Saturday 22 March 2014

 

With a few days to kill we hired a car to have a better look at Martinique and on Saturday explored the south west of the island.  Not far from Le Marin is the village of St Anne.  We wanted to have a look at this as the anchorage in the bay comes highly recommended.  We could see why.

 

 

Pretty square and church with French style spire in St Anne:-

 

 

 

 

As we drove farther north we could see the benefits of Martinique being a full ‘Departement’ of France.  The quality of the roads and familiar French road signs are quite unlike the other Caribbean islands.  Next on the list was the pretty bay of Petite Anse d’Arlet.

 

Our coffee stop:-

 

 

 

The coffee is, for us, one of the disadvantages of being in France.  It is so difficult to get a coffee in any decent size of cup and we always ask for ‘beaucoup de lait’ .  Their raised eyebrows suggest we are asking for what to them seems to be industrial levels of additional milk.  We are not espresso or ‘real coffee’ fans!

 

Then up to Grande Anse d’Arlet which has also been recommended to us as a nice anchorage by many cruisers.  It is a quiet place amongst the hills with a pedestrian walkway along the front:-

 

 

 

 

A more typically Caribbean scene with lots of fussy stuff.  Nice waste bins:-

 

 

 

 

 

We continued north and passed Anse Mitan on the way to Les Trois-Islets.  I wanted to visit here as the description in the Pilot book with the small islands in the bay sounded lovely.  In reality it was a bit of a dump with few redeeming features.  Napoleon’s Josephine was born in Martinique and was baptised in Les Trois-Ilets in this church:-

 

 

 

No doubt that is why the church has been so well kept and all the photographs of the town seem to include it.

 

As we turned back inland and south towards Le Marin we decided to look into the large Carrefour supermarket.  Large supermarkets are a novelty to us as we tend to visit places that either don’t have them or if they do they are a long way inland and out of reach except by car.  We managed to find a few things we can’t normally get and were overcome by the size and range of fresh produce on their fresh food counters.

 

One third of their cheese counter:-