Travel Day

Stephen:
Today should be an easy one. Half our stuff is already in the car and once we get the rest in, it is a twenty minute drive to Le Moule. We are meeting Shani at Le Spot, a restaurant that overlooks the prime surfing place in Guadeloupe. . . .She came right on time and guided us back to their compound which consists of a building with two duplex apartments, one of which is ours for the week, a small swimming pool, her family's house and her grandmother's house, which is mostly an covered dining terrace for twenty or more people which they fill some Sundays with her family. In my imagination I see her son asking what kind of house he should build her and she responds that all she needs is a place where she can have her whole family together.

Hiking and Beaching

Stephen:
Dawn wanted a hike today so I picked one from the internet that would take us from just east of town to the “Gates of Hell” of le Moule. It would be a 10 kilometre round trip affair, mostly along the shoreline. We didn't take any pictures so I grabbed this grafitti photo from the internet to represent what looks like the bombed out building covered with graffiti behind our starting point which was a beach having its facilities rebuilt so it was mostly a construction site.

Within five minutes we are on a wild and rugged shore on a beautiful trail that first swings out onto the rocks near the water and then back under the trees. Soon it arrives at some fields which we cross, before it climbs two hundred feet or so through the forest to a view above the ocean. Then it leads us down to an overlook of the cove. We sat for awhile admiring the ferocity of the waves formed by a week of wind coming from the east or northeast. I did take pictures here but they were inadequate except the one you see. The trail had a last joke to play on us when it took us past a recently dead goat. On our return to the car, we soaked our feet in the small surf. before heading back to our place.

The next day we drove forty minutes to plage de St. Felix to swim on a south facing beach, avoiding the the large waves around east facing le Moule. After our swim, we had lunch at the Baie de Pelicain. We had been here a year ago for a sunset drink. It is a nice spot on a small bluff overlooking a little harbor with its aforementioned pelicans. Last year there were four and this year, four again. we don't know if they are the same birds but I think so because a fifth appeared and somehow got the signal that it wasn't welcome, and so it flew off out to sea even though the fishing is really good here. Best practially under our feet.because they dove successfully time after time a few feet from where our bluff met the water. I must admit that I can give in to the tropical fantasy of coming out of the water for a nice lunch with a good chilled rosé, but the selfie shows that my Panama fedora has morphed into peasant head gear and I am not the suave elgant man of my dreams.

The sun is on the pool in the morning and Dawn is taking advantage to take a dip and I am taking advantage to get a photo of the beautiful woman that I have loved for more than half my life. Sometime you just have to shout these things out in sheer joy.

We took a hike today where we needed to have one or two of the machetes that Michel showed us this morning. The trail called the Ravine de Audoine was on the outskirts of town but civilization was invisible from it. On the map, we started at the red circle and moved clockwise on the green trail and then took the red shortcut back to the car. You can see how close we were to the houses but we felt we were in the middle of the Amazon. We have not talked about the hurricane that came by last fall, but it has damaged some of the boats and the flora of the island. Many places have been repaired but this trail through a mangrove swamp has escaped attention. It was a little like we were dragging the African Queen as we worked our way around newly fallen trees and over downed branches. For myself, it has been awhile that I have hiked a trail where I wasn't sure that we could keep following it. It would peter out only to reappear some yards away. This can be disconcerting especially when it stops at the water's edge. This trail is mostly used by locals who bring in their crab traps to capture the animals that will be eaten at traditional meals. The traps are made from recycled construction site material. The photo shows the basic design with the blue stripe showing who owns it. After the crab is caught it needs to be kept and fed for awhile before you can eat it, both to improve to taste and more importantly to remove any poison in the crab from its eating the fruit of the manchineel tree. Eating the crab could be fatal if it has recently eaten the apples of this tree.

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Drinks, Talk and Learning

Dawn:
n We invited our hosts over for a drink Friday. In the morning, we agreed on them coming over “ce soir,” but we didn’t mention a specific time in the evening. I figured we should be ready any time after 5:00 since the sun sets around 6:00. Michel was working on the grounds around 5:30, and we exchanged “Bonsoirs.” We figured he had some work he wanted to finish up so maybe they would come by around 6:15 or 6:30. By 7:00 or so, I figured that either they forgot or we misunderstood and they were going to drop by the next evening. So we made a salad and were just about to sit down and eat it when they showed up! We were happy to see them and quickly switched gears to Ti Punch and wine and appetizers. It was a good conversation for a couple of hours. As often happens, the subject went to politics, and they couldn’t understand how Trump won when all Americans that they meet here did not vote for or support him.

