Another family run part 1: Martinique

So time to pick up my mum. We chose to anchor at La pointe du Bout. 20 minutes by taxi from the airport, easy access to Fort-de-France by shuttle and even though not so pretty, still a lot nicer than Baie des Flamands in front of the city.

By the way: you do know that if you don’t like reading the text and just want to browse the pictures, you can click on the first one and you’ll see them in full screen without the blabla ;-)
What’s to visit in Fort-de-France?
The Fort of Saint-Louis. We really wanted to visit this but you have to reserve at the Tourist Information Kiosk in advance, so no luck for us this time. 

 We walked through the Place de la Savanne (wildly overrated green place), towards the beautiful Schoelcher Library. 

 
Next stop is the Saint-Louis Cathedral through the small shopping streets. The doors just closed in front of Anna’s nose (it’s only open in the morning). She was very sad as she really loves to visit churches!

You have many cultural spots, so I guess an evening visit should be promising.

 

 

The food market was under construction, but they moved temporarily to Place Fabien. All products are the same, they look quite nice, I’m not sure it’s very “local”, but at least it’s very interesting …  

We provisioned in the Commercial centre of Perrinon and were ready to go back to a more “tropical” environment. We were really happy to have visited this friendly capital city after all, which is a lot prettier and more interesting to visit than Point-à-Pitre.

Before going North, we visited Petite anse d’Arlet one more time. 

A wonderful “Pirates ship” is sailing by after hiding their treasure (according to the girls)…

 

On route for Saint-Pierre, Anna is very concentrated, her daddy shouting orders and her grandmother giving a hand once in a while :-)

And Louise is just enjoying the quiet sail for once!
Do you remember the Mont Pelée we climbed before? Well it’s this one:


You can do the same hike from here (longer) or rent a car in Saint-Pierre so it’s a shorter ride to get there :-)

A yacht out of gas looked like they need some help :-) The Bay in front of Saint-Pierre:



Our two Pirates checking out what’s to "find" in town :-) There’s actually quite a lot of ruins to visit which are very nice (most of them destroyed during the last volcano outburst). The ruins of Figuier where servants of the Esnotz batterie were housed.

The old Theatre.

 

And then the backroads up to the rhumfactory of Depaz (they do not usually see tourists coming up here 😜 ).

 

 

It’s a small and charming rhum factory. With a glimpse of our next demure ;-)

 

Hanging in a “small” rubber tree:

Just smelling the empty crates was enough to get us in the right mood for a taste ;-)


We had a dinner up there and found a beautiful road back through this exit, passing the sugar cane plantations. 

Afterwards we found out we could go on a lot longer through the fields. Should be very nice!

The last day on Martinique we anchored in Anse Noir (at “Pointe de la Grande Rivière). It doesn’t seem to be a great overnight spot, but a wonderful beach surrounded by the tropical forest and you’re quite alone as it’s not accessible by the road. Watch out for the jelly fish though, I got stung so badly, that I came out withe a fever and aching everywhere! Takes about 24 hours, but then I accumulated with an angina that had to be treated with antibiotics in the end. Where did I pick that up?!

 

A few hours after arrival two boats we spend New Year with arrived also in the same bay! What a coincidence. We all left for the Saintes (Guadeloupe) that night.