We've been here a week and the wind has been pretty strong out of the NE with a relentless north swell! We had to get off the boat! We've seen a lot of Bourg des Saintes by foot but when we get back on board, it's a roller coaster ride. We took a ferry to Terre d'en Bas for the day and it was an idyllic, Gallic, charmingly irresistible treat. It's love at first sight.

It's small, dry (hence all the flowering plants in abundance for our personal pleasure), steep with red and brown cliffs up to l000' with perfect white beaches everywhere. These two islands are really fairytale adorable, sparkling clean and can we say 'picturesque'?

The Saintes have been French ever since they were colonized and it's long supported a small community which used to rely almost entirely on fishing. I think it's baking now...ok tourism for sure. There were fishing villages everywhere like eye candy and even now you're convinced of a big fishing community by the activity on the waterfront.

It's really, REALLY FRENCH! We're laughing a lot, but we're managing quite well actually.

We walked the entire southcoast, with a detour at the immaculately preserved pottery factory, with a number of stops after climbing the mountain for a couple of hours! We wanted to find a restaurant we were told about and it sounded close to the ferry station. After we were just about to the western edge of the island we hitched a ride and got in the back of his open jeep with a couple of kids. He was conveniently able to deliver us to Chez Eugenette's, after dropping everyone else off, lucky us. We went WAY outta of our way, but we would never have seen the sights we saw today nor found Chez Eugenettes for lunch without that teacher on "siesta" nice enough to stop and scoop us up.

We had a fabulous lunch after which we needed to walk! We didn't think it could get any better than the south coast but we're here to share our photo bounty! When we couldn't possibly believe it could get any better, we had a most extravagant sunset to end our perfect day of being a tourist. Thanks Universe.

Dudley and Bec