Guadeloupe

The tiny village of Deshaises

"Pirate Jon"

One of the parakeets at the Botanical Garden in Deshaises

A rainbow greeted us as we anchored in the tiny bay

Carol's "prize winning" photo taken at the Botanical Garden in Deshaises

Our sail to Guadeloupe was smooth and fun. All around us we could see squalls, water spouts, and storms taking place, but we never sailed through one. The east coast of Montserrat held our attention for many miles as we got farther away. We could now see the east side of the volcano and the dust flying from the winds hitting the ash that had flowed to the sea. We neared the two mile exclusion zone and were thankful the winds were blowing the dust away from us.

We reached the tiny, protected bay of Deshaises (pronounced day-ay) in the afternoon, found our spot to anchor and relaxed while we waited for our anchor to settle into the sand bottom. We were delighted to see rainbows all around and to feel the calm water, in spite of the fact that the wind was blowing hard. That evening a young woman in a dinghy approached our boat. We greeted her and in her best English she asked if we would like to have bread delivered to our boat in the morning! Wow, what a treat. We were definitely at a French island. Of course, we ordered a baguette and two chocolate croissants. At 7:00 AM the next morning here comes our bread, this time delivered by her husband. The couple lives on their sailboat in Deshaises and does this as a small business for the visiting yachts.

Later that morning we put the motor on our dinghy and headed to the small village to check in with customs. We motored up a small river to find the dinghy dock and locked our boat among the other dinghies and fishing boats. We walked to the internet café to clear in with customs only to find out that they were not longer handling customs. Evidently, the Guadeloupe government does not want to charge yachts to clear into their country; however, the café owners need to charge a very small amount to cover their paper and ink costs. The government does not allow that so they are in a constant disagreement. So…..that day we could not check in at the internet café. We decided to leave our quarantine flag up and visit again the next day to see if the story changed. The story did not change, but the café owner informed us that the douanes (customs) officer would be in his office at the top of the hill, so we quickly walked up there and cleared in. Now we were legal, so we hoisted the Guadeloupe flag which is the French flag.

The tiny village includes a few small markets, some restaurants, and some souvenir shops; however, they open late and then close between noon and 3:00. They also close on holidays, some afternoons and whenever they feel like it. So, we never had the chance to really visit many stores! We heard that the highlight of the area was the botanical garden, so we knew we had to go. The walk to the botanical garden was only about 1 ½ miles but it was straight uphill, so by the time we got there we were dripping wet! It was so worth it, though. The walk through the garden took us by ponds full of carp, through a parakeet aviary where you could feed the parakeets nectar as they perched all over you, by waterfalls, parrots and flamingos, and all along the way we passed every imaginable tropical plant loaded with flowers. Before leaving we had lunch next to an area where you could overlook the sea and bay where we were anchored.

We were enjoying Deshaises so much we stayed for about a week. We introduced ourselves to some people we had seen in previous anchorages and quickly became friends. We met on their boats for sundowners and even had a boat book exchange before we split up for a few days as they headed south. We wanted to sail out at the same time but discovered water in our food lockers and decided we better make the necessary repair before it got worse. Jon had to caulk and rebed the chain plates on the deck where the caulking was coming out, and it was best to do that before more rain and waves caused more leaking. With that repair complete, we headed south to Basseterre at the end of the island.

Basseterre was a very strange anchorage, but it was only for one night since the next day we would be sailing to Les Saintes. At Basseterre there was only one other boat until another came in at night. There was a tiny black sand beach where many locals were swimming, but other than that; the area was like a ghost town. A previous hurricane had damaged the marina so there were still wrecked and sunk boats all around. Intermingled were new boats, but no one was on them. Weird. We were glad we weren’t staying long. The next morning as we were leaving, we noticed that the beach was again full of people swimming and some even taking swim lessons. The one other boat was still anchored there and the one that came in the night was gone. No bread delivery here…..time to go!