#91 Martinique

I love the name of this island. Maybe because it contains my husband's name? I just love the way it sounds. I love that you must pronounce the T or it just sounds weird. I like the way French sounds. I have general disdain for the French, but I like the language. While on vacation I read the book "Eat Pray Love." In the book, the author talks about how much she loves the Italian language and wants to learn to speak it just because she loves the sound of the words. That's kind of how I feel about French. I don't see myself moving to France to immerse myself in the language, though. However, Martinique might be a fun place to do that!

Martinique has a romantic past. It was the home of Empress Josephine, the wife of Napoleon. The painter Paul Gaugin spent a few months there in the 1800s, before he went to Tahiti to paint. A volcano destroyed the main city on the island in 1902. The island, like Guadeloupe, is a French territory. French is the language and euros are the currency.

We were in Martinique on Wednesday February 13. There were not many excursions offered through the ship, and the ones there were didn't sound appealing to us. Since it was our ninth day of vacation, we decided to sleep in then wander ashore to see what we could find that would be fun. We've never done that before. Marty and I have a fear of missing the ship and having to figure out how to get to the next place to catch up with the cruise, so we usually book excursions through the Explorations desk. We were really going out on a limb here.

When we went ashore, most of the people were already gone on their activities. There is a small terminal and a taxi stand right at the dock. There wasn't much activity anywhere. Luckily for us, we were greeted by an extremely handsome man who spoke English and offered to take us on a tour of the island in his cab, a lovely Mercedes. His name was Marc.

Marc drove us north from Fort-de-France, first stopping at the church of Balata, which is a replica of the Sacre Couer Basilica in Paris. It is a pretty church and the view is breathtaking. That's when I knew I would love Martinique.

We continued north through the rainforest, with Marc telling us all about the island and being very obliging whenever I wanted to stop for photos. T does not love to ride on the winding mountain roads. Just as in Guadeloupe, he just closed his eyes and took a nap. I get a little carsick, too, but I was so enthralled with the beauty of the island, I just fought it off and closed my eyes every once in awhile to get over the queasiness I felt.

We went as far north as Morne Rouge to the foothills of Mt. Pelee, an active volcano. It's last big eruption was in 1902 when it destroyed "the Paris of the Caribbean", St. Pierre. Before arriving in St. Pierre, we stopped at the DePaz rum distillery. There we took a self-guided tour. Where it had been raining in the rainforest (of course), it was beautiful at the distillery and plantation. The sugar cane fields were vibrant green and sloped down almost to the sea, and the volcanic mountain was draped in clouds. After our tour, we had a sample of the rum. Whoa! It is strong! We bought some.

From DePaz we turned down the west (Caribbean) coast and headed south back to Fort-de-France. First we stopped in St. Pierre. The village has been rebuilt on top of the ruins of the city that was destroyed. By the way, everyone in the city was killed when the volcano erupted except for one person, a prisoner who was in the jail. Marc stopped at the remains of the church and we spent a few minutes looking at it and thinking about what it must have been like. There were photos there showing what the church and the town from 1902. It was cool.

From St. Pierre we continued south through quaint fishing villages, including Carbet, where I'd read that Gaugin lived and painted while he stayed on the island. We also passed through Marc's village of Case-Pilotte. Marc told us about how he is one of the drivers for media that come to the island and that he was the driver for Pierce Brosnan when he was on the island to film "The Thomas Crowne Affair." It was interesting to hear him talk about it. I just liked hearing him talk. He had a delicious Caribbean/French lilt to his speech. Plus, did I mention that he was quite good-looking?

In all we were gone about three hours and we had a pretty good idea of at least part of the island. Marty and I have a dream to retire to one of the islands in the Caribbean, and we both added Martinique to the short list of places we'd live. I would definitely like to go back there and spend some time on the beach of one of the villages. It was a more prosperous island than some and it was very nice. The city of Fort-de-France was a like Pointe a Pitre, Guadeloupe in that it wasn't colorful and quaint. It was European-ish. That's ok, but I like the quaint and colorful in my Caribbean!

When we got back, we did the t-shirt shopping thing, then it was time to go. On the way out of the port, I was treated to a really beautiful sunset. In all, it was a fun day of exploring and admiring the island!
Notes on pics: 1) View from Balata church. 2) Balata church 3) Rainforest 4) Sugar cane fields at DePaz rum distillery 5) View of Caribbean from St. Pierre church site 6) Sunset off the coast of Martinique. I took all these pics with my Canon.