Voyage to Petite Terre, Guadeloupe

Almost every day here has similar weather: low of 22 degrees C (72 F), high of 27 (81 F). Mostly sunny, with a few clouds and occasional rain bursts that rarely last more than a few seconds. But on the morning of the catamaran excursion we’d scheduled to the nature reserve at Petite Terre islands, we woke up to this:

We walked to the marina thinking, how bad can it be? They didn’t call off the trip. And when we boarded the boat, it was cloudy, but warm and not (yet) raining.

There were 48 passengers and 3 crew on the boat. This was the same excursion during which a woman had gone missing during our first week here, and washed up dead a few days later. Apparently she’d gone snorkeling where she shouldn’t have and got carried across the sea back to the main island of Guadeloupe (a 2-hour catamaran sail away).

Before long, the sea got rough and the skies opened up. We resisted for as long as we could, but eventually went indoors. It turns out my stomach, despite — or maybe because of — all the vomiting I’ve done over the years when having allergic reactions, is quite sturdy. Even when I was three years old on a converted Polish warship sailing to Sweden, when almost everybody else including most of the crew got seasick, I was fine. (I remember that remarkably vividly. What I remember most happily is that the nasty woman who guarded the children’s playroom got sick, so my 5-year-old brother, a 4-year-old girl, and I had the place all to ourselves! No line-ups for the slide. All the toys we wanted. We could run in the hallways with no adults telling us not to. A final memory from that trip was sitting on the floor of our cabin, holding a spoonful of food that a sickly steward and brought for my brother and me, imitating the motion of the waves with my spoon and singing “Up and down. Up and down.” And then, for some odd reason, my parents and other brother, who were hanging over the edge of their berths hovering above barf buckets, told me to shut up! I couldn’t understand why they were annoyed with my happy sounds.)

When we went into the covered area of the boat I tried to ignore the people puking all around me, and instead focused on dancing to the reggae music on the sound system. I felt sorry for our captain, who had to stand out in the lashing wind and rain.

As we neared the nature reserve, the rain stopped, the winds calmed, and we were greeted by a beautiful setting.

The Petite Terre islands are famed for their iguanas, tortoises and birds. The dominant variety of iguanas on the islands start off green and turn black with age. We went for a guided walk to the lighthouse, and saw lots of them. Also saw many families of hermit crabs crawling around.

I had been uneasy about the fact that the trip included lunch, which would, of course, be fresh grilled fish. (For anyone who doesn’t know me, fish is one of my deadly allergies.) The organizers assured me they would cook chicken for me. Amazingly, they not only did so (apparently a lot of the children on board also wanted chicken instead of fish), they kept it well separated from the fish and used separate equipment, so I was able to have a lovely, allergen-free lunch on the beach. Phew!

This being part of France, they also served wine with lunch. And this being part of the Caribbean, there was plenty of rum punch.

The snorkeling was fun, and I was careful to stay in the safe zone, which was plenty large enough, so I made it safely back to shore for another cup of punch before getting back on the boat.

The ride home was smooth sailing. One of the crew told me that they typically have 2 or 3 people each day who are sick on the trip to the island, but only about one a month who are sick on the way back.