We're now back in Rodney Bay, St Lucia and I find myself again trying to catch our blog up with what we have been doing.

We had always wanted to explore more of Martinique but with the language difficulties and expense had never gotten the opportunity. Then some folks on a boat that we had first met in Grenada sailed into the harbor and anchored not far from us. This was Smart Move with Robyn & Barry. We had gotten invited them to Inspiration for Sundowners (and old cruising tradition that's like an extended Happy Hour but on a boat). They also wanted to explore Martinique so we decided to split a car rental and go off adventuring.

I first checked at a Budget Car Rental office that we passed most every day walking through town. They said that they didn't have any cars & didn't know when they might - maybe in two days - and that I should go to the office at the airport. Only that's a $50+ taxi ride! Barry found an Econo Car Rental just outside of the downtown area on his iPad so the next morning we took off to find it. We got to the office around 9:30; by 10am we had a small Peugeot 4-door and were off. We had discussed where we had wanted to go and what we wanted to see before starting off. St Pierre and Mount Pelee and rum distilleries were at the top of our lists, so we started off northward along the west (Caribbean) coast for St Pierre.

Our immediate impression was that the roads were so much better than on any of the other islands we have been around. Most of this leg was on 4-lane, divided highways - though it still twisted & turned along the rugged coastline. Before reaching St Pierre we came to the Neisson rum distillery so had to check it out. This was a fairly modern facility and while there weren't any guided tours we were allowed to walk around most of the site.



There are two ways to make rum. The first is to take the molasses left over from making sugar as the base. The second (and more preferred to me) is to use the cane juice directly. In Martinique this is referred to as Rhum Agricole. All the Martinique rums are made this way (as are the better ones in Dominica, St Lucia & Grenada). All the machinery to take the harvested sugar cane, crush it and collect the juice is run off from a steam engine (pictured above). After fermenting in large concrete "tanks" (open on the top), the resulting liquid is run through a column distillation process and then moved to barrels for aging. The distillation column is pictured below.



Leaving Neisson, we continued to St Pierre where we had a delightful lunch overlooking the bay. French restaurants have "Menus" and ala carte items. The menu choices (there were two) included a (limited) choice of drink, appetizer, main course & sides & desert. I selected Ti Punch (usually made from rhum agricole, syrup de cane & lime juice) for my drink. I was given a glass with a slice of lime, a bottle of syrup de cane & a bottle of rum - so I ended up having several.

After lunch we wandered around St Pierre and spent a fair amount of time in the Volcano Museum. While most all the captions were in French it was still extremely interesting. Half the museum was dedicated to showing what St Pierre was like prior to the 1902 explosion of Mt Pelee. At that time there were over 30,000 inhabitants and the city was called the Paris of the Caribbean. The other half of the museum is dedicated to the eruption of the volcano and aftermath. There had been numerous warnings for over a week prior to the massive eruption. Unfortunately, there was an up-coming election and for political purposes the island Governor had decided not to evacuate the city! An estimated 29,933 people died with only two survivors - an prisoner in the jail and a cobbler who was in his cellar. Below is a picture of some the ruins (this was an opera house) which are still standing around the town.



Walking around St Pierre you see many buildings that you can tell have one or two walls (or partial walls) from a ruined building that was then reconstructed with new walls and a roof. One building that was completely rebuilt was the church - pictured below.



Leaving St Pierre and heading towards My Pelee we came to the Depaz rum distillery, so we had to stop of course. Depaz sits on the slopes of Mt Pelee. Again, there were no guided tours but we were allowed to wander around the grounds and look at everything. Below is the plantation house for Depaz with Mt Pelee (shrouded in clouds) in the background. Depaz is another distillery that crushes the cane for the juice to ferment and then uses the column distillation method. With a column, distillation can run continuously where as with the older still method (still used by River Rum in Grenada) the fermented juice must be distilled in batches instead.



While Depaz uses a steam engine now, it once used a water wheel to power everything. Here's a photo of the old water wheel (below). The problem with using water power is the general unreliability of the power source. The process coincides, naturally, with the harvest time for the sugar cane. While that is usually the wet season, there can be lesser amounts of water coming off the mountain depending upon the rains.



Leaving Deapz, we headed off for Mt Pelee. Here we ended up on a narrow, twisting road that had room for about 1 1/2 cars! Luckily we only met one vehicle coming down and there was room to pull partially off the road so they could pass by. As we got close to the end of the road we were enshrouded by fog/cloud. At the end of the road is a nice parking area & rest stop with a small restaurant. From there is a well marked path going to the summit (estimated time 4 hours). As it was late afternoon, everyone vetoed my (Gary's) idea to climb to the top. So I went up a ways & took the photo below - looking towards the Caribbean.



At this point, we headed back to ST Pierre and then along the coast back to Fort de France. As we had the car for two days, we continued our adventures the next day - in the following blog post.

The picture at the top is Margi & I at the Neisson distillery in front of a wall of their bottles. Note that all these pictures and many more can be seen in the Photo Gallery (link to the right) in the folder: Places & People > Martinique (at the bottom of the Places & People page.

Day 2 will be up in day or 2 depending upon the availability of good wifi.