St Anne

We arrived in Le Marin needing to visit a dentist, so anchored off the main channel. then first thing we went in to make an appointment. Would you believe they could do it the very next day! So 40 euros later the next afternoon everything was perfect, between our limited French and the dentists limited English the job got done. 

We then started our provisioning runs to Leader Price for our summer provisioning. As we always do we stock up here coming south for the excellent selection, quality and price of things. We only regret that the use by dates for so much of the things we love like cheese and meats is so short. 

We then moved to anchored out in the lovely clear water off the beach of St Anne to join up with Out of Africa again. Our first walk back was to Saline beach along the gentle coast path for a lunch stop at the beach, a couple of hours each way make this a favorite walk.

The lovely Saline beach

Our next walk was to Creve-Coeur a prominent hill with views back over Le Marin and the whole south end of Martinique. The hill itself is very steep and wears us out on the climb up but affords great views as you can imagine. 

There was a local boat regatta in the bay at St Anne on one of the weekends we were here in June, it happens every year and if you are around well worth staying to see. The local boats are Yoles and they have one or two masts, I think they take them off or put them on as conditions allow. As you can see from the photos they have no ballast so to stay upright to crew has to shift from side to side and hike out on long poles. It is very colorful and exciting to watch. The start/finish line is off the beach in front of the anchorage so the tacking in and out comes very close to the anchored yachts as you will see in the photos.

All action at the start

Close quarter racing for the first few minutes

The field soon spreads out

Hiking out as they return upwind

Almost everyone has to act as ballast

This guy waved at us as he passed

Yes they got this close to us

All hiked out before the tack

Very colorful

Tacking off our bow you could nearly jump aboard

The next walk was over to Baie Des Anglais on the eastern shore then following the path around the southern end of Martinique. The scenery around this trail is quite varied from  gentle hills to mangroves to barren tundra like rocks then a beach walk back. The walk was fairly flat and at around 6 hours a pretty strenuous hike.

Our first stop

Time for a cup of tea

A little shade

We have reached the east coast

A huge amount of Sargasso weed

Really varied terrain

Almost a moon scape

Fairly flat too

A cute little bridge but not easy to use

On the bridge

wading off the other side

A nice statue on the trail

Our last walk was to catch a bus to Cape Ferre and walk the eastern coast trail past Cape Chevalier to Baies Des Anglais and back across to St Anne. an early start was in order to catch the local bus at 7.15am. At one place on the walk the trail ends, mostly because there is no bridge over a river, but it continues on the other side. Well normally you can wade over near the sandy beach but today it was clogged with sargasso weed up to our thighs, it was really icky to wade into it. The rest of the trail was delightful and the scenery again was fabulous. This was a 7 plus hour hike and although not too steep there were certainly enough hills in the heat to wear us all out completely.

Devin, Liz and Nina reach the eastern shore

Great views from the start

Nina, Liz,John,DeAnne,Richard and Jo

Still huge amount of Sargasso weed in the bays

walking trough mangroves

A great lounge but no bartender

Another trail marker

More great coastal views

A couple of nice beaches too

Part of the track we used

We are here

Boardwalks across the swampy bits

A view from the tower we climbed

A nice way to disguise your trash

Some nice farm animals along the trail

A restored mill near St Anne

Well it is time to leave for hurricane season again as we must be further south to avoid the worst of the storms. Nowhere is totally safe but the further south you are there seems to be less violent storms and our insurance company agrees. So we must be below 12d40m by 1st July and so we head to the Grenadines.

we hope everyone has a wonderful summer in 2018.