Sunday morning, we met Michel for what he said was going to be a garden tour. It turned out to be a three-hour lesson in the geological, biological and human history of Gwada and its flora, fauna, music and customs. It was totally fascinating, partly in French and partly in English as he used to be an English teacher. He loves his country and believes it is important for descendants of slaves as well as descendants of European colonists to know the history of this country that they either inhabit or visit. He showed us a tambour made from a barrel (slaves had been forbidden to cut trees for drums since the European settlers wanted all the wood they could get for building their houses and furniture.) He also showed us a smaller drum with heads at both ends and said that there are seven rhythms native to Gwada, (Gwo ka) and only one of them, the mendé, came from elsewhere, the Congo, and would be recognized in other African countries. Near the end of our history lesson, Michel’s wife, Yvelle, brought out fruit punch and two bottles of rum (that I did not imbibe at 11:30 a.m.) and some boudin, à spicy, salty blood sausage.

We got some photos to remember them by, including ones of Stephen helping Michel saw apart, then clean out a calabash. The calabash needs to dry out for a couple of days in the sun, then we will sand them smooth inside and then they can be used for many purposes. They are often finely incised with designs and sometimes made into lovely lamps. When we get home, we will decide what to do with the two Michel gave us.

It was raining when we said good-bye to Michel and left Le Moule. He said, “the weather is sad because you are leaving.” Interesting that the phrase for “It is raining” (Il pleut) and “He is crying” (Il pleure) are quite similar. When I was studying French in high school, I used to get them mixed up. His other parting words were “Please vote Trump out of office. We are scared.” I said “We are scared too.” Stephen thinks we should go to Pennsylvania for a few weeks before the next presidential election to work for the Democratic candidate. It is a swing state, and maybe we could stay with his brother there and try to swing some votes. He was raised there.

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More Talk and Laughter

Stephen;


Saturday night, the girls face-timed us and we had a great time. They were trying to edit Dawn's Wikipedia page and we were trying to figure out how they might pop over from a family vacation in Miami to visit us in Deshaies. We don't really have beds for them but who knows. They seem to be in good spirits and it was fun to hang out with them digitally.

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Last Day, Rain, Superbowl

It might be a pitter patter, but today the rain seems a little pushier. Here is a photo from the click clack (convertible sofa) that I took in between the rain episodes. It shows what is our porch, dinner room and yoga studio in morning light. The car is not far away but I brought our rain coats inside from the car in case we want to leave while it's raining. Today we have an hour drive.

I listened to the Superbowl last night and even though the Patriots are my team, I was okay with the loss. The team demonstrated its strengths and at the same time had its weaknesses exposed. Also, rooting for a team that is too successful is boring. Remember the Yankees.

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Sainte Rose

A night time view of the beautiful B & B where we are staying this week. I think Dawn is making us Ti Punches at the bar.

Meditating with Hammers

Stephen:
The sound of a hammer hitting a nail is a message. It is not the message of music, not even the message of the African drum, rather a picture of the person who has hit the nail, their experience, their skill, even their mood. It is the rhythm of work. In my life I have mostly heard the sound of workers framing houses and putting on roofs. A good carpenter sets the nail with a tap and then drives it with three or four blows. There is a pause as another nail is gotten out of the nail pouch and the rhythm is repeated. It is a solid sound, the hammer stays in contact with the nail as it is driven nearly an inch with each blow. The pitch goes up as the nail shortens and the last sound is different as the hammer finishes at the surface of the wood. A good carpenter will not hit it again. It is done and he moves on. There would be a crew working on the house so the sound would gain in complexity. In the summer, the noise of house building would blend in with listening to baseball outdoors on a transitor radio during a lazy day in the back yard.

There are other jobs that employ hammers. I have been listening to men build forms in order to pour a foundation for a wall that our hosts' neighbors are building. We can't see them because they are just down the hill behind some bushes. Here the sounds portray a different picture. First of all they are masons. I think their hearts are in the water, sand and cement with which they make their walls. Their wood construction is only a temporary thing to shape the final work. The wood goes up and then it comes down and then up again in a different place until the wall is finished. Maybe they reuse the nails. The might be rusty by now. Although they chat when they first come to work, there is little talk once they start hammering. But these guys’ sounds are much more like the sounds that I make when I build or repair something around the house. A glancing blow adds a tinny sound and then the thud of the hammer hitting the wood, followed by the taps that you need to straighten out the nail. Then there is the ringing bell sound when I drive a spike into a piece of hard wood with a hammer that is too light. The nail doesn't move, the hammer bounces back which frees the nail to vibrate back and forth, ringing like a bell. Once it makes this sound it almost never works to just keep hitting it harder like I do. You just have to go find a sledge hammer and whack it in with that.

