The Insiders' Guide to St. Barths: les Saintes Oct 26th / 29th 2006

Thursday morning, our adventure to les Saintes begins. We left St. Barth on Air Antilles Express. For anyone that’s ever thought of using them, I would recommend it. They were cheaper than Air Caraibes, with newer planes and very friendly employees. The plane’s AC blew cold for the entire trip. We arrived in Guadalupe 45 minutes later. As we were approaching Guadalupe, the captain got out of his chair and passed mints to all four of us aboard. He also offered mosquito spray, a bad sign we thought. We had booked a flight to les Saintes on Air Caraibes, but received a message from them right before leaving home that our flight had been canceled. We found out later that they just stopped flying there altogether. Numerous attempts to reach them were useless. Thanks to the help of a wonderful girl named Sophie at our hotel on les Saintes, we had several options for getting there. This is where we needed the help of Rosita. After receiving the message that our flight was canceled, I was unable to call Guadalupe, or St. Barth. It seemed that for some reason the phone lines were not cooperating. Rosita was able to take the information I gave her and secure us a private charter over to les Saintes. So…..as we landed on Guadalupe, we noticed a pilot standing next to a small 4 seat Skylark waving to us through the window. He met us at our plane and walked us through immigration, back out of the airport and onto his plane. (more mosquito spray offered to us by Immigration) 30 minutes after landing on Guadalupe, we were landing on Terre de Haute, where an iguana on the runway met us. The private pilot was from C.D.B Formation, 06 96 28 98 04. or g.cornelie@hotmail.com On the return flight we met the company owner, Guymere Cornelie as our pilot. He owns several small planes and has been very busy since Air Caraibes has stopped flying to the island. The airport building is small and nobody was there when we arrived, no employees to be found. No clearing Customs here!

Everybody speaks French, very very few people speak English. It’s a French island, you should be speaking or understanding French at least a little to make your trip enjoyable.

We had booked a room at Coco Playa hotel. The hotel was waterfront, they call it beachfront. The area behind the hotel was packed with small fishing boats and the beach was dark sand that was more like mud. Somehow we had made mistakenly ended up in a hotel without a pool. This was a big mistake, more on this later. The walk to our hotel was short (no real cabs to speak of here and there are no car rentals on the island) and we were ready to start exploring. We set out on foot and started looking for a beach. The closest beach turned out to be an area that doubled as a goat pasture, with lots of goats. We found that the beaches listed on the map are not necessarily beach people friendly. They are more like vacant lots on the water that you can carefully walk to if you need to look at the water. Someone had told us about the islands best beach and gave instructions on how to get to it. We followed the instructions and found that it was actually someone’s backyard area that was beachfront. The homeowner was not in and the neighbors had set up camp on the beach. The 75-foot section of sand already had 20 people on it so we choose to move on. It was lunchtime anyway.

We began looking for a lunch spot and being on foot we choose the closest one that looked inviting with a water view. Found a great little spot on the water with very friendly owner. La Case aux Epices turned out to be a great choice. Martin ordered the special that turned out to be an awesome mahi-mahi dish prepared with a Creole sauce that was to die for. Janine was thinking about walking through the goat pasture and really didn’t feel like eating anymore. She did have a Carib though. When we finished the meal the owner gave us the check almost right away, we thought this was odd on a French island. As soon as we paid the bill the owner dropped the shutters and closed up for the afternoon, while we still sitting on the deck. After lunch it was time for a nap at the hotel. After a snooze we walked the main part of town and watched the tourist and locals coming and going on the numerous ferryboats at the town dock. Dinner that night consisted of not much more than a snack, since we had eaten a late lunch and weren’t really that hungry anyway. Les Saintes shuts down much earlier than St Barth does. When the last ferryboat left the dock (8pm) it was as if the town closed down and everyone went home. The stores and restaurants closed and we were left sitting at the dock all alone. Needless to say we were sleeping rather early this night.

