Martinique, Encore une Fois
14 May 2015 | Fort de France
Bert - Partly Cloudy 17 kn East Trade Wind
This is the fourth time we are visiting Martinique and although I was taught French in school I have forgotten quite a bit of the language; just as the saying goes “when you don’t use it you lose it”. Luckily Dorothy is doing a lot better. So we can proudly have a French title to this blog page. Martinique is locally named Madinina - The Island of Flowers. It is centrally located in the arc of the east Caribbean islands and with a population of 400,000 living on 417 sq miles it is also the largest of the Windward Islands. The rugged landscape is a blend of rich volcanic mountains, verdant hills and white and black sand beaches. Like the other French islands Martinique has corporate agriculture with both banana and sugar production. As part of France and the European Union it has privileged export rights to the countries of the European Union. Schools, medical and public services are close to the same as in Europe and since it is part of the European “Schenken Agreement” Europeans do not need a passport to visit this island. Although poverty is still eminent this island has a solid middle class which is among others evident by the amount of cars that are very slowly moving during morning and evening rush hours on the semi freeways around “Fort de France” the capital of Martinique.
Fort de France is in a difficult development status. Most middle class people found better places to live outside of town resulting in the fact that after 6 o’clock in the evening the town is empty. New development is very slow to materialize, which is evident from a still unoccupied high-rise office building with surrounding new buildings that were completed over two years ago. The town still has many very nice stores with the most up-to-date fashion especially for women and it is very pleasant to wander around the narrow streets that are closed to traffic. A lot of the buildings are still in good shape, but at the same time lack of maintenance on others is starting to take the beauty of the town away. Next to the Fort Saint-Louis is a nice park and together with the beach it is even on Sundays visited by many people. The very nice boardwalk is incorporated with the seawall and is very nice location to come ashore with the dinghy. This probably one of the best dinghy docks in the Caribbean. The only problem is that the area between the road and the boardwalk is a children playground with only dirt ground cover and with the very stiff wind the dinghy is at the end of the day filled with dirt and leaves. The deck of Island Girl is also covered with dirt. A project is in progress to enhance the area in front of the ferry docks. We really hope that there is a future for Fort de France.
In the aforementioned park is a veterans’ memorial that the President of France visited the day after Victory Day (1945). Unlike in the USA the general public is kept at a considerable distance, so we only saw the president in his car when he was rushed from the park. However, it was clear that he was here due to the amount of different police forces, the secret police and the fact that we could not use the dinghy dock. A navy ship was in the bay with all the sailors dressed in white along the railing, but that was 2 miles away.
The deterioration is true for St. Pierre the first anchorage arriving in Martinique from the north. St. Pierre was called the Paris of the Caribbean and was the center of agricultural and trade activities of the French in the Caribbean. Shipping, trade, culture, and commerce were all centered here. In the early 1900's, about 25,000 people lived in and around St. Pierre. But all this came to a very rough end on May 8, 1902. On this Sunday morning Mount Peleé volcano erupted. This eruption did not bring a lava stream or other material but very hot gasses and a huge fire ball. An estimated 29,933 people burned to death, leaving only two survivors in the center of the town: Leon Leandre, a cobbler and the famous Cyparis who was in a stone cell imprisoned for murder. Twelve ships in the bay were destroyed at anchor and sank and you can still dive to their locations. I described St. Pierre in more detail in our blog after our visit in 2013. During our visit we were anchored in St. Pierre and attended the remembrance of the eruption on May 8, at 8:02 in the morning. We love to anchor in St. Pierre, but we had a very rough night with 55 kn. wind when we still had our awning out. The wind broke the tie-downs and in the middle of the storm I had to go out on the deck to save the awning by taking it down and rolling and tying it down around the mast. We had to stay awake the entire night on anchor watch. During our land trip we drove up to Mt. Peleé which is 4750 ft. high and we were completely in the clouds, it was cold and on our way down it started to rain.
The most interesting part of Martinique is the different types of landscape, the north/west with the high rainforest covered mountains, the rolling terrain on the east and center of the island and mountains again in the south/west and south/east. The best part of it is that you can visit all these different sites since the roads are nice and wide and in perfect condition. As an American you wonder how it is possible that the roads on an island as Martinique are so good while in our home country our infrastructure is crumbling down despite all the money we spend. We again rented a car for 2 days and drove around the entire island except for the north/east part which we had done previously. We spent most of our time on the east coast and south coast and enjoyed the white sand beaches. The beaches on the west coast are gray or black because of the volcanic sand. The rolling terrain in this area with banana and sugar cane fields, the coast line with the reefs are my favorites. The towns in this area are so authentic and the country side is covered with very nice homes.
The rum distillery “Depaz” is just a couple of miles from St. Pierre and during a previous visit on a rainy day we walked to the distillery, but it was closed. So this time we took the opportunity to visit this old, but now very modern distillery, tasted a few rum flavors and buy some rum. The samples are great, but I still had to drive back to Fort de France, so I did my best to restrict the sampling. On the south side we also visited the Distillery “Trois Rivieres”, but refrained from any tasting.
In Trois Islets we visited “La Pagerie Museum”, the birth place of the Empress of France Josephine, who was married to Napoleon Bonaparte. This museum shows the location and ruins of the home she was born in, but the main house was destroyed during a hurricane in 1766 just 3 years after Josephine’s birth and it was never rebuilt. The museum is now housed in what used to be the kitchen and shows many original drawings and china. The grounds are very beautiful with the original rose garden.
Before we will sail to St. Lucia this weekend we will sail first to St. Anne on the south/west side of the island so we can visit Marin to do some shopping in the largest marine facility and marina in the Caribbean.