Around Deshaies

After clearing in, we decided to explore. Our friends Madeleine and Jerome have spent many happy winter vacations on Guadeloupe and had given us a pencilled scrawl to guide us to important spots. The Musee de Rhum looked promising and proximate. We asked a taxi driver; he wanted 60 Euros to take us there. The bus was 2 Euros each. Guess which we took?

The buses in Guadeloupe (and, presumably, Martinique) are unlike buses in other Caribbean countries we have visited. These run on something resembling a schedule, are actual small buses rather than minivans, do not have loud music playing constantly, stop at designated stops. Oh, and the roads are paved, rather than having extended areas of potholes and road-wide devastation, not to mention and absence of sleeping policemen. The buses positively pelt along. It’s all terribly...European. Our driver (together with most of the passengers) was much interested in delivering us to the correct place for our transfer to the bus that would carry us on to our destination. There was clearly a suspicion that, as tourists, we might not make it. We were successfully deposited in Ste. Rose where we, equally successfully, caught the bus to our next destination. We tried to get off at the wrong stop. The crowd was outraged. At last, we were gently deposited at the end of a long, not very steep road up a hill. We climbed.

The Musee de Rhum was, in all honesty, not much different from the one we’d visited in Grenada. There were, however, a few significant differences. This one has an outstanding collection, from sugar-producing nations around the world, of the machetes or scimitars (as some islands call them) used in harvesting sugar cane (the basic ingredient of rum). It also has an absolutely amazing collection of mounted Caribbean and, more specifically, Guadeloupan insects. Truly stunning. Finally, it has a room full of beautifully displayed wooden model ships representing boats as old as the Phoenecian and as recent as the Titanic. Well worth the visit.

We walked back to Ste. Rose and had a pretty nasty sandwich there, then made our way into the centre of town where we bought a few provisions, found the bus to Deshaies, and headed back to our wee boat.

A quiet afternoon and evening ensued.