It has been a very eventful week in Martinique so I will be dividing this week’s adventures into two weeks’ worth of blogs. This week will focus on the usual Martinique-isms as well as hikes, beaches, churches, etc. Next week we will tackle the world of Yo Ho Ho and an Island of Rhum. We started the week by renting a car. Renting a car seemed like a simple and mundane task until we remembered we were in Martinique. Bill went online and made a reservation with a company called Flizzr. We had never heard of them but it is not uncommon in the islands to have small companies and Flizzr was far cheaper than the others so we grabbed the deal. We had the marina call a taxi and off we went. The cabbie had never heard of Flizzr but we had a street name (places here do not have actual addresses usually). He headed toward the airport and we found every car rental company in existence except Flizzr. We had Hertz, Avis, Thrifty, Enterprise, Sixt and multitudes more. As we watched the taxi meter ticking upward, Bill suggested we pull over and ask one of the Sixt employees where we might find Flizzr. The Sixt employee pointed to the Sixt office and said, “In there”. Well, quite logically! Why didn’t we figure out that the Flizzr office was located in the Sixt office? As we entered, there was no Flizzr counter, no Flizzr sign, no Flizzr employee. Just the Sixt girl. We explained that we did not have a reservation with Sixt and she nodded and said, “Flizzr.” Giving up on logic, we gave her our name and she found the reservation in the computer and we were on our way. We are still not quite sure what Flizzr is but evidently, you can walk into a Sixt office and get a car for one-third of the price of the Sixt cars by just saying the magic word “Flizzr”. As we began our adventure, I did have to give Martinique credit for their amazing roads. They have lines painted on them, very few potholes, signs that give you direction and wide enough lanes for two cars. It has been amazing driving around the island this week! Bill had to pull out his long forgotten driving skills which included driving on the correct side of the road again as well as driving a stick shift which he had not done in years.
Bright and early Monday morning, we took a deep breath and headed over to Digicel in the mall to tackle our internet connectivity issues. First let me clarify that the Digicel was in a mall. An actual mall that could have been in any US city in the 1990s. It was full of stores including clothing, sporting goods, jewelry and a store much like a super Walmart called L’Eclerc. It made me very nostalgic for the good old days of wandering the mall! We easily found the Digicel with the one employee. She did not speak any English but she was quite willing to use Google translator to help us. After several back and forth communications, she settled on what we needed and went to work getting the sim cards ready. She slipped one of the sim cards into the phone we had purchased in the Dominican Republic and we were ready to go. Except we weren’t…the sim card was not connecting to the internet. Hour one. She got on the phone and called for technical support all the while helping other customers that came to the counter. At one point, she was talking to tech support about our issue, handling payments for two other customers and selling a new phone to another. After a long while on the phone, she typed into her translator that our DR phone was the problem. It was a 3G phone and the sim card was a 4G card. First of all, let me say that while the cards here may say they are 4G, I would guess 2G on the best day. So, we told her to sell us her cheapest phone. Hour two. The last and final hour consisted of her getting the new phone ready to go and getting rid of us. Hour three. I am pretty sure I heard the entire counter cheer as we made our way out of the mall but with new phone in hand, we were finally happily connected to the rest of the world! Following the Digicel fiasco, we decided we had earned some fun. We head to downtown Port du Prince which is the capital of Martinique. I had several sites on our list so we started with the fort because we can never pass by a good fort. Alas, the fort was closed on Mondays. On to the library. Closed due to Covid. Since everything else on the island is open, I am pretty sure the librarian moved away and no one else has figured out the library has never reopened. On to St. Louis cathedral. Closed but at least I could get a nice picture of the square. On to the Balata gardens. Open. Finally! We ventured up to the gate and presented our vaccination cards which were from Grenada. It clearly says on the card “fully vaccinated”. The two girls at the gate looked confused and then said, “Booster?” to which we replied, “No” to which they replied, “PCR test?” to which we said, “No, not doing that”. If I had known French, there would have been a come to Jesus meeting about how our vaccine cards were good enough to get into their country but not good enough for their gardens….which were outdoors! We took our wallet and decided to spend our euros elsewhere. We found it quite ironic that just the previous day at lunch, a herd of police officers had come into the restaurant and searched everyone in the restaurant to make sure we all had vaccination cards. We had no issues with the police yet the garden girls thought we had broken the law. On the way back down the hill, we came across the Sacre Coeur which was an amazing cathedral in the middle of nowhere. It looked like it had been shipped over from Europe! It also had an amazing cemetery and I was intrigued with how many family members they put into each crypt. Each family member had a plague sitting on top of the crypt and some families had at least a dozen plagues. I’m not sure I would want that much togetherness for eternity! We woke up early Tuesday morning and headed to the south end of the island to further explore Ste Anne and get some shopping done in Le Marin. We had a tourist map that had marked all the hikes on the island. The map key rated the hikes from one little hiker (easy) to four little hikers (difficult). On the way to Ste Anne, there was a hiking trail by some ruins that was rated one hiker so