Martinique

Monday 11th May 2009, day 296, 6,951 miles. 14° 35’.98 N, 061° 04’.15 W. Mouillage des Flamands, Fort de France, Martinique.

We finally disentangled ourselves from Antigua, with engine and generator running, the diesel tank thoroughly cleaned, (and containing nothing but diesel), sails mended, and set off south for Grenada, to lay Tomia up for the summer. A day and a half’s sailing took us half way, to Martinique, which we had left out on the journey north, due to the whole island being on strike.

Two months later, and the capital, Fort de France, is in full metropolitan swing. It is a proper town – with a few high-rise flats on the outskirts, and traffic jams, rush hour, no right turn, “Défense de stationner”, traffic lights, junctions, sign posts, parking meters, bollards to stop you parking on the pavements, zebra crossings … life on a boat is really much simpler.

It also has easy access to three of life’s great pleasures, which we have been denied for some time: baguette, butter and brie. (And a bit of Bordeaux too, to round things off.) There are several markets, the one by the dock labelled “Marché Touristique”, which is probably warning enough, so we should not be too surprised at finding ourselves surrounded by people wanting to sell us all sorts of souvenirs, from place mats to shell necklaces. I had a spirited conversation with one of the vendors, a lively and optimistic chap, who worked hard at convincing me that my two small nephews would be delighted to be kitted out in sets of matching shorts and shirts, made of a pink, orange and turquoise tartan.

Oh heavens, how it rains here! And how consistently. Every night, we go to sleep with the hatch open to let a bit of breeze in, every morning at around 3 am we are woken by rain falling on our faces – a mad scramble around ensues, to get everything closed down and waterproof – and stifling. Then after half an hour of uneasy dozing, the heat wakes us, and we open up again, knowing there will almost certainly be a repeat performance at around six.

We caught a bus up to St Pierre on the west coast, to see the site of the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée, in 1902. It killed 30,000 people, and destroyed the town, in about five minutes. There is an excellent vulcanology museum, in a futuristic earthquake-proof building, with films and exhibitions and interactive displays, and a children’s discovery zone, where we played happily, building models, and watching them fall to the earth in simulated earthquakes. For the minute, what we don’t know about the difference between Plinian and Pyroclastic explosions isn’t worth knowing.

The only other notable event in Martinique was discovering that we had uninvited guests in both the chick peas and the oat meal. That’s a morning gone, cleaning out all the cupboards, boiling the boxes, checking everything else for possible infestation.