Finally!

Martinique Nord

Yes, we are in France. We just finished our breakfast of croissants, oeufs, jus, and café, but that’s enough French for now.

In January of 2011 we first visited St. Pierre, the first viable port on Martinique’s northwest coast, and we did the usual tourist activities over a day or two. In 1902 Mt. Pelee erupted, after giving much notice to the nearby inhabitants, and totally annihilated the town, killing all but two out of approximately 29,000. This town used to be called the Paris of the Caribbean for reasons which are definitely not in evidence today. It has had a slow and incomplete recovery, and there is a section of the waterfront where buildings are still derelict. The local museum is dedicated to the volcanic eruption and has before-and-after photos as well as artifacts, including a plate of petrified spaghetti.

This time we’ve discovered, much to our delight, that there is much, much more to St. Pierre besides the museum and facilities dedicated to remembering the explosion. We stayed 4 days and found ourselves quite busy.

Martinique, as well as many other islands in the chain, is fond of its rum distilleries and you may find some of their products back home, specifically from the St. James, Clement, and Depaz facilities. The last one is about an hour’s walk up from St. Pierre, has beautiful grounds with a self-guided tour, and, of course, a bit of tasting at the end. It was very professionally done. It also had the largest ficus tree we have ever seen.

The next day we decided to climb Mt. Pelee. The weather was crystal clear with a strong northeasterly wind so we expected that the views at the top would be phenomenal, and they were. We took a taxi collective – a privately operated van with a semi-regular timetable – up to the nearest town, Morne Rouge, then had to walk another 2 miles to the start of the trail. There was, in true French fashion, a little café at the bottom offering light food, another water and snacks, and of course, coffee.

We expected to be hiking with people as fit as we think we are, but no. Most, of course, were people in their 20’s and 30’s, but there were whole families with babies in backpacks. The trail up to the crater was mostly straight up a narrow ravine of a path with steps scoured out that, to my mind, made it more difficult as you were forced into a set rhythm which can be more tiring. Then we were at the edge of the crater and considered continuing on to the summit via the path which first disappears 300 feet straight down into the crater before rising up again on the other side and continuing another 600 feet. That wouldn’t be fun so we stopped for our lunch in a sheltered area out of the wind and watched the people.

There was a race on the plateau to the side of the crater – unbelievable! We’re not sure how many times they had to make the circuit which did involve some altitude changes but it must have been plenty as we were watching men and women so tired that they were walking. We were impressed.

We knew in advance that the taxi collective did not run after noontime on Saturdays so we looked for ways to get back to St. Pierre once we made it down to the snack shop at the base of Mt. Pelee. We were able to hitchhike down the 2 miles to the intersection near Morne Rouge, then started walking. As it turned out, this day was part of the weeklong lead-in to Mardi Gras which is huge in the French islands as well as Trinidad. The main street had been closed off to traffic – no hitchhiking opportunities there. Eventually, once we were well outside of the town and the traffic was flowing, slowly, one man stopped and drove us back down to St. Pierre. Whew!

There was one more walk around St. Pierre that is worthy of mention. About 3 miles inland there is an aqueduct, the Beauregard canal, built by slaves high in the hills, which brought rainwater down to the sugar cane fields outside of St. Pierre. Much of it was literally erected along the side of mountains and its outer edge ranged from 12 to 18 inches in width. This is where we walked. There were some places where people could back up into while others passed by, but most of the edge was bordered by a sheer drop-off. How far down was the drop-off? It wouldn’t matter as you probably wouldn’t survive any fall.

The crazy thing is, according to our American minds, is that there are no guardrails or other safety devices. Would anyone have been able to hike along this route if it were relocated back home? In our litigious society we would say “no”. As we have noticed in other countries, people expect to bear the risk of issues that arise from being hurt in situations like this, and not to resort to the court system. That’s probably why the government has stayed out of it. We saw a family of 4 with two boys about 8 and 10 years old making the round trip, as well as a lot of couples. We had already been hiking almost 2 hours when we started walking along the canal but after a quarter of the way we had had enough. It was simply too scary to continue.

One surprise I particularly enjoyed and did not at all expect was the really decent snorkeling in the southern part of St. Pierre’s harbor. Even though the underwater landscape was mostly a monotone gray, there were quite a variety and quantity of fish. It felt good, especially after a hike, to gently exercise tired legs by leisurely swimming over to this undersea Lilliput. I’ve often wondered why different fish species react differently to my Gulliveresque form; some immediately flee for shelter, some mosey out of the way, and some even surround me for 10, 15 seconds before deciding that I’m either not too interesting, not too threatening, or don’t have any goodies.