Poubelles, Long Drop Cities, and poulette fume!

                                  25/01/2012

All serious yachties know that “check in”  procedures, garbage disposal and ATMs, together with the prices of beer and wine, are amongst the most important issues facing a cruiser

Our  beat over from Rodney bay, St Lucia, to Cul de Sac du Marin, Martinique, was only 25 miles, but it represents a serious step up in terms of  all of the above criteria, and especially in terms of ones culinary choices!

Gone ….is the pedantic bureaucratic nonsense about the exact minute of your arrival, and whether you arrive before or after overtime hours, the ridiculous cruising permits, expensive mooring buoys, and carefully hidden rubbish bins and the harassment of  opportunistic boat boys!  The quick and easy computerised self service procedures are a joy…… even if it takes a while to find Afrique du Sud in the alphabetical list of counties! (Its just below Yugoslavia!) Everything is of course in French, and on their own French (non querty) keyboard, but once learned, it’s a breeze!!

Hello! To the whole new range of French wines, cheeses, sausages and other delights, Free cruising permits:  the worlds best built dinghy docks, and the best and easiest ….and FREE garbage (poubelle) disposal facilities in the whole Caribbean! Of course, eating out in the restaurants is beyond most RSA cruising budgets, but the choices available make on board cooking a pleasure, once one looks beyond the baguettes, pain, and other French treats.

We enjoyed the quaint charm of the villages, churches, shops and restaurants, the bright colours, the Madras cottons, as well as the clearly buoyed channels and boat free swimming areas.

Religion, as in most of the Caribbean is an important part of life. The pretty, old churches, roofed with  old, red, “fish scale “ tiles, and filled with flowers, chiming their bells to summon the faithful, sure beats the heck out of the distorted, over amplified, hell and damnation sermons belted out across the anchorages via tired  loudspeakers elsewhere.

 The music too, is more sophisticated. We listened one evening to a truly gifted musician, probably from a French Moroccan background, play his music using an assortment of 20 to 30 different homemade wind, string, and percussion instruments.   One can even find good music on the local radio stations, instead of the noisy, brain numbing, SOCA music, so favoured on the other islands.

As we have found on so many islands, the cemeteries seem to occupy the very best view sights and real estate, overlooking the bays and anchorages. In Martinique however, (perhaps due to the rocky ground), the cemeteries comprise flower covered family owned crypts, where numerous family members are laid to rest. The little buildings are of all shapes and sizes, and painted white, facing either the church, or the access road. The backs of all these little buildings face the sea. As we were motoring into Marin, I pointed out to Mary this strange collection of little white buildings, saying it looked like “Long Drop City”! Only when we went ashore, and saw them from the other side, did the penny drop, and I could not help but think that it was not such a bad mistake after all!!

Linked to the St Annes Church (circa 1780), were the 14 Stations of the Cross, zig zagging their way up the hill to a little chapel on the top. The view over the bay from these stations was lovely, and many locals used the climb as a form of exercise, even while others went through their chants and prayers on their knees.

Two weeks later, we restocked the pantry at Leader Price in Marin, and for once, enjoyed a DOWNWIND sail to Petite Anse D’Arlet, a very pretty little town and anchorage (might become one of our absolute favourites).En route we passed the very conspicuous Diamond Rock, which was once captured by the British Navy, and commissioned as HMS Diamond.

 After that we went to yet another lovely little anchorage called Anse a L’Ane,  where we had been told one could buy the worlds best smoked chicken from a street vendor. Mary had set her heart on one such “poulette fume”. It was indeed excellent, but at 10 Euro, it  blooming well should have been!! So with us both poulette fume’d, we sailed off to Fort du France, where we anchored alongside the old fort. We were beginning to really love Martinique!

We are also beginning to understand why so many of the French people seem so smug and almost arrogant….I think if I were from Martinique, I too, would become even more smug and intolerably arrogant than I am already!