Guadeloupe, some end thoughts

While so many people leave on vacation, some last random reflections on our big trip we took at the Easter vacation to Guadeloupe. 

1. Getting there: 
   We found some pretty decently priced flights from Guadeloupe from Paris. Since it is part of France, there are regular connections.  When booking from Belgium we usually got a high speed train ticket in the connection.   The cheapest flights were from Orly though but we chose for the comfort of having a direct train to Roisy CDG. We could even check in our bags at the train station in Brussels-Airport and just take care of our hand-luggage as of there.
   In our return, we had to pick up our luggage from the plane, walk it through the airport to drop it off at the train again. Not so much of an adventage but still better than dragging our suitcases into the train ourselves. 

2. Tropical landscape. 

We had been in the Caribbean before on the island of Bonaire, but Bonaire is an arid dry land, with salt mines, cactuses and roaming free donkeys in the dust.

But on the Basse-Terre part of Guadeloupe, you find a dick lush tropical forest that is very different from what we are used to. It was closer to what we experienced in Goa, India before. 
Plants we've never seen before, fruit we can't find in our stores, etc.  We had to drive to our rental house through the lianas hanging down.  We had to take care not to park under mango trees or falling palms.  We ate our breakfast next to fresh calebas fruit. 

It's fun to be in such a completely new landscape that is so abundant.  And yet, as you can expect: it is so green because there's also regular rain showers.  

3.  Next to all the tropical plants that take over each free space, there's also different animals.  
Or when it are familiar animals such as cows   and pigs...they are not in farm lands as we know them. Nope: they are simply attached to a pole seemingly in the middle of the wilderness.  While driving along the road, we saw roped goats, cows, pigs...alone and attached to a pole. 

Lizards are simply everywhere in all forms and shapes and sizes! 

On the square of the city hall in Deshaies we were surprised to see dozens of crabs crawling on land and disappearing quickly in holes in the ground when we approached.  Never seen such a massive amount of land crabs. 

As with any southern country, there was no lack in stray cats, but the country has even more free roaming chickens.  Chickens are literally everywhere and are also the most common ingredient on any menu.  The availability of chicken as cheap (and only) meat dates back from the slavery period. 

A pelican on the dock. 

4.  Traditional houses are in a colonial style with red metal roof, balconies around and fenced gardens. Also town houses often have balconies but are mostly hidden behind fences, gates and roller shutters.  Windows are usually closed, it is hard to see from the outside if there is live inside or not.  It all looks messy and hostile, but I understand it is also to keep the heat out.  Poorer and cleaner houses are mixed in a big chaos. 

As European, I had to get used not having a clean market square with a lot of bars and restaurants concentrated or a promenade near the coast etc., as I already wrote before.  There are less restaurants as we know it, but more foodtrucks and bars on the beach. 

The many gates and walls are often decorated with street art however to cheer up the streets in a colorful way.

5. The beaches are always aligned with trees .   There are usually some beach shacks or food trucks to have a drink or a snack. There is usually also a toilet hut and a shower available. 
We had our best food in such beach restaurants on our little plastic chairs and at best a plastic colorful table cloth. 

7.   Cocktails are too sweet for my taste

8. Roads are not very qualitative so our rental car continuously had too low tire pressure but our rental house said it was so common to have tire damage that they even have a compressor on site to help with this. 

9. Pointe-à-Pitre is known for its traffic jams.  It's a litteral bottleneck in this butterfly shaped island.

10.  In this very tropical island, it's sometimes weird to come across very French things such as a Fnac, Carrefour express stores in tiny villages, the Gendarmerie that drives by in jeep along the beach or the French army training on the beach. 

11.  We felt that there were less rules or that they were less adhered to by the locals:  they happily dump garbage despite the many signs that urge the people to keep Guadeloupe clean, they burn their garbage in big tons close to the many jungle trees in strong wind because garbage pick-up only happens every x weeks, in nature area's are seemingly many cowboy guides docking with party boats on fragile atols, etc...

The migrated French living there now, sigh, roll their eyes but also taught us that the more you get irritated or rushed, the slower service would become.  And so we adapted and chilled.  


The End.