I think their sounds are a result of building next to a flood canal and having to improvise bracing so they end up nailing where they have no good place for their feet. Hanging over a railing to hammer a nail is very different from a framer's or roofer's solid stance. At the end of today, I heard someone nailing with a beautiful managed rhythm. I imagine the forms are up and he is going back to reinforce them before the concrete is poured.

Mostly this listening has been while we have been meditating and the rest while sitting by the pool and writing this section. My meditation practice converted the guys' banging, which should have been unbearable, into images and allowed my mind to try to see who they were. My writing practice made me dig deeper into the details, but we did head to the beach before I or they finished. We are not crazy.

Plage de Clugny

Dawn:
Plage de Clugny is a lovely beach. However it is also the place where a 17-year-old body boarder disappeared over a week ago when the surf was dangerously rough. I grew up loving the ocean. My parents, brother and I spent weekends riding the waves at Jones Beach on Long Island, NY and some July vacations on Martha’s Vineyard. As a youngster, I was fearless. I did have a scary incident at South Beach on the Vineyard that perhaps contributed to my becoming more timid about the waves as I got older. So last week, Stephen dove in, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing so. In the last couple of days, the sea has calmed down a bit, and I have really enjoyed being in the waves, today even being inspired by a couple of young men with body boards to body surf myself. It was great fun! So many memories of my own childhood as well as my children’s childhood on Cape Cod.

Stephen:
We learned anout the death on French TV. On TV. I seem to remember that the boy was bodyboarding. In the newspapers they just said he was swept out to sea. The second picture came from the news article. I don't know if it is a stock photo or if someone went out to the beach and shot it. This event, combined with some other things, has caused me to start writing a murder mystery about what might have happened. Yesterday, while playing in much smaller waves, I got caught inside and was roughed up pretty good. It is the first time that I can remember that my back was arched by a wave. It also held me down for a while longer than I am used to. It all worked out, but it was enough for me for the day.

Trois-Cornes Hike

Stephen:
Not the hike, but the rock at the top of the falls that was the destination of the trail. It was shaped like a tri-cornered hat. Dawn saved the day twice, both by choosing to take this loop trail in the direction that was suggested and after talking to two girls who had just come off the trail, she decided we should pick up a couple of hiking sticks from a pile at the beginning of trail. Both were good ideas.

I have always been snooty about hiking sticks. I am proud of my balance and my leg power and feel that adding a weaker limb, my arm, to the equation and then needing to find a place to put the stick would slow me down and make me less stable. Within minutes of the start of the walk, the stick had found its rhythm. When not needed it would just tap along, but this was not the case in ninety percent of the time.



Dawn:
I took this photo deliberately from a distance because I feel that it shows a human being, in this case Stephen, at an appropriate scale with the rest of nature. We humans are but a small part of the natural world. Our attempts to dominate nature have surely brought some benefits to our own species, but our hubristic shaping of the environment is also wreaking havoc on all species, our own included. Will we wake up in time?

(I bet Zak is going to make fun of this paragraph!)

Stephen:
The trail went up or down, mostly down as we worked our way from the ridge top where we parked the car to the river bed where the falls were. The stick placed forward on the trail coming down on mud did the same thing as a good pole plant in downhill skiing. It kept your weight over your feet. If your weight is back toward the hill, your skis or feet tend to shoot out from under you in a very unpleasant way. And this trail was muddy, as advertised. And slippery because of the clay.

We had been here before. Last year, when Thierry and Catherine had come over to visit us, spending the day the Botannical Gardens in Deshais, we drove over here with the intention of hiking this trail. But it had been raining for a couple of days so it was impassable. I think Thierry collected a couple of plant samples and I inspected the sulphur baths. It would have been nice to hike with them, the trail's slow pace in the middle of a tropical forest would have been amicable to conversation..



