Up to Antigua for the Classic Rally
MALARKEY
Jo & Trevor Bush
Fri 6 Apr 2007 17:07
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Jolly Harbour Antigua. 17:04.5N
61:53.7W
After the cricket in St Lucia we moved north
immediately. St Lucia was a good venue for the cricket but based on what little
we saw of the island, we figured it wasnt worth hanging around for. Besides
moules & frites were waiting for us just up the road a way in Martinique.
The French Islands are still part of France and it
showed. Our first land fall in Marin near St Annes. The Brits, bless 'em,
gave most of the old colonial West Indian Islands their independence and
promptly abondoned them. As a consequence, the islands seemed to have
struggled with naf infrastructure and a poor or corrupt lifestyle, which is
in stark contrast to Martinique. It was just like arriving in France. The
roads were pretty good, public transport adequate and bars, restaurants &
good supermarkets like Carrefour, in abundance. A nice change we first thought,
then it dawned on us... it was too much like France and not at all like the
Caribbean we liked. Not only that, the prices were very French too and of course
there was the copious amounts of dog shit on the pavements that had to be
negotiated (even more important when wearing flip flops). Despite this, it didnt
stop us tucking into the goodies on offer. We stuck our snouts in the trough for
a couple of Froggy feeds and Jo enjoyed the shops. But the budget said time to
move on, so we headed off to St Pierre on the north west coast of
Martinique in the shadow of Mont Pelee.
Mont Pelee, for those non historians amongst
us (me & Jo included), was the volcano that errupted in 1902 with very
little notice and wiped out the whole town. A fireball of superheated gas rolled
down the mont and incinerated everything in its path including all 29,933 of the
population except one prisoner in the local nick.... - who says crime doesnt
pay!. It was said to have had the force of an atomic bomb, so it was quite
atmospheric to be anchored in the same harbour where no less than 12 ships
were also fried and sunk with the loss of all souls on board.
 Then off to Dominica for a one night stop-over
before crossing to Guadeloupe. It was during this crossing that we had our first
real 'close encounter of the whale kind'. Our first
thoughts were.... 'that is the biggest dolphin I've ever seen' and our second
thought was... 'oh great its a whale', then our third thought was... 'oh poo its
not only a big whale, there are about half a dozen of them and right in our
path'. Fortunately they were fairly agile and managed to swim out of
the way in time. In fact they seemed to not only be aware of us but swim and
play around us for about 15 mins or so. During that time we took loads of photos
but we didnt seem to be able to catch them at their best.
 They were about 15 to 20ft long and when we
compared their features in Jo's hand book on whales, we discovered that
they were a variety of the killer whale called the 'False Killer Whale'. It
would appear that they are fairly rare and come to the warm waters of the
Caribbean to breed and give birth to their young. Judging by the frisky nature
of this particular encounter, we think they were definately breeding
and not calving!
Dominica looks like an interesting place. It is
relatively unspoilt, has rain forests, waterfalls, lakes and rapids, and is
definately worth a look on the way back down. But in the mean time we needed
to move north to Antigua before the weather turned against us. So we moved off from Portsmouth, Dominica early in the
morning before the 'Mango Man' had chance to hassle us. This guy, and I kid you
not, was a skinny Rasta wearing baggy football shorts and a Rasta Tea cosy hat,
selling mangos from a knackered old surf board that looked like it had
only just survived a shark attack. He was paddling it around this
huge bay with a sack of manky mangos on the front. Unfortunately we
didnt get a picture of him cos he was a bit pissed with us for not buy
anything from him, having paddled all the way over to us to sell his juicy
fruits!. Taking a picture of him might of tempted fate but we will promise to
get one of him next time, if he is still there.
Guadeloupe was the next and last island before
Antigua. We went straight to Deshailes on the north west coast and bumped into
Adrian & Jan and Richard & Jan heading south together. We havent
seen Ade & Jan since Barbados and Richard & Jan since Las Palmos way
back in the Canaries prior to the Atlantic crossing. So there was some serious
catching up to be done and a longer stay than planned was inevitable. We went to
th Botanical gardens which was particularly nice and one of the best we have
been to.
     Plenty of ponds, waterfalls, exotic flowers,
strange looking trees, parotts hiding in the bushes and lizards pretending to be
sticks. A very nice day out. Well thats enough of that old malarkey and its off
to Antigua tomorrow.
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