Sunday, January 28, 2018- Martinique

Sunday, January 28, 2018- Martinique

The ship was still underway as we woke up this morning.  Our arrival at Martinique was scheduled for 8:45. We booked a tour through the internet with Karambole Tours.  This tour was discovered through Trip Advisor reviews, and while it followed the same tour stops as the Princess Cruises tour, it was a small group tour with a culinary sampling feature.  Crystal, the proprietor, driver and guide, had received excellent reviews except for a couple of reviewers who felt that they had been crammed too many passengers into the minivan.  We were just keeping our fingers crossed that the van would not be overfilled.  

While I had criticized the breakfast buffet for its lack of cottage cheese, there was cottage cheese this morning. As for another of my favorites, there is always a pot of oat meal, but I like grits with bacon. There is a sign that Grits and Cream of Wheat are available on request, so I retract any criticisms of the breakfast.  During breakfast in the Horizon Court, we were able to watch our approach to Martinique.  There were roving rain showers that we went in and out of. The official forecast called for overcast with a chance of showers, but it was looking like we might actually be in for some real precipitation.  Accordingly, we packed rain hats and umbrellas.

The ship ended up docking a bit late, so we didn’t get off the ship until 9:30am.  There was a huge throng on the dock alongside the ship that was a mob scene, where the ship’s excursions were trying to get organized.  We made our way to the head of the dock, where it was much less congested and easily spotted our guide by a colorful native Caribbean hat she wore.  She later explained that this simple fabric hat was of Eastern Indian origins, and how it was folded denoted a woman’s marital status.  If there was a single point on the front of the hat, this was a married woman and not available.  However you could go up to as many as 3 points to say “come and get me” if you wanted.  

Crystal was very easy to understand.  Her English was excellent and she spoke at a reasoned pace. She taught high school english, but says that the French aren’t very good or diligent at learning languages other than their own, even if mandated by the state.  Martinique is an overseas department of France, so residents of Martinique are French citizens.  

After she greeted us she pointed out her van, a Mercedes Viano 9 seater (including the driver and a diminutive spot in the center between the driver and passenger with no leg room).  There was a couple sitting in the middle from Michigan, who had booked a tour with another tour operator, but they said they were bumped from that tour because a woman that was also booked said she wanted the van to herself, so she “bought out” the van.  There was one other passenger from our ship that had booked directly with Karambole Tours over the internet. She was single gal from Texas.  

The Michigan couple claimed the middle row, so I hopped into the passenger seat to ride shotgun, while Janet and the gal from Texas sat in the 3rd row.  Janet said there was plenty of leg, hip and shoulder room in that 3rd row with out a middle seat passenger.  Crystal used a microphone connected to a rearward speaker mounted on the back of her headrest.  I think the Michigan couple might have regretted their choice of the middle row because Janet needed to have the speaker turned up to maximum volume to hear the narrative in the back row.  

Crystal did a good job pointing out sights and explaining historical tidbits as we drove through Fort-De France. There is a statue in the center of town of Josephine, Napolean’s wife. It is missing it’s head. She explained over the years, the statue had been decapitated by locals unhappy with political issues like slavery.  The head had been replaced at least twice, and the third time it was decapitated, the town decided it was safer to simply display the head in a museum, and leave the statue headless. We learned a bit about Josephine including the fact that she hid her teeth in her portraits because they were rotten.  Being raised in an aristocratic family, they had access to sugar, but weren’t into modern dental hygiene.  We also learned that although she never fathered a child with Napolean, her daughter, who was adopted by Napolean, married Napolean’s brother, so her daugher and she were sister’s in law.  Her daughter gave birth to Napolean the 3rd, and was also responsible for much of the royalty throughout northern Europe.  And all this from a local Martinique girl.  

Crystal explained that the name of her tour “a Pile et Face” meant to see both sides of the coin, referring to the wet rainforest side of the island, and the dry side of the island. 

Martinique is a very hilly island, so driving around it involves a lot of twisting and turning through tight valleys. After a quick drive through Fort-de-France, we headed up into the rainforest.  We drove past several land slides and learned that the Caribbeans have hundreds of small earth quakes a year because they are between the Caribbean and Atlantic tectonic plates. We learned that there are no banana plantations in the rain forest proper because it is too wet, and there isn’t enough sunlight. Bananas are grown in drier and sunnier parts of the island though.

Our first stop was the Sacre Coure of Martinique, which is a local copy of the Sacre Coure in France at Monte Marte.  There were services going on because it was Sunday, but we were able to walk around the outside, peek inside and use the restrooms.  True to French form, the men’s urinals are fully visible from the sidewalk.

Crystal offers treats and tastes on this tour.  When we first boarded her van, she passed out handmade local sugar candy that were colorful, and tasted like dinner mints.  At the Sacre Coure stop, we sampled two empanada like treats filled with guava and banana, along with some local banana wine.  She baked the pastries fresh this morning.  

We ventured further into the rain forest and stopped by a running creek at Pont de L’Alma.  A local man was taking a dip in the creek.  There was an abandoned hiking trail that started next to the bridge that the creek ran under. We could walk up some stone stairs into the rain forest to where the trail disappeared amongst monstrous tree roots. Crystal served us a local hot chocolate and cinnamon beverage with more freshly baked pastries.  Ironically, they were called apple and cinnamon buns but contained neither apple or cinnamon, but were freshly baked and an excellent complement to the hot chocolate.  She explained that in local lore, mermaids were born in rivers and streams, and grew their tails as they matured. The chocolate-cinnamon drink was thought to help mermaids grow their tails.  Alas, nobody sprouted any tails in the van.