we figured we could handle a one hiker trek and the exercise would be good. The hike was marked as a 30 minute hike up easy terrain. We began what we assumed would be a nice stroll and the path was a long, flat road. After 10 minutes, we came upon the stairs. Vast, sprawling stairs of different shapes, sizes and depths loaded with rocks and tree roots. Figuring the stairs must only be a small portion of the hike, we continued. Uphill. Up a long and never ending hill of stairs after stairs after stairs. I am not sure who timed the hike on the map but they must have had very long legs because getting to the top took us about an hour. The views were breathtaking which was not a positive since I had no breath left to take! After a long rest, we began the arduous trek down the mountain. Once we reached the bottom, all I could think of was what the four hiker rated treks must look like. They would have to airlift me out since my one little hiker needed CPR by the time I reach the bottom of that mountain. Following the death hike, we dragged ourselves into Ste Anne for lunch and had a successful afternoon of shopping for Galt parts. The next day we went to La Savane des Esclaves which was a recreated slave village that told all about the history of the island and its’ inhabitants. The Martinique history is a confusing one because control of the island switched fourteen times between the French and English. Each time England would sign a freedom document, the island would change hands back to the French and enslavement would continue and vice versa. The French even tricked Dutch Jews into coming to the island with the promise of land and profit shares only to enslave them for 3 years prior to giving them any land. It was a brutal history and Bill and I were perplexed that all of this brutality was going on at the same time as the Renaissance in Europe. There was certainly no enlightenment on Martinique at that time. After our educational morning, we headed to Anse Mitan to soak in the cool water and relax on the beach. Each night we had to make our way back to Galt because I could not get a place to stay. I tried Airbnb, Booking, Travelocity and Kayak. Each time I would reserve a room, the next morning I would receive a denial message stating that the room was not available. It began to feel like online dating all over again. For the life of me, I could not get anyone to swipe Right and I was definitely getting a complex! Finally, I managed to get Serge on Airbnb to swipe right so we had a place to stay! We ventured our way over to the windward side of the island which was made up of mostly small beach towns. The windward side is on the Atlantic so the waters were much rougher and the seaweed often sent a stench into the towns that was definitely unpleasant. Not learning anything from our death march earlier in the week, we saw a hiking trail that had the one little hiker marking again so off we went. Luckily, this trail was much easier and we enjoyed visiting ruins of an old sugar plantation with an amazing ocean view. Now it was time to make our way to our Airbnb. As I mentioned before, there are very few addresses in the islands. These were the translated directions I received from Serge: “Head towards the Lorrain then towards Morne soap villa Serge Melgire opposite the water castle”. Well that was certainly crystal clear. I asked for more specific directions and received the same text. We finally pulled over and had a man who spoke French call Serge. With a lot of pantomime, we figured out that Serge would meet us at the gas station and then there was something thrown in about flowered clothes. Sure enough, once we found the station, there was Serge and his wife and she was indeed wearing flowered clothes. They directed us to the Airbnb and we had a nice night with an amazing ocean view. At one point, the flowered lady came walking in and placed a dish of fish on my lap, gibbered in French and left. While the fish did not look appetizing, they were quite good and we appreciated the kindness. Upon return to the marina, I was greeted by one of the dockhands who said, “Gone Galt?” and when I responded, “Yes?”, he stated, “You check out on 22. You must leave now.” I sighed and explained for the umpteenth time that we were not leaving until the beginning of April. He argued with me for a few more minutes until he realized I was not going to move my boat. I am pleased to announce that we have been “approved” to stay in our spot until April 3rd……at least until the next time he tells me we have to leave! We rounded out the week with a trip to the Martinique Zoo and another death hike. The zoo was quite impressive for an island zoo and had a variety of monkeys, birds and reptiles. We were not quite sure how the birds and lizards lived in harmony but they seemed to be making it work. Our final death hike on Martinique was to Cascade Couleuvre and Anse Couleuvre. All the reviews described the area as “lush and isolated” and “a private getaway”. Evidently not on a Monday! There had to be easily one hundred people hiking to the falls and enjoying our private getaway with us. I have also decided that the local map maker must be dyslexic because he had the distance gauged at 1.3km. No way was it only 1.3km to the waterfall but we made it and then fell into the ocean for a long soak. Our last educational experience on the island was to learn about the history of the Pelee volcano. The worst eruption thus far was in 1902 when over 30,000 people died from ash and a tidal wave. We spent time walking around St. Pierre which was demolished at that time. Ruins of the theatre, jail and houses were easily explored and the map of ships that were sunken in the bay was overwhelming. While Pelee is still an active volcano, scientists closely monitor its’ activity to hopefully avoid a repeat of 1902. I will leave you now with the knowledge that next week you will learn everything there is to know about making rum! Given that we visited at least half a dozen distilleries, you’ll have more knowledge than you ever wanted! Until then, Yo Ho Ho! ***More pics on Picture tab
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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