Martinique………….I must confess this has been my least favourite island to date! Why? To be honest I am not sure! They are so French with the typical French attitude.
Let me explain briefly what I mean! The French Yachties or Frenchies as they are known, have a reputation of being very unfriendly, to the point of rudeness and seriously unsociable! (My apologies to the few we have met who have been great!) The people of Martinique fit this profile very well. They make it clear they don’t actually want or need you there, unless you speak fluent French, trying to speak it is not good enough, they won’t try help at all.
We did still have fun. Would you expect different?
The Empress Josephine grew up on Martinique on a 200 acre 150 slave plantation. Both Martinique and Empress Josephine are linked to the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1804 Napoleon was master of Europe but the British still had naval supremacy. But ships were still scarce and then someone noticed that Diamond Rock on the south coast was where the British would position a vessel, if they had one. So they commissioned the rock as a ship. Dragging cannons, supplies, water and a full crew to the barren snake-infested pinnacle was a feat in itself and for 18months the HMS Diamond Rock was a nasty surprise for ships sailing into Martinique. Napoleon was incensed this was the birth place of his beloved Josephine. Although he was brilliant on land Napoleon never fully understood the workings of the navy or their problems. He labelled all sailors shirkers. He ordered his Admiral Villeneuvre to free the rock and destroy British Admiral Nelson while they were about it. Villeneuvre slipped through the British blockade of France and headed for Martinique. Lord Nelson smelled blood and bounty and set off in hot pursuit. However poor information sent him in the wrong direction to Trinidad and Villenuevre liberated the rock keeping clear of Nelson and returned to France. Napoleon ordered him to report in disgrace as he had left Nelson still in control of the high seas. Villeneuvre preferred death to dishonour and put his ill prepared fleet to sea to fight Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar. Ironically Villeneuvre, who wished to die, survived the battle and Nelson was killed.
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| Grand Anse D'Arlet |
Our first anchorage was in Grand Anse D’Arlet. It is a picturesque little village set on a white sand beach. It used to be a fishing village but no concentrates on tourism. We went ashore to check in on a computer, you then print your check in page and the bar lady at the venue stamps and signs it. We had plans to draw some money and have dinner. We had no Euro’s on us. There we discovered the nearest bank was in Anse DÁrlet and were told it’s not far; about 20 minutes! An hour later we finally arrived there. We could find nothing with any cash sign on not even Visa or Master. The only machine we could find that looked like an auto-cash machine and fitted the directions we had got from a shopkeeper nearby, asked; in French ONLY; if we had pre-paid or contract? (We understood that much) We pondered for a while and decided our savings account must be Pre-paid??? So we tried that option but no luck. Confused we tried again, maybe I had clicked the wrong button! Nope! It asked the same again. Nervous it would swallow our card we gave up and walked further. There I asked a woman in very, very broken French, a little Portuguese with Afrikaans and English thrown in where the bank was. She indicated we shouldn’t bother it wasn’t working. We smiled politely thanked her and decided we had had enough, we were walking back. It was getting dark anyway.
Then as we approached the same machine we had tried there were other people busy with it. She stopped and told us we should try as it seem they were using it. Luckily he spoke English and explained it was out of order but you could top up your mobile phone on it! So much for French efficiency! So the long walk back to our boat. There we asked if they would take a credit card for 2 beers but were informed only if the bill was over E20.00 so dinner was on the cards.
The next morning at 08h00 we lifted anchor and sailed to the next bay called Anse Noir (Black Beach). The beach sand here being of volcanic origin is black, it doesn’t look very pretty when you are used to white sand beaches. The black sand gives the water a different colour, because the sun cannot reflect off of the white sand below instead of the turquoise blue it’s the deep blue colour of the deep ocean. One of the advantages is the black sand is it is heavier and doesn’t stir up so the visibility it better.
Anse Noir is a tiny bay with a palm lined beach. The other sides of the bay are edged with cliff walls. We were the only boat there. We anchored and minutes later were joined but 3 other boats. We had heard the snorkelling was great and that was our intention. We off loaded the kayak and decked out in our snorkel gear paddled around the headland to the next small bay. The snorkelling was pretty. Lots of reef fish. At one place I dived down about 4 meters to see some sea cucumbers and saw something shiny sticking out of the sand. At first I thought it was a piece of a fisherman’s anchor chain he had lost down there and almost ignored it. But curiosity got the better of me and I waved the sand away and pulled; a silver ID bracelet! I searched for a name as would have walked the beach asking names in case it was recently lost, but there wasn’t one. Andre assured me that being so far under the sand it had probably been there some time. My plan is to bead it into an ankle chain. J
After 4 hours in the water, we lifted anchor and set off for Fort de France. This is the capital of Martinique. I must confess the guide book descriptions of delightful city and a great place for shopping, people watching and restaurants seemed a little exaggerated! However in town we found there were preparations for some sort of carnival. On further investigation we had struck gold. It was the second day of their carnival and the parade was starting at 15h00, just an hour after we arrived.
