Lyn's Log, 4th December 2006
Martinique

St Pierre, Martinique.
N14º45', W61º11'
11,272 miles.

Last time we came to Martinique we explored the windward east coast in among the reefs, which Andrew had particularly enjoyed. So this time we went to the West coast, and also hired a car for a day to explore more of the inside of the country. The island is much like a piece of southern France with the economy and prices to match. We are now paying £2 or more for a beer and more than £1 for a fruit juice. The huge marina at Le Marin, right in the south, is quite cheap at €10 a night and a matter of cents for the water, but a lift and hold in the travel hoist would be €300, or €200 after some hard bargaining. We thought we might need this service in order to tighten the bolts holding the rudder, but fortunately Andrew managed to do this job by diving under the yacht.

For each of the four bolts to tighten, he had to remove a split pin through the bolt with a pair of pliers, tighten the castellated nut with a spanner, relocate the hole in the bolt between the castellations of the nut with a large needle and keep turning the nut with the spanner until successful, then replace the split pin and splay the ends. Each tool had a line attached and was handed to Andrew as required and I had to try to stop his snorkel or arm from getting too tangled in the lines when he surfaced. With new stick-on lenses in his goggles he had quite good vision underwater, but with the current he kept being swept away from the job. Each bolt took around half an hour.

We stayed in Martinique much longer than expected, for several reasons. One was the need to move out to St. Anne’s Bay in clean water in order to dive under the boat. Another was to spend a couple of days exploring the country. A third reason was the deteriorating weather. We spent a week in the marina in Marin where we had power to have the fridge working, the fan heater running on cold, run the computer and as many lights as we wanted. The water was cheap enough not to worry how much we used and we would fill the tanks just before departing. Every day we went to the bar/restaurant to use the free wi-fi facility. It was particularly useful to be able to use Skype as our mobile phone was unable to connect to a network. We posted our Christmas cards, did our laundry and put a little more fiberglass on the underside of the dinghy where the wooden strips were looking cracked. On our last day we replaced the diaphragm in the bilge pump and bought a new spare.

The day we hired the car it rained a lot. I saw a lot of very winding narrow roads and green covered sheer drops as I drove. We took a road along the top of a mountain ridge and stopped at the Balata gardens. These were landscaped gardens on the hillside with a path winding unobtrusively all around it, and were different from anything we had seen before. We took lots of photographs and although it rained a lot we could shelter under the greenery or in one of the many shelters scattered about. Particularly memorable were the many bromeliads and ginger lilies. After the gardens, we took a minor road towards St Pierre and stopped at a waterfall. Again it was pouring with rain but Andrew was brave enough to take a dip in the pool. It was not very deep and rather muddy and someone (moi?) did have to look after the camera. Then we took a turning supposedly to an observation point, but after driving up a very steep incline and around a bend, the concrete road suddenly ended with workmen clearing the ground for the next section! Next we found a restaurant that just happened to serve Creole style dinner. One of the vegetables served was cut in thin rectangles, was grey with bluish veins and had a texture rather like blotting paper. The waitress brought out one of the vegetables to show us what it was. It was a brown, roundish root, possibly Dasheen.

In the afternoon we visited the museum in St Pierre to learn about the famous eruption of Mount Pelée that destroyed the once thriving city and all its inhabitants a hundred years ago. Although the actual lava flow did not cover the city, the toxic fumes and ash did, and in just three minutes everything was burning and dead. The disaster began with a tidal wave flooding the city. We explored the ruins of the theatre (pic above) and the adjoining prison. Apparently there was just one survivor, a prisoner in solitary confinement where the thick walls and door prevented most of the fumes and ash from penetrating. Today St Pierre is just a village, a fraction of the size of the former city.

On our return to Le Marin we came across a fallen bamboo tree across the road. I thought I could drive under the leafy branches but not until Andrew got out and held them away from the wheels. A car coming the other way did the same as us but the next car did not have a passenger and got stuck.

On another day we took the collective taxi, to Fort de France. Since the destruction of St Pierre this has been the capital and the only place to do decent shopping. There were good roads but full of traffic and the 35 kilometres took over an hour. Here we did some Christmas shopping for each other. There were one or two small department stores but mostly boutiques. It was not as good as in Port-of Spain in Trinidad.

It is noticeably cooler and more comfortable here than it was in Trinidad, 250 miles further south, and I no longer feel as if I'm having a continuous hot flush all night long. This has much improved our love-life. (Andrew says I should write more about this in my web-log, as he thinks it would make for more interesting reading than an afternoon spent tightening the rudder bolts.)