Les Saintes

Saturday 4th April, day 259. 15° 52’.17 N, 061° 35’.06 W. Bourg des Saintes, Terre de Haut, Les Saintes, Guadeloupe


Apart from a supermarket and a sail-maker, Basse-Terre hasn’t got much to recommend it, so we quickly moved on to Terre de Haut, the largest island (but still tiny) in Les Saintes, a little group of islands off Guadeloupe. The island lives on tourism: the main street is a collection of brightly coloured weather-boarded shops and restaurants, all with white-painted wooden fretwork round the eves. The whole place comes to life in the morning when the ferries come in, disgorging their visitors from the “mainland” who stroll around the shops, disappear into restaurants, hire scooters or are swept up by taxis, and scatter round the island. Mid afternoon, they all come back or are ejected from the restaurants, do another sweep through the shops for hand-painted T shirts and €70 bikinis, and vanish.

The whole is brightly coloured, neat, colourful, totally aimed at tourists – think Southwold with sunshine and added garlic. The inhabitants are nearly all of French stock – there were no slaves imported onto these islands, as the lack of rain meant no agriculture – so we have chic, elegance and a certain formality, to take the place of the noisy cheerful exuberance of the islands with a stronger African heritage.

We spent a day exploring on foot, and walked up to Fort Napoleon to admire the impartiality of the naval historian who had devoted so much time to making innumerable scale models of the progress of a battle which his side lost. Among the heroes of the battle was the Chevalier de Soissons, who had had a spectacular naval career, improving the accuracy of sextants, bettering the lot of the average seaman, rising quickly through the ranks … “He only received one set-back in his entire career, when his head was blown off during the Battle of Les Saintes” the exhibition tells us.

From there we went on to a little beach, and swam, with some pale blue geckos keeping a beady eye on our belongings.

I wish I were a gecko on a tree-trunk by the sea
With a frill around my neck, oh, what a splendid sight I’d be.
I’d catch butterflies for breakfast and mosquitoes for my tea
Just a happy turquoise gecko on my tree-trunk by the sea.

The rest of our three days in Les Saintes was spent starting to clean up Tomia, in preparation for the Oyster Regatta in Antigua. European anti-fouling doesn’t quite seem up to local wildlife, and the poor girl has developed quite a thick coating of weed and crystalline white growths.

So we had a happy few hours harassing barnacles (don’t tell the RSPCA), armed with our WMDs (Weapons of Mollusc Destruction i.e. a polyfilla knife for Anthony and the kitchen spatula for me). The thrill of the chase is such that after a while we forget about the tons of water and boat above us as we try to lever them off (or should that be winkle them off?) their footholds. Underneath the keel, where the anti-fouling never reaches, was a veritable octopus’s garden, with beautiful fronded ferns waving gently among the barnacles – rather peaceful, like an upside down Japanese Zen garden. All gone now!

The weed and growth comes off in a great cloud of dust and gunk, which makes the local fish very happy. We are swimming in a great cloud of little silver ones; they keep out of the way of the flippers when we thrash our way downwards, but otherwise seem very unbothered, happy to mop up the free fish food.