A map of Basse Terre
This was the day of the last episode of Seinfeld. Finally, we’re done with the hype.
We got up early again, around 7am this time. After another breakfast of yogurt and OJ, we hit the road at around 8am. We got back out to the main road (N 4), then took that to N 1 in Point a Pitre and towards Basse Terre. We followed N 1 down the eastside of the other island. There are a lot of banana plantaitions along the sides of the road, and the bananas are covered in blue plastic bags that they must put on the plant when it flowers. It’s very lush and tropical on the side of the island.
A map of Basse Terre
The lush forest of Basse Terre
We turned off at Sainte Sauveur and headed up to the Chutes (waterfall) du Carbet. The road up to the falls was a twisty-windy 1 lane road. People drive really crazy and fast. Ruben came up with the reason – these people drive like they are saying "We can take Russia!!!!"
Once we got there, we put on our "hiking clothes" – originally we thought to wear our long pants, not knowing what kinds of bugs/plants were up there. But it was way too hot, and we wound up wearing our shorts and sneakers. We bought some cheese sandwiches from a vendor in a van, and had two litres of water in our backpack (Ruben was the pack animal on this trek). We think that we were subjected to a 5 Fr "ignorance tax" – basically we think we were overcharged a bit on the transaction.
The trail to the second waterfall is wide they have built steps to make the hike pretty easy (it took us less than ˝ an hour to get there). The trail was well maintained and there were a lot of people on it (including this really old woman with a cane on our way back).
The second Chute du Carbet is approximately 110 m high and incredible. There is a pool of blue-green water at the base of the falls, and many people were jumping in for a swim. Ruben contemplated jumping in, but we decided not to in order to avoid blisters from wet feet. I walked up as close as possible to the bottom of the fall. I looked up and found it to be a very strange, disorienting experience.
We pressed on to the first (premier) Chute du Carbet, a strenuous hike up the mountain that was supposed to take 2.5 hours. The hiking required hands-over-fist climbing over rocks, and tree roots. We did make it up there in less time than we anticipated, but we were very hot. We did finish off both bottles of water during our entire hike. The trail was pretty muddy, and both our white sneakers got caked with red mud (there is a lot of iron in the soil up there). We spent a lot of the hike working on breathing, and giggling about very silly things.
We made it to the bottom of the first Chute, which is about 15m higher than the second Chute. The waterfall is just gorgeous, but has less water running down it. The pool under the fall is smaller, so I was able to get almost right underneath it, without getting in the water. Still I got soaked from the spray. It cooled us off tremendously, and felt so good on our hot, sweaty bodies. We eventually took off our shirts (I was wearing the bikini top underneath), and tried not to be too terribly embarrassed. Eventually we pried ourselves away from the cool water and walked back down, making it to the car by 2pm.
Our goal, when we headed back to the main road, was to find a black sand beach called La Grande Anse, near Tres Riversoix. Unfortunately, we missed the cut off to the southern most part of the island and suddenly wound up in Basse Terre by the way of the shortcut route. I guess the instructions in the Ulyssess book were a bit screwy.
We stopped in a Supermarche Match (the grocery store) and picked up some snacks and more water. I wound up finding a great snack – it’s like the cheese and cracker snacks that I sometimes get my son, but these have goat cheese and breadsticks (I love goat cheese! So does Matthew, I would have loved to bring some back for him).
We continued north on the main road, which is called N 2 on that side of the island. This part of the island is very dry and hot, the road is very twisty and windy. Ruben and I thought this was perfect, here we were, on our honeymoon and going on a road trip along a coast yet again. Not only that, the road and climate reminded us a lot of Pacific Coast Highway (PCH = Route 1) in California. We nicknamed the road CCH (Caribbean Coast Highway) or GCH (Guadeloupe CH).
Along the way, someone made a right turn in front of us, without giving us a lot of notice. It was ok for us, but the car two behind us almost hit the car directly behind us. The guy just behind us held up his hand in a rude gesture – his hand was flat, facing towards the car and he gestured up. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it became important a little later in the evening.
We stopped around 3pm at the other Grande Anse beach. After a somewhat harrowing ride on a back road filled with potholes, we made it to a gorgeous stretch of beach with a deep surf. The beach (at least here) was not very populated at all. Here I got daring and finally took the bikini top off (everyone else was doing it, why not?)
Close to 6pm we headed towards the more populated area to see what was there and hit the bathrooms. The little "no see ums" sand fleas bit us all over our legs and drove us crazy. We watched the sun go down as we walked back to the car. Unfortunately it went down behind some clouds before it hit the horizon. Then we cleaned off the sand and headed back to the hotel. I was driving most of the afternoon because of how twisty it is (I get pretty car/boat/plane sick). I was doing pretty well until we got close to Gossier, when I was in the wrong lane to go around a traffic circle. Eventually some nice person let us into the lane, and I waved to him to say thank you. The guy honked at me, which really startled me. Eventually I realized why I got honked at – when I waved my hand at him, I just stuck it out of the car up in the air, with my palm sort of pointing back, but sort of pointing towards the car. A few minutes later it all became clear - I think he thought it was the same rude gesture we had seen earlier in the day! (Our friends in St. Barts told us the "thank you" gesture I should do the next time to avoid that problem.)
I think we got back around 7pm, and wound up turning on the TV, showering and relaxing for a while. Because we got NBC America (basically a video feed from New York), we caught the 8pm retrospective on Seinfeld. We debated on whether or not to go eat, or watch the 9pm show… Finally our stomachs won out, and we ate dinner from 9-10pm in La Veranda (we were eaten alive by mosquitoes while we were eating). At 10pm we came up, watched ER and fell asleep.
