Advertisement
Published: September 29th 2009
Les Saintes
Anchored outside of Terre-de-Haut in Les Saintes, one of our favorite islands in the Caribbean.Even though we had to book it south for hurricane season, we couldn’t resist stopping at Iles de Saintes on our way back down. We skipped the Saintes on our travels up the Caribbean chain this year, and just couldn’t pass by these islands without stopping again. Besides, we had to break up all that travel somehow. And who could resist this group of small islands just off of Guadeloupe. The Saintes are one of our favorite anchorages in the Caribbean. We absolutely love the quaint French fishing village on Terre-de-Haut, it is so charming! The people are friendly, the food is great (lots of fresh fish caught by the local fishermen), and the snorkeling and diving is fantastic. So we dropped anchor and spent a week having fun in Les Saintes.
The one thing we really wanted to do during our stay was to rent scooters and explore the island. We have always seen tons of tourists come over to the Saintes on the ferry from Guadeloupe, hop on a scooter, and take off. And we thought it looked like so much fun! Terre-de-Haut is the perfect islands to explore on scooters. There are only a couple of roads,
Jen Pouting
Our plans for renting scooters was squashed because they wouldn't let me- boo! not many cars, and lots of beaches and bays to discover. We were looking forward to the adventure. But unfortunately when we went into town to talk to someone about renting a scooter- they denied us. Well they didn’t deny Jay because he has previous motorcycle experience. But they did deny me because of my lack of experience. Bummer! I guess we could have both ridden on one of the bigger scooters, but that didn’t sound like as much fun. So our plans of scooting were squashed. But that didn’t stop us from exploring the island. We decided just to hike over to one of the bays on the other side of the island for the day instead, Plage de Pompierre. It is one of the more famous beaches in the Saintes, so beautiful and picturesque. We spent the afternoon just lounging in the shade of the palm trees there- nice! It really was a lovely and lazy afternoon.
But the weather was getting hotter and hotter in the Caribbean as summer approached. So instead of spending more time hiking around the Saintes, it was time to get in the water. Besides, we had just picked up new dive
Plage de Pompierre
So we hiked across the island to the Plage de Pompierre instead. gear for ourselves in St. Martin and were excited to try it out. This was a big step for us. We have always gone diving with either a dive master or dive company, never on our own. But our confidence in our diving skills increased and we were ready to take the plunge. We figured that we probably would never have the opportunities to dive as much as we do right now, living on a boat in the Caribbean. So we bought our own gear: new BCDs (buoyancy compensators), tanks, regulators, and dive computers. Awesome! And we were anxious to try out our new gear. Luckily the Saints have great diving. But for the first trial run we decided to make it an easy dive, just a small wreck that is located in the middle of the anchorage. It took us a while to put all our gear together, test it all to make sure it was working properly, and get everything figured out. But it was a total success. And so much fun! We were super excited and ready to do some serious diving now. So we moved out boat over to the Pain du Sucre anchorage in the
Beach Day
Spending the day lounging in the shade of a palm tree at Plage de Pompierre. Saintes for our next dive. One of the best dives in the Saintes is a wall dive along the base of Pain du Sucre, so we had to check it out. What we loved about this dive was that we could do it from the back of our boat. So once again we donned our new dive gear and jumped in. It was a beautiful dive- so many fish and bright coral. And we are super pleased with ourselves for diving on our own. In fact, we plan on having lots more underwater adventures in diving this year.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.342s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 19; qc: 168; dbt: 0.2383s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
Ollie
non-member comment
Diving - lucky people
The diving looks fantastic - I'm learning to dive at the moment and trips like yours is so inspiring. Enjoy!