Gorgeous Guadeloupe

We spent a few days checking out a couple of anchorages in Guadeloupe. We checked into customs at Terre de Haute, a town in the archipelago of the Iles des Saintes, a group of islands located on southeast side of Guadeloupe

and checked out at Deshaies, an anchorage on the Northwest side of the island.

Like Martinique, Guadeloupe is a French territory and again we had an easy schmeezy electronic check in/out.  While it has limited anchorages on the west side of the island, thus not known as cruiser friendly, it has the best mooring balls we’ve ever seen. They were high enough out of the water that Jeff could easily reach down and run a line through the eye. Even the seagulls agree!

When we dove on our mooring ball, we saw a huge block of concrete onto which was secured a steel cable mooring line.  SWEET!!! And they were free!!! SWEETER!!! However a lot of cruisers don’t venture to Guadeloupe because of the limited anchorages and the “rolley” conditions. And yes it was rolley! But knowing we were securely tethered definitely helped. It gave us ample opportunity to explore…

Guadeloupe is drop dead gorgeous!!!...Apparently a lot of U.S. citizens agree because this was the first island since Trinidad where it was easy to run into folks hailing from U.S.. While not cruisers, many came via cruise ship or air travel, especially to Terre De Haute.

It’s probably for this reason that a few more locals had a rudimentary command of the English language. And here you will often see menu's in both French and English.

Jeff and I love to hike…maybe it’s because we’re confined in a small space on the water much of the time. We rarely rent a car or tour unless the island is too large or has some difficult areas to access via sailboat. Also since most of the Caribbean was formed by volcanic activity, most of our hikes are up and down hills.

In Terre De Haute, we hiked up to the very fortified Fort Napoleon. It was the essence of what you would imagine a fort to look like. Replete with a huge moat around the entire perimeter.

Maybe this Iquana feels so at home on the fortress grounds because he is a walking fortress!

Fortress view

Along the way we had great view of our harbor and the surrounding area 

In Des Shaies, we hiked up to the very well cared for and laid out Jardin de Botanique. Not only do they have  rich, brilliantly colored, abundant flora...

These leaves look handpainted!

But exotic brilliantly colored fauna as well...

Then we hiked inland onto some back roads and came across these cows thatwere tethered in a pretty isolated area. I'm still trying to figure out why. Theywere really malnourished. One cow was mooing very loudly to another cow hidden on the other side of the woods. It was the loudest mooing I have ever heard. 

A wondrous journey to all,

Pam & Jeff