Our next stop was a waterfalls called Saut Gendarme, which would have been a beautiful stop except for the fact that a vendor had set up climbing ropes on the face of the falls, and was charging people 10 Euros to rappel down the falls.  That was kind of obnoxious.  The setting in the rain forest was nice, but you did have to descend some steep narrow and slippery stone steps to get to the falls.  

We drove through a the small town of Le Morne Rouge where an unusual WWI Memorial featured a statue of a black soldier from Martinique who was sent to the trenches of WWI.  The soldier held the French flag and a rifle, but Crystal said it would have been appropriate to put a flower in the barrel of the gun as the men who left Martinique eager to serve Mother France, were ill equipped to deal with life in the cold and miserable trenches on the front.  Crystal was just full of local knowledge and surprising cultural depth.  

Next, we visited Saint-Pierre, the former center of commerce and culture in Martinique until 1902 when Mt. Pelee exploded with a pyroclastic flow that wiped out the entire city, killing tens of thousands nearly instantly.  The only survivor had been a prisoner in a basement cell.  He was rescued but suffered severe burns.  He eventually ended up making a career in the Barnum and Bailey Circus in the Freak Show as the sole survivor of the eruption of Mt. Pelee.

We encountered periodic downpours as we drove through the rainforests and then around the “dry” side of the island.  Fortunately, most of the time when it was pouring down rain, we were driving from one stop to the next. Our next stop was the DePaz Rhum Distillery, where we were able to sample multiple types of locally produced rums, and learned the difference between light rums (distilled and rested in stainless steel drums) and dark rums (distilled, and then matured in oak casks).  Their claim to fame is the use of pure locally grown cane mash instead of molasses as the basis of the liquid that is fermented.  They had samples of most of their products. Janet liked the flavored rums (passion fruit) best, while Ben liked the 18yr aged dark rum.  We walked around the distillery on a self guided tour, and then climbed back in the van.

Our last stop as along the western coastline at a viewpoint overlooking the Caribbean ocean.  We were not able to see Mt Pelee, as it was shrouded with dense clouds all day.  Crystal commented that this kind of raininess is unusual for this time of year, which should be in the dry season. Valleys that should normally be all brown were still verdant green.  We sampled their local lager “Lorraine”, which was a fine beer for casual drinking, along with a pork stuffed pastry commonly served around Christmas.  We did learn however, that the favorite beverage of the islanders is French Champagne.  We encountered a bus full of fellow Princess cruise passengers who looked jealously at us as we relaxed with our beers.  Their tour bus had a guide who only spoke French and Spanish, so these ladies were not very happy with their excursion.

We were dropped off at the cruise ship terminal just in time for us to make the 2:30pm afternoon trivia.  We sat with two new couples, Dan, Jenny, Laurence, and Pat.  We started as a single team, but eventually broke up into two teams after irreconcilable differences arose over some of the answers.  As it turned out, our version was correct, but it wasn’t enough to win the game.  We ended up with 11 points while the winners had a whopping 16.  

We got cleaned up and had afternoon tea.  We ended up sitting next to the same couple we had afternoon tea with yesterday- a Filipino woman and her Greek husband, who were very pleasant and well traveled. They strolled through town, but were disappointed to find everything closed. They have been to most of these islands many times in the past, so weren’t really expecting anything new this time.  They just enjoy cruising through the islands.  After tea, went back to the head of the dock to use the Wifi, until a moving van appeared and started to pack up the building.  They thought the ship was scheduled to leave at 4:30pm-as originally planned but later altered to 6 p.m.The Wifi got switched off prematurely.  We were able to download some emails before it went down.  A Caribe percussion band came down to the dock to bid us farewell with a rousing selection of drum and whistle songs.  Martinque celebrates carnival and the band represented some of the island’s culture with homemade costumes and a lot of red color  

We went to dinner at 6p.m.  The head maitre’d was able to get us a table upstairs in the fixed dining room.  We had oysters Rockefeller and frog legs.  The oysters were shucked and cooked on a bed of spinach covered with a white cheese sauce.  They were tasty, but not as good as Panko pan fried in our experience.  The frog legs came attached to the pelvis, so it was a bit gross.  The meat itself was very bland- not fishy at all, but somewhere between chicken and tilapia.  They were OK with a bit of salt and pepper, but we wouldn’t go out of our way to order them again.  

We then got to the Princess theatre for the evening show, which featured a Xylo-Synth player David Meyer showing off his virtuosity with a selection of popular and classical music arrangements.  His wife came on stage to do some lighted baton twirling and modern dance to accentuate some of his numbers, but her rendition of Carmen was a bit strange.  But it was entertaining and good quality.  

We actually had an opening to do the 9:15pm evening trivia, which featured close up pictures of items that needed to be identified.  We missed just 3 out of 21, but finished one point out of the lead.  We decided to play alone rather than joining a larger team.  We were getting closer to a win.  

Ben made a trip to the buffet to pick up grapes for Janet, and a bowl of wonton soup and samplings of their Caribbean night cuisine which included jerk chicken and ribs.  

Tomorrow, we arrive at St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where we have our first official Princess booked excursion.