Guadeloupe - Grande Terre

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The principal marina of Guadeloupe is in Pointe-à-pitre. About a 3 minute walk down the road from the marina office is a small plaza with a fast food pizza eatery and many small stores. There are public phones, ATMs and an internet place.

January 13, 2012. Once I checked into the country, the people in the marina office were really nice and let me leave my luggage there while I went to sort out where I was going to go in Guadeloupe. As I did not expect to land in Guadeloupe (the sailboat was aiming for Trinidad), I had no idea what I was going to do there and knew absolutely nothing about the island. I found the internet place and looked for couchsurfing (CS) hosts. I sent out many requests and also looked at bed and breakfast and other accommodation possibilities. A CS host responded after 30 minutes as I had mentioned I was at the marina and he happened to be at the marina, so he said he can come and pick me up in 15 minutes. I bought a phone card from the internet place and went to call him and we confirmed the pickup.

He came in a BMW convertible, threw my bags onto the back seats, and drove me to St. François where he was renting an apartment. It was a complex of houses and he was renting one section of the upper floor. All my hosts in Guadeloupe who were renting had apartments like that. The marina in Pointe-a-Pitre is about 35 km from St. François or a half hour ride when the traffic is really good. The traffic is usually bad since there is only one road unless you want to loop around the northern part of the island. I was so grateful that he picked me up so quickly because I was so tired from serious sleep deprivation for the past 17 days. I explained that I had just crossed the Atlantic and will probably sleep for 3 days and he said he didn’t mind. So I slept for 3 days and also had a massive migraine for 3 days. On the second day, I woke up suddenly in the middle of the afternoon because I thought there was a huge earthquake. I ran out of my room and asked my host if there is an earthquake and he said no, I was just experiencing mal de débarquement (landsickness) which is what happens when you’ve been at sea for a while and return to live on land. Your sense of balance is used to the constant motion of the sailboat so when everything is suddenly still, you feel off-balanced. I felt the earth move violently for quite some time but then I went back to sleep.

When I was better, we went to the very eastern tip of the island and walked around the Salines. I had acras and home made fruit juice and both were really good.

There are two bus depots in Pointe-à-pitre. The Bergevin bus depot (Gare routière de bergevin) on Blvd Chanzy at Blvd du Galerie de Gaulle has long distance buses that go all over Guadeloupe. The Gare routière de Darboussier depot located off rue Dubouchage has local buses that go everywhere in Grande Terre. The bus to St François was €3.60 and at rush hour, it takes 1.5 hrs. Most bus drivers will put on music. I hitchhiked once and found it really easy to get rides. A driver who picked me up told me that a “metro” is what the locals call people from France. He is a metro and had been living in Guadeloupe for a long time. He found that locals don't really mix with metros because they still feel that Guadeloupe is a colony.

Couchsurfers in Guadeloupe meet at L'Affirmatif (pub) in Le Gosier every Wed evening. I stayed with another CS host in Le Gosier which made trips to Basse Terre more accessible as there are no buses after 5pm and nightfall started around 6pm. If you are visiting areas in Basse Terre, it would be better to stay in Basse Terre or at least at Pointe-à-pitre where you can catch buses going to Basse Terre very early in the morning. Traffic is always bad between Pointe-à-pitre and St François, other roads on the island were not too bad.

We walked from St François to Plage St François or Le Lagon. The water was a bit cold but interesting for snorkeling. Another host took me to Port Louis and we walked through the mangrove and along the beach. I realized why this was the best surfing beach in Guadeloupe. The waves were perfect! On that day, the wind was light and the waves were not big but it went on forever becoming smaller for a long time, perfect waves for beginners. The water was also shallow for a long way out. My host told me that the water is 28° in the summer. Well, that's it. If I ever wanted to learn to surf, I'd live at Port Louis. Just seeing those waves will make anyone want to surf and I realized why people invented surfing.

An excursion I highly recommend is kayaking in the mangroves at Vieux Bourg. http://www.ti-evasion.com/index.html From Pointe-à-pitre, I took the bus going to Petit Canal and the bus driver dropped me off at Sauvia. I start walking and eventually, a minivan came and took me to Vieux Bourg for €1. There are only 2 kayak trips per day, one in the morning at 9:00 and one in afternoon at 2:00 as they are 3 hours long. Our guide was Gwendole and he was amazingly fantastic! He gives a kayak lesson first so you don't need to know how to kayak to do this. He talked really fast and told us as much as he could about the mangrove ecosystem. We saw an American heron and there were only 2 in Guadeloupe so it was an exceptional sighting. We saw tons of organisms and animals and Gwendole explained what everything was. I learned so much and I didn't even understand half of what he said because he spoke super fast in French. There were really slow kayakers in our group and the excursion ended up taking 4 hours.

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