent, the road does not join with the one on the east coast, there is a gap of about 10Km where the volcanic slopes and rain forest come right down to the sea, totally untouched.
We drive as far as we can and find Anse Ceron, a nice beach with lots of locals camping in groups under the trees behind the beach – despite big signs saying “Camping Interdit”. Classic French attitude to silly rules!
Finally the road ends just above the last accessible beach, Anse Couleuvre. We park the car and walk down, not really sure how far the beach is. The walk takes us through a cool shallow river, then through thick rain forest where the track turns very muddy, passed an old rum factory where all the steam machinery is over grown by the jungle, and finally to a pretty beach. We are surprised just how many people have made this trek with all their gear and picnic stuff, just to get to this secluded beach.
On the way back we turn inland from St.Pierre where the road winds its way up high, through beautiful green valleys of rain forest.
After what seems an endless succession of swish back road, we finally arrive back to Fort de France. Here the short vacation ends as we go to Hyper-U supermarket to stock up for our departure from this lovely island. One large shopping trolly later, full of all things French, we head back to Cloudy Bay where Oana meticulously stores all the goodies and updates the inventory.
By the time we are done, its bedtime again.