The mercury rises! Les Saintes
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Thu 9 May 2013 15:08
Today, we have spent the morning defrosting the fridge and freezer - the freezer seems to have given up trying to work and has waved the white flag! I have already cooked a defrosted chicken and I think it will be a busy day sorting out what we can cook and eat from what is left. I think we may have to find some friends to invite for dinner to help us eat up - it seems a shame to waste good food!
The weather is due to remain hot and still for the next few days, although looking at the rainfall forecast for this afternoon, unless it is a serious error, we are in for a soaking - supposedly nearly a centimetre of rain will fall between 3pm and 5pm - fingers crossed! We had a huge thunderstorm a couple of nights ago, but that doesn't seem to have clear the air at all - we got badly caught out as we had gone to the boat next door for drinks and left all the windows open. What started as a bit of a spit suddenly became torrential and by the time we had jumped in the dinghy and shot back, the boat was very wet and the window sills were flooded with sluicing water!
One thing we have never done in all our visits here is have a tour round the island. Most people use scooters here for getting round, there are very few cars. Whole families go out to lunch on a scooter, it is not unusual to see 3 or 4 people on one small scooter. They also use scooters as a means of transporting just about anything else, including freshly caught fish and building materials! As neither John nor I have a scooter license, and our insurance excludes scooter accidents, we needed to find an alternative. This turned out to be an electric golf cart - very strange to drive and we got a few funny looks as we pottered round. The oddest thing is that nobody can hear you, so they routinely step out or even walk directly in front of you!
The island is very pretty with lots of picture postcard views over the smaller islands and out towards Guadeloupe and Dominica.
John in his 'Noddy' car
Seaduced at anchor
Fort Napoleon. All the visitor information was in French so largely lost on us. We did pick up a few useful bits though - we now know that the French word for 'wahoo', a very tasty fish, is actually 'tharzard'. We had been put off it in the shop by the name!!
The fort is now most famous for its cactus garden!
Overlooking Terre d'Haut
The beach at Grand Anse on the Atlantic coast - no swimming allowed due to rip tides.
Another gorgeous beach - this one had goats and sheep grazing behind.
Baie de Pompierre - we spent the morning going round the island, and the afternoon relaxing on the beach, topping up our suntans.
Another job that I have been putting off for ages is our sailing log. I know, I should do it as we go along, but I never do, I leave it until I can hardly bear to look at it! When I opened it this time, I had done nothing since Mystic, last September, so I had a bit of catching up to do. John promised to take me out for lunch if I finished, so with that to motivate me, I got on with it. We had a little guessing game, how many miles have we done since we left Antigua last May? We were both woefully inaccurate! I guessed over 3,500 miles, and John under 3,500. The final total was 7,500 nautical miles! Which makes a grand total of 14,700 nautical miles since we left the UK in July 2010!
Sent from my iPad