But now we are hiking down the side of the ravine, one long switchback takes all the way back to the return trail for a confusing moment but we hike on. We reached an intersection that was mysterious at best. One sign pointed left and said parking, the other one pointed the other way and said nothing. I forgot to take a picture of the map at the top of the trail so we mulled and very soon a pair of hikers appeared and said yes the falls are that way. As we got closer to the river crossing that would lead us upstream to the falls we met more couples hiking toward us with differing opinions about whether one could cross.

The French couple said “non” but the English couple said “We did it and I'm kind of wobbly”. Encouraged, we went on, crossed the river, found the falls, took a light-struck, interesting picture, ate lunch, snapped a picure over Dawn's shoulder of peeling a clementine. There were fish in a pool just below the falls where we had lunch looking at some fish that we couldn't identify. Photos were useless, but I did get a video of them darting about. After a rest, we re-crossed the river and slogged our way straight up the side of the muddy ravine through a couple of hundred feet of elevation back to the car. It took about three days to get our shoes semi-cleaned and they are still not clean and are not brought into civilized company.

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Another Palm Tree and the Spirits of the Terrace.

Another palm tree. Not as big as the first one, but friendlier. I think its spirit reflects our hosts who are gracious and kind. But the tree watches over us in our place for the week, a lovely covered terrace with their house on one end and our room at the other.

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If I am on the terrace and the wind is blowing, I have guests, the drapes. They move in such a gentle human fashion that I find myself turning about to greet them, but it is just the drapes. They are like young brides, their hair cinched in back simply and their their straight slim dresses extend to the floor. Perhaps they are waiting for their bridegrooms. But maybe they have turned away from all that and are simply the virgins of the terrace who turn on the temple lights each evening. I had thought it was some mechanical timing device.

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Terrasse du Port (Connecting the Dots)

Stephen:
Back in high school I was a photographer. I worked for the school newspaper and yearbook. I don't think I have to say that it was all film then, and mostly black and white. I mention this because when I put these photos on the website, they reminded me of my battle with dust in the darkroom. They can strike whether you are developing negatives or printing photos. They can take any shape and can ruin a lot of work. Dawn is in charge of writing this section, so I won't say any more...

Dawn:
The restaurant we wanted to go to was closed, so our hosts suggested we try this one. We got there at 7:30, early for the French, and there was only one other couple seated. The sort of Spanish-looking man behind the bar said we could pick any table and took our drink order. Most places we have gone to in Gwada have been quite casual, but here were tablecloths and cloth napkins and little devices that projected moving spots of light all over the room. By the time we were finishing our drinks, the place had filled up with both tourists and locals. It was a place to eat fish, which we did quite enjoyably. The service was fairly slow, but what’s the hurry? Stephen insisted on taking a couple of short videos of the moving lights that looked particularly vibrant on my white shirt. We tried to figure out how these dots of light could connect to our video theme for Reach. Hmm, our concept is about connecting so how about “connect the dots?”

After dinner, I went to the toilette (twalet in Creole) and stopped by the kitchen to thank the cook. The host, bartender, server was feverishly scraping dishes while a wiry Creole woman at least my age was cooking. She had done an excellent job with the fish and appreciated my telling her so. As we were paying the bill at the bar, I said to the all-purpose man how lucky he was to have such a good cook. He told me that she was his wife and they owned and ran the place together. There have been so many wonderful examples of interracial marriages and families in Guadeloupe. Although during Carnaval season, the history of slavery is evoked, there seems to be a pretty relaxed racial atmosphere here

Stephen:
Well. I will say a little more. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen to have these bits of light crawling arounds Dawn's face. We were seated in a corner. Dawn had her back to the main lighting in the room, so the dots were much stronger on her than on me.

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Miller Time at Les Bieres de Lézarde

I can count on one finger the times that Dawn has said to me “Hey, let's go out and drink some beer”, but it did happen when she was feeling a little house bound by a day of my writing and photo manipulation. She found a craft beer place on the internet and it was only a half hour away. “Let's go girl” and we were off. Maybe a little less enthusiam and more finding out more precisely where is this place would have made the trip go smoother, but after a stop or two and a desperate call to google maps, (who answers when she has mothing better to do, and then when she gets bored, flips us a “GPS lost” and goes off with somebody else), brought us to Les Bières de Lézarde, a gorgeous brasserie, that sits atop a hanging tropical garden over a river bed. The meat of the matter were in all the vats and tanks that were making the beer that we were about to drink. Actually not that much, two for me, a dark and a white, and a hibiscus flavored one for Dawn. They were all pretty good, but aimed at the French market who wouldn't know what to do with an IPA if they saw one.

