Road Tripping With 'Banyan' - Day Two
13 December 2013 | St. Anne, Martinique
Lynn
"Tour guides extraordinaire Alex and Dave on s.v.Banyan with our mighty volcano climbing diesel, M. Peugeot."
When we parted ways the previous day after the "southern Martinique" road trip, we made a plan to go all the way up to St. Pierre with the car, and see how far we could drive on Mont Pelee, the volcano.
This time, we were a little more organized. I packed some disposable plates, cutlery and serviettes, as well as a cooler bag and 2 liters of cold water. We also had a change of clothes as we were going to meet up with Jeff and Izzy on 'Izzy R' for drinks and dinner when we returned. This was going to be a packed day!
First stop was the supermarket. Hmm, dried chorizo, double cream camembert and some cheap pate-type stuff should do it. We would pick up the baguette closer to lunch time.
Dave pointed the car north. We followed the highway past Fort de France and aimed for the west coast. Again, this is an area Ken and I have seen by bus before, but this was more entertaining.
In St. Pierre, we parked the car and did a quick walking tour of the opera theater and some of the ruins close by. We didn't linger too long, as we all knew we would be back with the boats at some point, and frankly, the threatening rain clouds didn't lend themselves to hanging around. As it was, we had to huddle under the blackened ruins twice to endeavor to stay dry, and to keep our fresh baguettes from getting soggy.
We consulted the road map yet again, and headed north to find the road that looked like it would take us to the top of the volcano. We finally figured out which road it was and headed up. Well, we started to head up, but there was a bit of a glitch.
Apparently, I was the only person in the car with any farm animal experience. We found this out when we got to a point on the narrow road (one car wide, that narrow) and there was a bull on one side of the road, with his tether chain draped across the road. Dave was worried about trying to detour around the bull as he thought it would ram the car. Dave honked, the bull twitched an ear in response. The bull did not move. I was in the back seat with Ken, and Alex was in the position to get out of the car to try to encourage the bull to cross the road so that we could continue on. Alex got out of the car, and Dave proceeded to back the car up a little, "just in case". I had already nudged Ken to put the GoPro into video mode to capture all of this. I was killing myself laughing, as that bull didn't look like it could ever be bothered to charge someone, and it was just watching us in that calm, bovine way. As soon as Alex reached the front of the reversing car, the bull decided it would acquiesce to let us pass on, and started to cross the road. Alex ran back to the door, as Dave pulled forward. He did brake long enough to allow Alex back into the car. It was classic.
We then continued on the planned entertainment for the trip, going up the road. This was a narrow farm road. At one point, grasses (maybe very immature sugar cane) was brushing the sides of the car. Once in a while a drainage conduit slowed us down further as Dave negotiated the bumps so as to not bottom out the car. We continued up, looking a expanses of ground provision, bananas, and sugar cane. Oh yeah, and cows, but none were a hazard to navigation. At one point Ken piped up when we got close to some houses "maybe someone should knock on the door and find out where this leads". We kept going. Comments alluding to "Deliverance" and other things of that ilk came out. And we kept climbing. The car was firmly in first gear, with second but a dream.
We finally got to "the top". Actually it was a trailhead for one of the trails that takes you to the top. All you had to do was climb another 600m or so. We weren't planning on that. So, with the weather threatening, and Dave wisely deciding that he didn't want to get got in a downpour driving back down that road, we left.
I pulled out the lunch fixings and made camembert and chorizo on baguette sandwiches. They were excellent. It helped to take Alex's mind off the descent, too. Dave wondered out loud if that bull would be blocking the road again.
We finally got towards the bottom of the road, and damn, but wasn't the bull back on the "wrong" side of the road again. Of course it would, though, that was where the shade was. However, this time when Dave honked the horn, the bull sauntered across the road with no problems. It was almost like it was messing with us the first time, but decided we weren't worth messing with a second time. Ken and I then took off on a run of bad bovine-related puns.
We ended up driving to the east side of the island, and also went up as high as we could on another Mont Pelee access road. This road was MUCH more accessible. However, the view was wasted as it was overcast, threatening to rain, and just generally miserable. We turned around.
By the time we got to the east coast, the sun was shining and the views were spectacular. We stopped to stretch our legs and get pictures at one beach... and were parked next to a car with a Quebec license plate. Huh?
We arrived back at le Marin at about 5:30 to meet up with Izzy and Jeff for drinks before dinner. Dinner was at a restaurant close by, and we had a lot of fun. The retelling of the bull incident was certainly entertaining.
We made it home just before 11:00pm, way past our bedtimes! It was a fun day, with entertainment found in places we certainly weren't expecting it! Thanks to Dave and Alex for inviting us along!
If you go to the bottom right side of the links and look for our "Sailblog Friends", you will see Banyan there, or a link to their blog in the links bar. Alex has figured out how to add more pictures to her blog, and you will get their take on the same excursions!