Friday morning we decided it was time to rent a scooter. Very few cars on the island, and no rental cars at all. Martin went back and forth with the renter for the 100cc model and off to every corner of this island we went. The beaches are not nearly as pretty as St. Barth. The sand is a dark and almost like dirt, it was so hot you needed shoes all the time. The day was hot and humid and the breeze didn’t pick up until late in the day. After a lot of exploring by scooter, we settled at plage de pompierre. It’s a nice beach for families. Nice calm water, trees to get some shade and even some covered picnic benches. There’s even a guy that sets up a little snack stand selling, drinks and sandwiches right before you get to the beach. There are no nude or even topless beaches here. Every beach is posted with the same rules and we saw no lawbreakers at the beach on this trip. Even at the beach that was allegedto be a nude beach, NONE. There was a lady on the beach selling “stuff”. It was jewelry of sorts, things she made for hair, wrists and ankles. She was a pest. She would wake sleeping beach goers in an attempt to make a sale. Janine threatened to pound sand in her a@@ and she left. The next day when we visited this beach the lady did not approach us, wonder why? After leaving the beach we had a late lunch at a small place at the entrance to the airport, called La Toumbana. After checking out the limited menu we both settled on the “islanders choice”. It was a mystery fish that we believe to be swordfish. It was so good we didn’t care what it was. It came with rice and something that resembled a sausage; maybe Lloyd can help us out on this one. Lunch was only 9,50 euro and came with a dessert of homemade ice cream. This restaurant also had a resident iguana, but it did not make an appearance while we were there. Friday evening was spent much like the pervious night, at the dock watching the people come and go on the ferryboats. Martin made the mistake of fishing off the dock and drew a crowd of people. It was obvious that nobody fishes from the dock, or maybe the island. And since they all spoke French and kept asking questions we fled to dinner. Dinner was at a small sandwich and ice cream shop. The panini was great and the ice cream homemade. Janine says it’s the best chocolate ice cream she’s ever had. I think it was the rum talking. After dinner we strolled the main street sampling the rum at several locations until the streets rolled up at 8pm. We then tiptoed back to our hotel.

Saturday morning we had the coffee and croissants provide at our hotel and then decide to torment the streets with our scooter. We went up and down every street and a few driveways in search of the perfect beach. We just didn’t find any. We settled again on Plage de Pompierre which had shade trees and picnic tables. By noon on Saturday we had decided to leave the island earlier than we had originally expected. We would fly out Sunday morning and head home. We were bored.

Saturday afternoon we purchased a great bottle of wine and chilled it in our hotel’s lobby refrigerator. By the way, did I mention that the restaurant at our hotel was closed? And the lobby bar was closed also. That sucked. Saturday evening we sat out at the end of the ferryboat pier and covertly polished off the bottle of wine. We then put a note (obscene I’m sure) inside the bottle and replaced the cork. Martin tossed the bottle off the pier after the last ferry left. It must have been 9pm when we left the pier and very few souls on the street.

Sunday morning and we headed to the airport to meet the plane. He landed at 10am sharp and by 1010 we were airborne. No one was at the airport to see us off, just an empty building. The ride was so smooth, and the landing was unbelievable. I didn’t even feel the Skylark touch down. 13 hours later and we were home.

Now for the rest of the story.

Had we been in a hotel with a pool we would have probably not left early. That was just a mix up after looking at every hotel for weeks before making a choice. Martin was going to dive while on the island but didn’t get a comfort level with the French dive dude. Martin fished several places but never hooked anything, not even a weed. We never saw anyone fishing from the beach, but small fishing boats were anchored everywhere. Every time we went for a walk in the main part of the island we saw men drunk, falling down, urinating in public and yelling in the streets. They appeared to be yelling at nothing in particular, but it was in French so who knows. You would be at a serious disadvantage on this island if you didn’t have some understanding of the French language. Everybody speaks French, it is not like SBH. The roads here are in better shape than we imagined, maybe from the lack of cars. Renting a scooter to get around is a good idea and relatively safe. The scooter drivers are not as crazy as the ones on SBH. And the scooters are not as loud, or maybe it’s that there are not as many on the streets. The police are very visible; they patrol the island on scooters and hang around the main area of town near the ferry pier. If you were looking for an out of the way place for complete solitude this would fit the bill.

Bottom line, the island is not for everybody. We have many pictures that we'll post a link to at some point.

M&J

Edited by Martin & Janine (11/01/06 01:27 PM)