Charlie's here
02 March 2010 | St Lucia
Chuck finnaly arrived after an almost 2 hour trip from the airport. Small Island, large trffic jam.
Because we have many miles to travel and lots of places to visit on the way, we left early the next morning for Martinique. We ended up motoring the entire 30 mile distance. Seems like the big low pressure system up north is sucking all the wind from down here.
We anchored off of Fort De France and dinghied into town to clear customs. At least the French have something right. A small computer terminal in a ships store that you can fill in the boxes online, print it out and the lady behind the counter signs it and you are in. DONE!
Dinner in a side walk café and back to the boat.
Fort De France is the bigest city in the Islands, very modern, very large and all the trappings of a metropoliton city.
On Saturday we got up early and took the bus to St Perie to visit a Rhum distillery. The distillery is located on the side of the Mt. Pelee valcano which last blew up in 1902, killing over 29,000 peopel. The distilery was also distroyed but was later rebuilt. A very interesting walkng tour where they still use steam power to run the plant. After several tastings of the various rhums (needed to decide which ones to buy) we walked the 2 miles down the hill, backpacks full of rum bottles. We were able to find the bus back to Fort de France after questioning several people, none of which could speak English, or as we could speak no french. Arriving back in the city we discovered that they lock the place up after 1 on Saturday. Everything was closed except the supermarket where we stopped to load up on cheap french cheese and wine.
Sunday morning it was up early again to head to Dominica, a 50 mile distance. We were able to sail 30 miles of it.
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