But for the Americans, it was like someone hung out a sign for free beer. The foursome that we talked to were from Washington, D.C. They were goverment workers hanging out in the Caribbean while the government shut down, then started up, then shut down again or didn't. Amazed that the government could do anything while they were away, they sighed and ordered another beer. They were two IT people and a doctor at Walter Reed and a guy from the IRS. The doctor was showing off a black eye from an encounter with a wave. We have been both looking at and swimming in pretty large waves. It is not the size of the wave that matters but the shape and placement. A lot of these waves break right at the shore, throw you down on the sand and then dump a lot of water on you. Imagine someone holding a three car garage full of water up over you and then opening the doors to dump its contents. You have to pick your waves and be ready for the consequences.

We took a couple of pictues. The place is in the highlands, the sea is faraway. We are in the core of the island. It reminded me of Costa Rica. (Dawn)

A hike to Plage Tillet and back

This photo is from the trail that at times hugs the top of the cliff. It wasn't long but it behaved like a stairmaster, always up or down. It goes down to the beach west of Clugny, passing the nudiste beach, which kept itself hidden. It starts and returns to the end of Clugny where we think the boy might have been killed on the rocks, so it hike had its solemn moments. The picture celebrates the diversity of shorelines that Guadaloupe has.

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Photos of Our Deck

We are finishing a wonderful week in a real bnb where we are given a great breakfast everyday. We have just a room with private bath, but have our own fridge where we can keep our stuff for our light dinners. Tomorrow we go to MangoPlaya in Deshaies where we will be for three weeks. We were there last year. It is our first housing rental repeat for more than just a night. We had a lot of rain this week and I can't imagine a better place to hang out with the rain. On the terrace, we were dry, but could celebrate the waves of tropical storms that would sweep over us dumping torrential rain all around and then sweep out bringing back the sun.



We should have spent a day photographing the terace and the things in it, and the lighting at night. It was the most beautifully decorated room that I can remember being in. She knew how add things and add things and then right at the correct moment, stop. It was a pleasure to come out of our room in the morning and see it in early light.

Later in the day, after out swim, we would watch the turn of the earth suck the light of the landscape only to be replaced by lots of carefully placed lighting fixtures both out and indoors. The Buddha was more than twice life sized. The hanging fish she painted herself. The blue painting on the wall behind Dawn's yoga uses broken mirrore as mosaic pieces. The wooden heads are all about connection.

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Our Review of Nicole and Claudio

Dawn:
I am writing this review in English to encourage more Anglophone visitors to stay with Nicole and Claudio. Although I communicated with them mostly in French, Nicole’s English is excellent which was great for Stephen as his French is a bit limited. Claudio even indulged me in practicing some Italian. They were lovely hosts, very welcoming and open. Nicole has created a beautifully artistic home, filled with color, shapes, great lighting, and unusual objects some of which she made herself. This is a true B & B, that is we live in a beautiful room with private bath, but share our hosts’ home. She made wonderful, copious breakfasts (that obviated the need for lunch for us) and we shared the kitchen when making dinner. They even give guests their own refrigerator. Don’t miss the table d’hôte as Nicole is an excellent cook, and it is enjoyable to share the meal together. They also have an adorable dog, beautiful, black “India,” and a pure white cat, “Coco.” Their pets are very “chill” and reflect the relaxed atmosphere of their home. I happen to be allergic to some cats but had absolutely no problem here as the living area is exposed to fresh air on both sides, and Coco never came into our bedroom. We highly recommend Nicole’s lovely B & B in Sainte Rose.

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Deshaies
Return to Mangoplaya

Travel Day

Stephen:
Dinner on our first night. The lighting here needs work so we are using our citronella candles to produce a romantic glow.

An easy day. In fact, we won't need to change supermarkets. In Deshaies we will use the same SuperU as in Sainte Rose. It is near the border of the two towns. We stopped in to pick up some staples: rum, raw sugar, limes, (these go together as the ingredients of Ti Punch), rosé wine, bread, cheese, chocolate, coffee, fruit juice. The fruits and veggies we can get from the vendors in town

We have learned something about Ti Punch on this trip. Very often, when you order it in a bar or reataurant, they bring you the ingredients and you make it yourself, or a glass with the lime and sugar already in it, and you pour the rum yourself. When we had our hosts over for a drink in le Moule, we learned to do the same thing but add “Kill yourself”. That is the tradition. Everyone gets to choose how much rum to put in their drink. Good idea, since the punch is really straight alcohol.

