Commodore
March 25, 2022

Moving further down the island

We had breakfast and looked how close we were to the reef and thought it was time to move. It is so crowded here we decided to head further down the coast to a marine reserve with good snorkelling. The thing that strikes us is how green and verdant the island is. There is so much untouched forest, the clouds gather on the mountains making very dramatic skies and obviously keep the island extremely lush. It is rather lovely that inland has not been developed at all and looks pretty wild. The other side of the island may be different. Guadeloupe is the shape of a butterfly, the two halves only separated by a river. Sadly we are too big for it but I have read that it is quite a dramatic river journey.

Passing unspoilt beaches

We finally anchored in Malendure inside the reserve. Thankfully there is a huge area to anchor, but it still took us a few attempts to get somewhere suitable as it is pretty deep and the wind swings about in all directions. Our first attempt we just dragged our enormous 55kg anchor, on the other hand it is incredible that it holds us. We put out 50 meters of chain, hoping for the best. We had a few abortive attempts at putting a smaller anchor out the back to stop us swinging, but all we did was get tangled up with the mooring ball next door, so we abandoned that idea. The wind comes and goes and funnels down ferociously when it does blow.

Our anchorage with the lush mountains in the distance

Once we were happy we were stable we headed straight over in Jeldi Jeldi to Pigeon island, which is Jacques Cousteau’s underwater reserve. We wanted to catch it in the midday sun. It was quite busy, a few people had canoed over and there were a few snorkelling/dive boats about. But it was still wonderful, with loads of fish and some big ones too, and a lot of healthy coral. We snorkelled all the way around the little island, the only snorkellers to go that far, it was very dramatic as there was a coral cliff drop off on the one side, we were surprised to suddenly find a lot of divers down there. It was certainly spectacular.

Pigeon Island, we snorkelled all the way around the little island on the left

More rain coming in

We decided to head to the Carrefour for a grocery shop, the dinghy entrance was quite hard to find and once in was crowded with local boats. It was a pretty rough little harbour, so we made sure Jeldi Jeldi was well locked up. We searched for the supermarket and finally found it’s closed doors, in this rather sad run down industrial estate. We found some young lads outside a pizza restaurant and discovered that it is a Public holiday today which is why everywhere was closed and the place was dead.

Entrance to the dinghy harbour

Leaving the dinghy harbour

We headed to the main beach which has a dinghy dock to have a little walk around. It certainly is a busy holiday resort, pretty tacky, so unlike Antigua, it is so amazing the islands are all so different and that the locals only speak English or French depending where you are. Obviously because it was a holiday the beach was heaving. We are amazed at how many white French people are here, it must be a cheap warm weather destination for the French. Somehow black volcanic beaches never look quite so appealing as brilliant white beaches.

We walked up to a restaurant on the cliff edge above PolePole and had supper there. It was a spectacular sunset which made up for my rather mediocre main course.