Sunday, February 3, 2013

Terre D'en Haut, The Saints


Thursday, January 31

We woke up early and headed over to Terre D'en Haut to rent a scooter and explore the main island of The Saints. A ferry runs from Guadeloupe to Terre D'en Haut every day, arriving in the morning, dropping off tourists and coming back in the afternoon around 4 pm to pick them up and bring them back to Guadeloupe. We arrived just as the morning ferry was arriving, so the streets were packed. There were also three cruise ships anchored in the channel, so the island was definitely busier that we had seen it over the past two days.

After a quick breakfast at one of the many French cafes, we rented our scooter and headed off on our tour of the island. We traveled down each of the roads, most of which dead-ended at some gorgeous beach. The island is not very big, so it was easy to see all of it from the scooter within a couple of hours, and enabled us to decide which beach we wanted to go back to. We stopped for a while at the Baie De Pompierre which is a national park beach where no boats are allowed to anchor, and it's one of the most protected bays in the Saints. It is a beautiful beach, but also a very crowded beach, so we didn't spend much time there after a quick swim in the ocean. We got back on the scooter and headed up to Fort Napoleon which stands on the northern hill overlooking the town, mainly to take some pictures of the views from the top. This was another popular location for the cruise ship and ferry passengers, so we decided to head back to our favorite beach on the island, Plage de Rodriguez. We stopped for some lunch and Ti Punch at Le Blue in the town on the way to the beach. Plage de Rodriguez is exactly what we were looking for – beautiful, and almost secluded with just one other couple on the beach. We found a palm tree and relaxed on the beach for the rest of the afternoon before heading back to return the scooter and head back to the boat for the night.

View of Ilet a Cabrit from Terre D'en Haut

Gene looking like a badass on our scooter 

Plage de Rodriguez

Plage De Pompierre

Laying under the palm trees at Baie De Pompierre 

 Guadeloupe in the distance

 Church in the main town of Terre D'en Haut 

We moved the boat to a new anchorage that evening, behind Pain de Sucre (off of Terre D'en Haut island), which is just across the channel from Ilet a Cabrit. Pain de Sucre has a great dive site and it is also in close proximity to the start of an awesome hike up to Le Chameau, the highest point in the Saints, so we figured we'd be in a good place to do both of these the next day. The anchorage was pretty crowded with other sailboats and also pretty rolly compared to our mooring ball in Ilet a Cabrit.

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