We stopped at Plage de Perle, one of the best beaches on the island, either to find a carbet (a little shelter) on the beach to have our snack, or have lunch at Madras 2. We have been here before, walking over along the shore from our studio, Mangoplaya. No carbets were available so we had lunch which took care of most of the four hours between Airbnbs. It was just slow, but we had a table on the sand, in light shade. The rains lasted 45 seconds or so and the food was good, my dorade better than Dawn's swordfish. The rosé was better than we have been buying.

We were headed into town, past Mangoplaya and the main entrance to Plage de la Grande Anse, and then I took an abrupt right onto a dirt road at a sign that might have said “Plage” and/or “Samis”. From our last visit, we had a sense the road might lead to a shack that might be a restaurant. It was a first-gear road, it went around and through holes filled with water, which hid their depth, until finally we got to the end where a few cars were parked.

There was the shack with a fire going and one group of tourists at a table drinking beers. It was after lunch time so we had no idea if these had been the only customers for the day.

We have returned since, seeking shelter there during a morning downpour. We met the guy who comes in to start the fire and cooks the wood down to charcoal. Sami and the rest of the guys showed up in a pickup and unloaded the supplies for today's meal. They were all friendly and there were many handshakes and smiles. The rain stopped and we left and we promised to return. And we'd better. (But we didn’t)

A few more steps lead us to the far end of Plage Grande Anse. By eleven o'clock, its main parking is always full, so if we don't mind driving at a snail's pace, we could park, especially if we wanted to drive into town afterwards. Normally, we just walk down to the beach and then home. But now, our four hours are up, and we head to Mangoplaya, where Daniel lets us through the gate at the foot of the drive, watches us mount the road in first gear, gives us keys to our home for the next three weeks and waves good-bye in his cheerful manner. Ray, the owner, is in France attending to family matters.

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Drama in the Cove

Stephen:
We got up early, did not stop to meditate and were headed for Petite Anse to snorkel when it started to rain and the carpenter showed up. The carpenter was easy to deal with. Not-our-job. Here was here to finish the storm doors and put a small roof over our doorway which will give us a small space to sit in the afternoon with some shade. We were warned Monday evening that he might come Tuesday morning and that it might be a little noisy. Today is Friday. He got a lot done, the cantilevered frame of the roof is up, but he is finished for the weekend.

The rain was predicted, but they have been wrong so many times that I ignored the forecast. It didn't rain for very long and stopped as we drove, Once we were on the beach, the grey clouds came in over the hills and it began to rain again more seriously. We headed back to the car and meditated in the front seats for twenty-five minutes. When we were done, the rain was gone (mostly) and the sun had returned.

On my second snorkeling swim of the day, I headed for the left side of the cove which meant swimming over a largish patch of sand with a few rocks scattered about. I swam over a group of yellowtail snapper grouped around some rocks with their noses all dug into the crevices. I stopped. All of a sudden a small octopus zipped about three feet into another hiding place. Half the group went with it but were a touch too late to catch it. The other half missed the escape and were still trying to find it at its old home. In a minute they all lost interest. When they left, I lost track of his hiding place and I too moved on.

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Langley Hotel Resort Fort Royal Guadeloupe

Stephen:
This is a big place, a destination resort just up the road. It used to be a Club Med until they were bought out by the Langley people. It is a big ugly thing that juts out on a spit of land into the sea with some beach bungalows that they added on.

We went to see how the other half lives. I am not going to write a review here, but I will say that it seems more like a camp than a Caribbean resort. It has to do with all the Americans and all their children. The hotel may not have enough money to landscape their extensive grounds, although the hurricane could have swept away some of it. The beach was thin, but this was true in a lot of places.

All the staff that we met were nice. Well, I guess just one and that would be our bartender, Fanny. We asked if non-guests could drink here and she assured us that she could certainly sell us a drink with which to watch the sunset. The drinks were good, reasonably priced, the sunset was okay and I think the green flash was pretty good also. Fanny had an I.D. tag that indicated she spoke French and English, and very nicely spoke French to me.



