How to Spend a Week in Les Saintes

Laid low by a nasty cold that would just not release it's grip on George and myself, our two boats have been lying low in Les Saintes.  What better place is there to be when you just don't feel up to much, certainly don't want to sail any distances, but still have one healthy person per boat who wants to avoid as much contact as possible with their sailing partner to try to avoid cold bug contamination?

The archipelago of Les Iles des Saintes consists of five little islands two of which are inhabited, just a scant eight miles south of the main island of Guadeloupe.  These islands were originally settled by Bretony fishermen and have never had slaves, so the history revolves around fishing, possibly some smuggling and a defensive position for the French against the English back in the old days of naval warfare and the battle for trade supremacy in the sugar & spice islands.

Today, Les Saintes is a holiday weekend destination for Guadeloupians (?) and there are more tourist ferries regularly pulling up to the dock offload passengers than we have seen anywhere else.  The waters between the little islands is deep so big dependable mooring balls have been installed and for 10 Euros a night (7th night is free) you can tie up and save worry about dragging your anchor in the swirly winds that drift between the little hills and into the anchorage.

One of them most distinctive anchorage features - Bourg des Saintes has "The Doctor's House" that is built as the prow of a ship into the cliffside.

The main street at the north end skirts the beach, full of fishing and service boats.  Liming under the tree at the picnic table is enticing.

Saturday morning market time - this Saintois gentleman passed me in his bare feet heading up the concrete hill.

Ashore, the charming little village of Bourg des Saintes is chock-full of little restaurants, bars and boutiques - all incredibly charming and oh so French.

Nowhere else in the Caribbean do you find this European feature and a way of holding crumbling architecture together.

To get from the hardware store to the superette you can walk around the long way or you can take this little narrow shortcut, if your bags will fit through the gap at the bottom.

As in all the French villages, the RC church sits in a prominent spot at the centre of town.  Every morning at 6:30 the bells start ringing and on Sunday morning you can hear the faithful singing from the anchorage.

Almost daily, we visit the local market to pick up some fresh produce.

We came here a year ago and little has changed.  The islands ooze French quaintness, filled with tourists on scooters, and goats.  This time, in the company of Jan & George (Wildcat) who have been here many times, we have sampled and enjoyed most of the best of the French restaurants, visited and become friendly with the local market proprietress, and generally practiced our French on many an unsuspecting vendor.  Typically, the response comes back in English so our practice is not getting us anywhere fast.

The bright colours and pretty gingerbread trim of the houses line the street / pedestrian walkway.

The first of many delicious meals shared in the company of George & Jan.

Now that our colds have pretty much released their grip, we have started getting out once again for daily walks with George and in two mornings we have pretty much exhausted the main island of Terre-en-Haut.  We have picked up and dropped more moorings than we can count between the various anchorages, all dependent on the direction of wind and swell and have even completed a few little boat jobs to keep us going.  

Repairing the clew of our genoa sail, still totally in love with my Sailrite machine!

Pan de Sucre anchorage is tucked behind a little mini-piton with basalt towers.

Named for it's shape - Pain de Sucre (sugar-loaf).

Wildcat arrives in the anchorage all set to pick up a French mooring ball.

Reminiscent of a sunset on St. Lucia when a cruise ship sailed right in front of the sun and obliterated the green flash - not sure we can blame the island but the effect was the same.

On Ilet a Cabrit we hiked up to the fortifications for a sunset view, and just a teensy little green flash (too small to get on camera.)

Our backyard view - more goats!

The dock is just a little rough shape - we chose to beach the dinghy instead.

Late afternoon view from Ilet a Cabrit, looking back on Bourg des Saintes on Terre-en-Haut.

We weren't the only ones enjoying the sunset.  This little goat was taking it all in too.  To be honest the place is overrun with goats, over grazed, and everywhere you walk the air is ripe with goat droppings.

