Hot walk around the sites of St Pierre

The public dinghy leads straight to a lovely big market building, which had a few vendors selling fresh produce which we came back to later. We walked along to some ruins of the old settlement when this was the capital of Martinique and a wealthy island because of the sugar cane. Then we headed up to the ruins of the old cathedral which was full of people when the volcano erupted. It apparently exploded when it was hit and it certainly looks like it when you see the huge chunks of wall lying all over the place.

The Two clocks, the bottom one is the revolutionary French clock introduced in 1793

This church survived the eruption better, just it’s towers had to be replaced.

Tsunami Signs. There was a big Tsunami here after the eruption, which is why the bay is full of wrecks, and many areas closed for anchoring because of them.

We liked the way the Tsunami safe location is at the town cemetery!

Huge tree covered in creepers

I love the old buildings

Fish tails at a closed fish stall

Ruins of the houses below the fort

The ruins of the Cathedral

We then decided to head out of town to the sugar cane fields on the side of the mountain. The French supposedly gave up their US territory (about a third of America!) in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, in exchange for their Caribbean islands, obviously highly valued at the time for their sugar. The main road into town that we passed had a police block at it, we were a little nervous it would be obvious we were abusing our 1 hour exercise slot, but they waved us jovially on! It was a hot climb up through the sugar cane fields. The road had a single row of tiny houses running along the road for ages, they must have been old workers cottages. Most of them were still lived in and many had wonderful tiny gardens. At the top of that rise we came across a Rum Distillery that has a beautiful old homestead, it is normally open for tours but sadly everything is still shut here. Rowan read that the whole family were wiped out by the eruption except for one son who was at university in France. He came back and rebuilt it.

Cottages on the road through the sugar cane and…

their gardens on the other side of the road

Amazing looking farm equipment

It was boiling hot and in the midday heat, we had not brought much water, I wasn’t very enthusiastic about going much further but Rowan found a circular route back to town, a much busier road but had three bridges crossing streams coming down from the mountain, it was in a bit of a gorge, and incredibly lush. We saw so many plants we have never seen before and amazing looking fruit on trees. One tree had what looked like huge gelatinous white strawberries on it.

Unknown fruit tree

Mangos

Lush river gorge

When we came back into town we took a back route and found the ruins of an amazing old theatre, it must have been so sophisticated when it was a wealthy sugar port. Next door was the prison and we could see the building that the prisoner survived the eruption in. We wound past the old fort where the museum is, but sadly everything closed. Got into town and bought a few fresh products including a local chicken (cost an eye watering 25 euros!) for Sunday supper!

Back at the boat all was good and so much better as we have put up the sun covers over the cockpit windows and it is so much cooler now. Had a long chat to Hannie eventually, as she is back in Maun (main town in the Okavango Delta) to do a bit of admin. At last she has good wifi, she is having a wonderful time and learning so much. Finding wildlife rather traumatising too, the lovely leopard cubs have not been seen in ages, they last saw the mother with a very bloody ear and think she must have been in a fight as they spotted a new leopard couple in the territory. It may mean the little cubs were killed just like the lion cubs… by their own kin!

The wind died down and the sea was the flattest we have seen it, which made a stunning sunset.