We walked on the boardwalk to return to our car, and were forced to go through the boutique, not unlike an exit from a touring show in any museum today. We both felt as we left that we didn’t need to come back, but I think we should remember that we were invaders here. The guests hopefully were developing a social life; their kids were meeting other kids. Parents were hopefully getting time with their kids and without. I say, good luck to all of us so we can find the vacation that refreshes us.

It is not the greatest picture of Dawn’s foot, but it does show the well used condition of the chairs.

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Un-Named Beach (Betty and Didier)

Stephen:
We grabbed our snorkel gear and stuck it into our red bag, (another great lightweight bag curtesy of Patrick H.) and hiked on the trail to Plage de la Perle. We were hoping to find a place to snorkel within a walk of our house. In fact, we made it shorter by taking a semi-legal cut through the property of Taino Lodge that was indicated by Google Maps. Almost all hiking trails on Google Maps are semi-legal. I don't know where they get their info. I think they just guess.

It was a sand and pebble beach in a cove where it can be hard to get into the water, and harder to get out. On the way in, the braver you are about diving in the sooner the water takes your weight off your feet. Once in, it was pretty good. Off to the right again. The prevailing wind and waves on this coast make the right side of all the coves the preferred snorkeling spot. Nothing dramatic this time, but more of the big yellow-tailed snappers. When I was searching for photos of them online I found a lot of recipes for them. It gave me pause. I guess that all these fish are somebody's dinner.

While we were standing on the beach drying off, we met a woman who wanted to practice her English with us. We had a great talk diving back and forth between the two languages and Dawn sometimes going off into Italian. Her name turned out to be Betty which we finally learned two days later when we met Didier, her husband in a pizzeria. He was picking up dinner for the two of them, their son and wife, their three children, and her son's business partner and wife, who had just descended on them from France. Good idea not to cook. We also learned that they will be here for a week so that the invitation they had extended us to visit their bungalow needed to be postponed. We said fine. That will be our last week.

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Nature Imitates Art

Dawn:
We have surely published several pictures of our lovely Caribbean Sea view...in sunlight, at dusk, with the crescent moon in the sky. Lately we have had some intense downpours when the entire sky turns grey, water falls as if buckets were being emptied on our heads, and the horizon line disappears.







Here we are suddenly witnessing a beautiful Japanese silkscreen for our view, all soft, grey and white and subtle. A few minutes later, everything snaps back into view, the dromedary hump of Gros Morne, the rocky point, the crashing waves, the detailed tropical foliage against turquoise sea, the horizon line. From Hokusai to Gaugin, perhaps. Nothing ever stays the same.



Night brings only color and silhouettes. Name your painter.

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Schumann and Brahms

Stephen:
I saw a poster for a classical music concert program and took a picture of it. There was one near us and I gave the link to Dawn.

Dawn:
While we don’t come to Guadeloupe for culture, we nevertheless miss it when we are here for so long. The Boston area is full of choices for music, dance, theater, and art of all kinds. At this time of year in Gwada, it is mostly Carnaval season. While we went for a live Carnaval celebration last year, we don’t feel we have to go again. So when Stephen saw the sign for Nuits Caraïbes, we investigated. It is a series of evenings of live classical music and jazz. We got to a performance of Schumann and Brahms quintets, with Pavane for Dead Princess by Maurice Ravel as an encore. The Debussy Quartet and Yves Henry on piano were a wonderful, seasoned combination of artists. The Schumann was particularly engaging with gorgeous solos and duets for cello and viola in the first movement. Often it seems that the first violin is the lead instrument in much classical quartet writing, but here they all had their special voices and moments. They played with ease and delicacy. Since the performance was in a movie theater, a fairly “dry” environment acoustically, we were glad to be close so we could hear the subtlety of their quiet moments. For those of you familiar with Boston-based musicians, Stephen mentioned that they played with the kind of idiosyncrasy of Russell Sherman.

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Tree

Dawn:

We had heard that the banana crop here was badly hurt by Hurricane Maria. When we had our Gwada history lesson with Michel in Le Moule, he told us that the banana plant is really a grass, not a tree. Hence their shallow roots make them easily susceptible to being blown down and uprooted. Here are a couple of photos. One is a banana “plant” next to the terrace of our hosts in Deshaies.