Golden hour light shining down on the little village below.

Another beautiful sunset in paradise.

After time at the Ilet a Cabrits anchorage we headed back over to the "main" island to visit a few more French restaurants.  Apparently Friday was Emancipation Day holiday and Sunday was French Mother's Day, so this was a final blow-out weekend for the tourist trade.  We navigated through the crowds thronging the narrow laneways and still managed to find quiet places off the beaten track.  Of course, as it typical we only had to wander 500 yards off the main street and there was not a tourist in sight!

Enjoying the view from Fort Caroline at the north eastern corner of Terre-en-Haut.

Sitting on top of this hill, Caitlin sent a text asking if we around for a Saturday morning chat.  Coverage was spotty and my photo wouldn't go through.  Caitlin - this one's for you!

Who knew there were French Rasta's?

George and his new friend - it was love at first stance :-)

Our time on Les Saintes is winding down and I'm not sure our waistlines can take much more of the fine French dining on this island.  We're now just waiting for the weather to clear so we can passage once again south to Dominica for a quick revisit.

Hey, it's Les Saintes and I said there were goats everywhere!

Tropical Waves and the Chameau (Camel)

Yesterday, the first of two tropical waves forecast for this area went through - the next one will hit us on the weekend most likely.  We haven't see a full day of wind and rain in quite a while so a day on the boat was not amiss as a lazy rainy day.  Watching the wind whip through the anchorage we were happily tucked in behind a little hill, although some boats headed out like some charterers we met who had a deadline to get back to their base for flight on Monday.  Sucks to have a schedule when you're sailing!

We're located on the blue dot with all that green mess coming at us for the day.

You can barely see the island just a few hundred yards behind the boat as they make their way out through the surf coming into the bay.

Today dawned a bit brighter so we decided to tackle Le Chameau (The Camel) which is the highest point in these islands at 1,014'.

Of course as soon as we set out, the heavens decided to open up too so we headed for what looked like an interesting old fortification on Tete Rouge.  Turned out to already be occupied so no shelter to be found here.

See the little tiny block on top of the hill - that's the fortification on Le Chameau.  While it sprinkled on us we rambled over these fortifications that have now been taken over by a herd of goats.

Hand's down the best hairdo on the island - and with all his nannies in attendance, he has a smile on his face too!

We found the road that wound it's way up to the top of the hill and after a bit of huffing and puffing found ourselves up by the old fortification that was a watch tower built by the French at the end of the 1800s.  The way the wind rattled around and through the edifice had a distinctly spooky feel to it and I sensed that we might be walking among some ghosts.

Not the easiest ascent to the 2nd level with the hope of some spectacular views.

Well, there were views, but they were only what you could see through these narrow gun-slits in the walls.

From the top of the hill we could see back down into Bourg des Saintes, the little town on Haut de Terre.

Fort Napoleon (we explored there yesterday) with Mowzer anchored below the hill in the bay.

Boug des Saintes and their little airport.

For the descent we decided to take the trail rather than the road back down.  This wound steeply down over the back of the hill and led us back past some of the northern bays on the way into town.

Henry gets another bouldering workout.

Follow the dotted line - yellow dots clearly marked the trail all the way down.

We passed through one area of intricately twisted vines and trees ...

... and little fonts of fresh water nestled into the rocks.

 We were only about a third of the way down when ouch! .... ouch, ouch, double-ouch!!  I rolled my ankle over on a small rock, wrenching it painfully.  Once we ascertained that it wasn't broken (thank goodness!) I slowly continued on the way gingerly placing my foot down among the rounded stones all the way to the bottom.  Never was I so happy to find the FLAT concrete road back into town.  Phew!

Everyone step encounters a nicely rounded ankle-turning stone and a moment of inattention on my part was my undoing.

Just before we got to the end of the trail this snake crossed our path - the first one we've seen in the islands.

These cubes of compressed bottles, cans and cardboard reminded me of brightly coloured fabric prints.