Here in Martinique they have a theme for each day, unlike the carnival we saw in Brasil. On this day it was “Devilish”. (The previous day was “the wedding”). The colour theme was red and black. The float trucks trundled down the boardwalk road followed by different groups. It seems cross dressing is big in carnivals. We saw the most gorgeous “woman” with the neatest butts who were not women at all... It finally ended at 19h00 and weary and footsore we fell into bed.
The next day’s theme was “in mourning” and colour black and white! We decided we were not going to be the odd ones out and did some quick shopping before the start at 15h00. We had a good laugh and bumped into our German friends on the Dean catamaran named Twika, (German for Giraffe) they too had dressed the part.
After a later start the next morning (we wonder why?) we lifted anchor at 13h00 and sailed to St. Pierre. St. Pierre lies at the foot of the Mt. Pelée volcano. This is not far from where the European settlers wiped out the last of the Carib residents in 1658. It is said that as the last ones died they uttered horrible curse invoking the mountain to take its revenge on them. As is Caribbean custom time was not an issue and Mt Pelëe waited until Ascension Day on the 8th May 1902.
At that time St. Pierre’s residents numbered 30 000 and was known as “the Paris of the Caribbean”. The mountain had given some warning, she had rumbled in April and erupted covering the town in ash. Refugees from the surrounds flooded into St. Pierre. On the 2nd May she once again warned the town of her ire and erupted covering the city in enough ash to kill some birds and animals. Later the same day an estate owner just south of the city went to inspect his crops and he and his workers were swept away by an avalanche of boiling volcanic mud. On the 5th of May it an estate just north of the city one of the richest in the area was completely buried including most of the family and workers.
Still the people of St. Pierre ignored the mountains warnings. One of the reasons was evacuation posed a huge problem, the roads were rough and primitive and the ferries did not have the capacity. The Governor at the time had been there less than a year and desperately wanted the problem to “go away”, had they left the business leaders would have suffered financial loss and he could not go against them. Governor Mouttet formed a committee to assess the risk, it was led by the schools science teacher, and they concluded there was no danger at all.
Despite the local papers assuring the people they were in no danger several hundred of them decided to leave anyway. Most of these were eyewitnesses to the disaster. People were approaching for the Ascension Day church service and saw heavy red smoke coming from the volcano. Instead of approaching they climbed surrounding hills to see what was going to happen. At 08h02 it happened! The side of the volcano facing St. Pierre exploded spewing a giant fireball over the town. The explosion released more energy than an atomic bomb. There were only 2 survivors of the 30 000. One was Cyparis who was at the time incarcerated for murder. The thickness of the walls of his cell as well as the fact the only small entrance faced away from the explosion saved him. He was discovered three days later badly burnt. He had survived licking the water that ran down the walls of his cell. Twelve ships were destroyed on anchor in the bay, all hands lost.
We wanted to dive one of the 12 wrecks left by the eruption. Most of them lie close to the anchorage in between 10 and 60 meters of water. The wreck of Roraima is considered one of the best wreck dives, so we set our sights on this. The top of the wreck is a no decompression dive and is all we are qualified to dive. The bottom lies at 55 meters and is a decompression dive. As one is not allowed to dive without a guide in Martinique we approached a dive shop. Here we discovered French authorities require a full medical and letter from your Doctor that is not more than 6 months old giving permission for you to dive! No luck, but the owner was a great guy, he said based on this he could not take us out with him or take money for the dive however we were free to follow their dive boat out and dive with them, we were not to make any indication we knew or were diving with them and he would look out for us. As we were diving to 40 meters our time at that depth was limited to 5 mins before we had to ascend. Apparently this ship had burned for three days before it sunk and evidence of this could be seen with twisted metal and most of the upper structures burned away. There was not much to see, but we can say that we have dived the Roraima.
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| The Cell the prisoner survived in. |
We visited the botanical gardens were the old Rum distillery was. The large water wheel with all the boilers and the still are located in this beautiful garden. You wander through the gardens along the old aqueduct that channelled the river to the distillery. The gardens have been beautifully set out using the remains of the old building walls as dividers between different sections. Each section is planted with a different species of plant. Meandering between them are tributaries of the river that every now and again tickle into a pool filled with water lilies. This is a private garden open to public and there is no rum made there anymore, so when we got back to town we found some rum to sample. It was a Box of rum, (soos in… ‘n Doos vol rum….) for only 18EU. So now we drink rum out of the “doos” at sundown every day. We either mix it with lime juice as learnt in Brasil, we figured if it worked for Cachaҫa it would work for rum, and it does. Otherwise rum punch with fruit mix is the order of the day!
We had had enough of St. Pierre and Martinique by now and up anchor to Dominca. As expected we had a horrible passage bashing smashing and slamming all the way!
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