We arrived in Martinique on Dec 16th early enough for our Christmas plans. This is one of our favorite provisioning stops due to the excellent French foods and wines and the extremely handy dinghy dock at the local supermarket Leader Price. So we anchored in Le Marin to check in the country and do our shopping runs, taking two dinghy runs to get all we needed at the stores.
After stocking up and stowing we moved out to St Anne where the beach and cleaner water is and most of our friends were anchored. John and Jo from Out of Africa, Stan and Lan from Barefoot Life and Bruce from Wild Matilda were already in town and staying for Christmas as well. We started of with a lovely walk out to the beaches at Grande Anse de Salines with all the above boats and had a wonderful swim in the sea, followed with a picnic. This one of the most popular beaches on Martinique, so it's always busy and there are lots of little restaurants dotted along the shore line amongst the trees. There is even a section for the nudists.
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| Walking buddies |
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| Salines beach |
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| The views |
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| Still looking fresh at the end |
Well no anchorage with Out of Africa is complete without a braii or BBQ on the beach. John rounded up crews for a Christmas Eve celebration at the local dive shop who gave us permission to use their dock, grounds and picnic table. It was a great evening and well attended by all crews and several local French crews.
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| BBQ evening |
Christmas Day was spent with John, Jo and Bruce on Moosetracks, we started early and made a whole day of it with appetizers, main course and dessert spaced out over the day. It was a great day and full of lots of stories and adventures as well as some discussions on future plans.
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| Jo & John |
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| Liz, John, Devin & Bruce |
Of course after 2 days feasting we had to go for a long walk to work off some calories. We have quite a few walking friends with us so we arranged another hike around to Anse Trabaud on the coastal hiking trail a few days later with more crews including Britta of Blue Moon and Katherine and Henry on Mouser. It is a long circular walk from St Anne passing Anse Trabaud and Grande Anse de Salines beach before returning back, in total around 11 miles. We took a packed lunch and found a table on the beach to stop for lunch as well as a bar for cold beers.
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| Walkers |
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| Stepping stones |
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| On the trail |
New Year's Eve was celebrated with another BBQ on the beach, this time at a later hour in respect for our French crews who generally eat much later. It was a great night with lots of discussion in French and enchiladas and sign language. Devin still practices his French occasionally but holding a full conversation is still very difficult for him. It was so great to have so many patient bilingual French folks to help. Around 11.30 we packed up the BBQ and walked to the far end of the beach. There is a Club Med resort with its own small dock and they'd put in a good firework display at midnight, we ever the only group watching sitting on the Club Med beach loungers, I guess the guest don't go much in fireworks?
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| Our French friends |
After the long spell here chores start to mount up, so along with other crews we jumped in the dinghy for a morning at the laundry. Again a nice thing here is you can dinghy relatively close and tie up instead a long walk with all the laundry. It was not cheap, see photos, but it's a very clean laundry and unlike some does use hot water and so does a great job.
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| Laundry day |
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| The price list |
We had another day walk to Grande Anse de Saline with our French friends on Ercolusa, (Erwin, Colleen, Loreanne and Samuel) and the crew of Avatar (Mark, Fiona and their son) as well as John, Jo and Vicky
After all this local walking we fancied something a bit further away for a change. With friends we met in Trinidad, Jeff and Vicky on Wraith, newly arrived we booked a car for 7 and made plans for 2 days of touring. The first trip was to Chateau Dubuc for a coastal walk around the peninsula. There is some really nice coastline here and nice walks through shaded trees along most of the route which was about 3 hours. Afterwards we stopped in Caravelle to buy baguettes for lunch on the beach.
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| On the trail again |
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| Great bay views |
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| Our crazy captain |
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| the windy bay |
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| Half way around |
Our next stop was the distillery at Sainte Marie called St James for a free tour and rum sampling. It is a very interesting site with a great deal to see from the old trains and machinery to the museum and grounds. You don't get into the rum factory as such but it is still a great free self guided tour with English signage and generous sampling. We bought a very nice bottle of coconut rum that Liz liked.
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| The sugar cane train |
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| Some wonerful exhibits of old equipment |
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| Rum aging naturally |
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| What it's all about |
To finish the day we drove to the Banana museum and plantation and after a good read of the French & English narratives on banana history and facts we toured the extensive plantation for 30-40 minutes. They gave free bananas in the museum so we all had a sample of the few varieties and I think we all found the small sweet bananas the most delicious.
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| Bananas everywhere |
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| Even purple ones |
The next day we set off early for Mountravail and the walks around the summit. Unfortunately just after arriving it started to rain quite heavily, so we waited a awhile for the rain to abate. Well after a good wait it looked to ease a little so we set of on the 3-4km trail in the rain forest. After about 40-50 minutes of almost continual descent and light rain through the canopy we decided this was a little more than we wanted so we back tracked a little and took a shortened trail that circled back to the picnic area. It would be a fantastic walk in clear weather and with a nice picnic area we thought well worth another try on another occasion.
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| A wet walk |
We stopped at the Trois rivers distillery for a pick you up after the wet walk. It is a prominent distillery on the road to Fort de France with a windmill beside it. We found it a little disappointing as again we were not seeing the factory and the limited signage was only in French but the rum did warm us up again.
We then went on to see the coast at Le Diamant and the first stopped at the monument at Cap 110. It represents the loss of lives of a slave boat which floundered on the shore here killing all the crew and a lot of the chained slaves. We then stopped at the view point overlooking Le Diamant Rock before back tracking to a nice beach picnic area in Le Diamant.
The afternoon was spent at touring Les Anses d'Arlet and the ruins of the sugar plantation where Napoleons wife Josephine grew up. Her house was lost in a hurricane in 1766 and she grew up in the buildings surrounding it.
We finished the day with a tour of Les Trois Ilet and then on for ice creams at McD's!
We had our last BBQ with lots of crews again attending as we all started to think about moving on. We have had a wonderful time at St Anne and we will certainly be back as it's got everything we love here.