This huge public space with a very sophisticated kids playground seemed virtually unused - perhaps a bit of a political boondoggle?

The little park across from the town hall featured this locally created sculpture dedicated to Saintois sailors and fishermen who have lost their lives at sea.  Compared to the other park, this one is much more used.

Not a bad adventure for the day but now time to get my foot elevated and hope I can walk on it tomorrow.

Exploring Terre de Haut

The most populated island of the five that make up The Saintes is Terre de Haut.  It also has the largest anchorage and protected area although we found that some of the swell was definitely wrapping into the anchorage around the headland to the north.

Mowzer in the anchorage (2nd from the bottom at the left).  Looks all calm now...

As an aside, when I was back in Canada I managed to pick up a sore throat on my last day, and although it seemed to be on the mend the other day in Deshaies it has resurrected itself as a phlegmy chest and cough.  As a result I didn’t feel up to hiking the 1000’ to Le Chameau and the lookout tower, but we did manage to hike up to Fort Napoleon and see some of the other areas of the island around Bourg des Saintes.

Here’s a little history lesson:  The French and the English battled back and forth over these and many other islands over a period of about 200 years.  However, The Battle of The Saintes, fought in 1782 between the two nations essentially established England’s domination in the Caribbean, although today we certainly enjoy the French islands immensely so we’re very happy they managed to regain some of them.  The battle was actually fought in the passage south of the islands and north of Dominica and 7,000 men lost their lives on that fateful day.  Once the French regained the islands a few years later, they wanted to make sure the English couldn’t once again take control so they built a number of fortifications around their holdings, including Fort Napoleon on the north western tip of Terre de Haut.

We set off from the village, past the Doctor’s House that is oddly built like the bow of a ship, walked up the very pleasant roadway to the fort and were quite surprised by the immensity of the site, along with the quality of the restoration.  Along with a very comprehensive museum there is a cactus garden with many labelled plants, just in case you needed to know the French name of those spiny succulents.  There were also reputed to be lots of iguanas, but we didn’t see a single one until we were walking back down the hill to Bourg.

The "Doctor's House", built in the 1940s, still houses the local doctor's clinic.

The immense walls and 'moat' of Fort Napoleon, way up on top of the hill above the harbour.

The garrison, now houses the museum.

A very laid back fellow with beautiful markings.

The elusive Saintoise iguana, in someone's front garden.

After lunch in the village, we took a turn to the windward side of the island where we passed the cemetery and ended up on the beach at the end of the little runway.  We’ve seen a few planes in the air, but nothing came in to land or take off while we were there.

Once again, the silk flower salesperson has made a 'killing'.

Rugged cliffs on the windward side of the island.

A beautiful beach at Anse Grande, but with rip currents and large roller waves, it is off-bounds for swimming and therefore not cleared of the sargasso weed that also comes ashore here.  That's the end of the runway on the right.

Not often you get this view of a runway - unless you're a pilot I guess.

Its amazing what a little French money can do.  Guadeloupe is actually a Departement of France which makes them not just a territory but a full member of the nation.  The soil in Guadeloupe is as French as if you were standing on the banks of the Seine.  As an extension, the commune of Terre de Haut must receive quite a bit of funding as we saw a large college stadium, beautiful roads repaired after Hurricane Lenny impacted the island in 1999, and of all things, an exercise park along one of the roads.

This reminds me of the machines at Goodlife!

If you look through the trees you can see the waves crashing on the beach below.  Hope you're enjoying the view Henry!

Well, this has been just a little slice of what The Saintes has to offer and as with the rest of Guadeloupe we will definitely be back here on the return up the islands.  For now though, this will have to suffice as we are hoping to make our way to Dominica with a weather opportunity on Monday, since after that it will be a bit unsettled for a few days.

Looking southwest across the other islands of The Saintes - lots more to explore and do here!