The other is the base of an amazing old tree that we pass daily on our walk to the beach. I do not know what kind of tree it is, but the trunk alone is complex and fascinating and appears to be quite old. I can hear Thich Nhat Hanh’s voice saying “There is nothing more beautiful than a tree.” When I do my yoga outdoors, my “tree” pose sometimes reflects the solidity of that strong old tree and sometimes wavers in the wind like the wide-leafed banana “grass.” Yes, sometimes I am tree and proud to be so, with deep roots and reaching branches.

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Dos d’Ane (Donkey’s Back)

Stephen:
The plan was to hike to the top of this hill which looks out over Deshaies. I was thinking of using it as a location in “Death in a Travelogue” so I wanted to look at it. Also, Dawn wanted to take a new and different hike. I found a description on a website and decided to follow it backwards to keep it short. So the hike started at the steles comemorating an airplane crash that we had never heard of. In 1962, an Air France Boeing 707 trying to land in a thunderstorm, flew into this hill, a few miles from the airport, killing 113 people. Everyday, we watched big jets fly over our house, bank left, and fly over the same hill.



We missed our turn right away and hiked slightly down and away from the hill. After sidehilling on a trail that was like bushwacking for a while we found a trail that went straight uphill which led us after an hour back to where we started. But not quite. We were on a different trail, maybe 50 feet above the monuments. Here, we discovered a piece of the fuselage with its two windows. It looked like a mask without a mouth looking up at us after fifty-six years. The paint was still faintly visible.

Next to it sits a memorial stone. The plane’s engineer is remembered in the top one. The engines were fine, but he must have known that they were lost and it’s bad to be lost in the mountains at night.

Those windows must have held frightened faces looking out into the night trying to see airport landing lights. Maybe one of them contained the faces of the brother and sister, Stéphane and Edmée Scrocco, 18 and 13, whose parents came here to help set up this plaque.

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On a Lighter Note

Stephen:
We were shopping in town. I remember toilet paper being on the list. Beer, wine and olive oil also. Afterwards, we headed to Madras, our favorite sunset watching place in town. It is a little less hip than Mahina or Cafe Paradis which we also like. Going up onto the deck I see this tall, clear drink with mint, limes and ice cubes sitting in front of a guy at one of the tables. “Qu’est-que c’est?”, I ask. “A mojito”, he responds. So when the waitress crosses the street and asks what we want, we say, “Deux Mojitos, s’il vous plâit.”

They really hit the spot and there is plenty to do with them as we wait for the sunset. You can stir, muddle and rattle. The spoon in the glass has a tamper on the end to really muddle the mint. Soon, a group comes in and sits next to us. Later four mojitos show up on their table. Pretty good for a drink that is not even on the menu. Dawn was worried about having a drink without knowing the price and I think rightly so as they were either 8 or 9 Euros a piece depending on whether my beer was 3 or 5. (I can only fiddle around with a drink for so long. I had to get a beer.) The sunset was good, giving us a green flash through the rigging of a sail boats. Home for dinner next.

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The Café Paradis, Another Sunset and Bar

Stephen:
I know, I know. Too many pictures of bars and sunsets, but we relearned a lesson about traveling. If you like a restaurant, go back. You will get to know them and they, you. The first night we went in, the cook recognizd us from last year. The second night was for dinner when all the help wandered by our table to say hello. On this last night, as we came in we ordered two rosés and he pointed out a table. We picked a bench with a better view and he found us with a laugh. We were only there for drinks and a sunset, before going next door for a creole dinner. $

We picked up a new idea about restaurants in Deshaies. If the first seating is at seven o'clock and they say 6:45-7:00, then come on the early side so you can walk into a nearly empty restaurant and get your order in before the restaurant is full at 7:00. Restaurants in France don’t over-employ servers, so it can take awhile to get everyone’s order. I ordered the Menu, which in France mean an appetizer, main course and dessert combo and at this restaurant a rum punch. The main course was giant fresh water shrimp. As we came in we saw a guy cooking them over a small charcoal fire about the size of a mini weber. The dish included four so I think that’s how many he would cook at a time. It is not the fast way to do it, but everyone one of them can be cooked just right. The sad part about it is that the shrimp are raised in farms or imported from Malaysia, because catching the shrimp from the streams is illegal. (See the section on Polution.)

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Our Garden

Stephen:
We have looked down into this hillside garden from the deck next to the pool, but this is the first time we have ventured down. It is a ravine garden, or half a ravine garden. Ray’s property ends at the bottom of the ravine, so the opposite side is wild tropical forest while his side is a controlled tropical forest. Can I say, two hands in prayer? Except upside down. They complement each other.

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