The goal was never to go to sleep, so that we wouldn’t miss the shuttle. Just in case, I set my alarm for 3am, knowing the airport shuttle was supposed to pick us up by 3:45. Turns out I napped a bit from 2-3am. Ruben zonked out on the couch for a little bit longer than I did, but still his eyes turned from white to a creamy sort of color. It’s really weird to see when it happens.
The shuttle arrived at around 3:40 am to pick us up. I stopped in to say good bye to Matthew, and he said a sleepy goodbye. Ruben came in too, and Matthew reached for him. It was very cute.
We arrived at the airport at 4:30 am – 2 hours before departure as "required" by American Airlines (they said so when I called to confirm this). However, the airport didn’t even open until 5am. I need to write customer service on that. Apparently it’s not the first time that’s happened.
We flew to Chicago, which was uneventful, as was the flight from Chicago to San Juan, PR. San Juan’s airport is bigger and cleaner than I expected. Then we took a small puddle jumper (an ATR) to Point a Pitre. Ruben had never flown on an airplane that small before (I had on my flight to Vancouver in October, 1997). We arrived at Point a Pitre at 10pm their time and started our trek through customs. Here’s where we had to start speaking some French, or at least, Ruben had to… I was a little shier than he is about speaking another language. Also he was studying it on the plane while I was in a drug induced coma from the Dramamine.
Guadeloupe is a butterfly shaped island made up of two, technically disconnected parts, Grande Terre and Basse Terre. Point a Pitre is in the sort of in the middle, but on the island of Grand Terre.
We stayed at a place called Residence Canella Beach, in the Pointe de La Vedura section of Gossier on the South side of Grand Terre. (From the Ulysses guide)
Map of Grande Terre.
Gossier is near the bottom left, and
we traveled out N 4 (labeled as route A) to Pointe des
Chateaux.
(From the Ulysses guide)
A postcard picture of Pointe de la Verdura. We stayed in the hotel up near the top middle.
We picked up a taxi from the airport – or rather the taxi driver picked us up. I guess we definitely looked like tourists coming out of customs. All we had to tell the driver was where we were staying. It cost us 150F to get to the hotel, and I have to admit I was a little nervous he’d take us all over the place before taking us to the hotel. But fortunately Ruben had called the hotel from Chicago and found out approximately how much it would cost. They were right on with their estimate.
The taxi drive was interesting, but we couldn’t see much because it was dark. We could hear a lot of crickets and frogs, the sound was pretty amazing. It was really hot and humid – the pilot had said it was 30C, approximately 86F.
Checking into the hotel was easy because the clerk spoke English. The room was ok, at that point, probably because I was tired and a tad bit cranky from the Dramamine, I felt like it looked better in the brochure.
A picture of a room like ours from the brochure.
The big problem was that there was a musty smell in the room that threw me off. The balcony looked out onto the water and there was a palm tree right out side. Ormijitos (really little ants) were coming and going from the front door to the bathroom, but they didn’t seem to stray too far, so I didn’t worry about it. We fell asleep around 12:30 am. Sometime during the middle of the night I heard a rainstorm, but I couldn’t quite get myself up to see it.
