Commodore
April 6, 0202

A muddy covering in today’s warm bath

We were half way through breakfast when we spotted to kayaks paddling our way, a Canadian couple with their 13 year old son and 12 year old daughter. They had just paddled around the Pitons and were heading home. They looked very friendly so we invited them on board to join us for coffee. An interesting family, both parents are from Mennonite families, although they are no longer practicing Mennonites themselves, the mother is a teacher and on an exchange here for a year. The husband is in the construction business, so has taken a year out, not the kind of business you can do from home. He says he has embraced being a house husband for a year. Lovely engaging kids, they are all extremely athletic and have climbed to the top of Petit Piton, no problem….it requires quite a bit of rope work and is a straight up vertical climb. As they know the area quite well they gave us a few pointers and the name of a guide who would take us to Sapphire falls for a proper volcanic mud bath.

Amazingly we were able to contact the guide Jahrod and he could take us in the afternoon. So we went and snorkelled the last section at the bottom of Petit Piton that we had not done. It did not disappoint with loads of very healthy coral and enormous barrel sponges., with loads of floaty coral that looked like ostrich feathers. Sadly it was slightly overcast and the light was not as good as before but still a stunning snorkel.

We headed into the dinghy dock in Soufriere and met Jahrod our Rasta guide, in his very smart people carrier. We had wanted to walk the Tet Paul trail that is mentioned in our guide book. It is next door to Fond Doux where we stayed last week, they had told us it was closed but the Canadians called us to tell us they were there and it was open. Jahrod obligingly took us there first, it is not a long trail but has wonderful views of both Pitons. We had a very good female guide there, so friendly and eloquent, very impressive as it is a community lead project, she is just volunteering there during Covid as they are making so little money without the cruise line tourists. Apparently they can have hundreds of tourists up there when the cruise liners are in town. We got to the top and found the Canadians still there, they had a picnic lunch up there with a French lady and her daughter. Otherwise we had the place to ourselves. We couldn’t stay too long as we had a lot more to pack into the afternoon.

Soufriere

Looking inland to the mountains on the Tet Paul trail

Gros Piton above, and Petit Piton below

We then headed back in land to near the volcano we visited last week. We parked and Jahrod led us into wonderful thick rain forest to the Sapphire falls, which it turns out he owns! It was a stunning walk there and a very messy mud bath. Jahrod’s deaf brother instructed us with sign language, how to apply the two different clays, it was difficult to understand and landed up a very messy affair with him taking a few photos of us on my camera.

Jahrod a very well informed rasta guide, who loves nature and knew every plant and bush, and what benefit they were to man….. even an incredibly soft leaf which he said was nature’s toilet paper! He made us try eating and biting all sorts of strange looking leaves, fruits and bark.

The water is full of iron and other minerals. If the water touches the leaves a lot, it will kill the plant, but they can cope with their roots in the water.