Guadeloupe

December 16th Pointe A Pitre, Guadeloupe

Map of Guadeloupe

Pointe-a-Pitre is a commune of Guadeloup which is a French territory in the Caribbean. The name Pointe-a-Pitre literally translates to the “headland of Pitre” and is said to be derived from the name of a Dutch/Jewish sailor/fisherman called “Pieter” who settled there in the 17th Century.

While we love our sea-days, we were ready to explore!

Here’s our blog entry for the day:

We got up and had a quick breakfast and then went to the theater to get to our tour. We are doing the “Costeau Reserve & Nature Walk” tour. We drove about an hour to this beach where we were going to get on a Nautilus semi-submersible sub (it’s really more like a glass bottom boat) where we got some great views the coral and sea life in the area. Unfortunately because of climate change lots of coral was dying and we were told it used to look even more beautiful. Afterwards Adam and David went swimming and the sea temperature was a little cooler than they thought it would be but it was still very refreshing! Then we drove a little waterfall that you had to do a small walk to get to (about 5 minutes). It was nice but nothing special. We re-boarded the ship and did the trivia and had dinner! We relaxed on the balcony as we left the port and enjoyed the beautiful sunset.

Tour description from the brochure.
Arriving in port
More view of arriving
Pretty harbor area
View when we docked from our balcony

As almost always, the port area of these locations isn’t always the most appealing – but that’s pretty common in our experience. A great example is San Pedro here in California – it is not a good example of what visitors will experience while in the Los Angeles area!

Terminal view from balcony
A closer view of the buildings immediately across from our balcony
Tours usually started in the theatre. You’d get your ticket and wait for your tour to be called

At the gang-way, they usually had a digital sign that showed the weather forecast for the day, and the name of the port and the times you needed to be back onboard the ship. I didn’t always have time to capture the screen – I missed it here – but here’s the weather forecast.

board on gangway
Us on the tour bus – preparing for our adventure!
Some of the view along the way
More view on the way to the Cousteau preserve.
Upon arrival at the preserve, we saw that they had many tours available.
These trees reminded us of “In-N-Out” burgers – they always have crossed palms at their locations!
We were told it was a ‘black sand’ beach – but we found it to be more ‘grey sand!’
Adam is ready for boarding of the boat!
The boardwalk to the boat
Our first look a the island we will be visiting.
The beach area near the boardwalk
On board our tour boat. You could go upstairs, and once we arrived at the island – they opened the hatch and we could go below and see fish and coral through the underwater port-holes.
Adam up top – enjoying the weather – he likes it cooler!
David, up top enjoying the view.
It was a bit cloudy when we headed out
David and Cindy on our boat
Adam and Susan onboard the boat
  • Divers we saw from our boat
  • Coral
  • Coral and fish
  • A fish who wanted to view us!
A pretty sea cave
Waves on rocks

After a few rounds of viewing the coral and fish – we came to a small cove and people could swim if they wanted to. It was a bit cold for Cindy and Susan but Adam and David went in. They seemed to enjoy it, but it was a bit colder than they expected.

Adam swimming
Adam and David swimming

David got the fun idea of swimming down near the port-windows and Susan took a video – it was funny (except for the part where David hit his head) but the video was a bit too large to upload here…here’s a screen capture:

David swimming by the port-hole windows
After swimming, we all got comfortable and headed back to shore

Next up – we re-boarded our tour bus and headed to a near-by waterfall. It was a short walk to the falls and there were some shops to look in. We walked down to the falls and didn’t really see anything we wanted in the shops so we got back on the bus for the trip back to our ship.

Some of the pretty rain-forest plants
The waterfall.
The crowd trying to get photos
The stream leading from the waterfall
More of the local plants. The area was lush and green.
Ready for sail-away.
Getting ready for a beautiful sunset
A sunken boat we viewed while leaving port
Another half-sunken boat. We think they had a recent storm
The pilot boat picking up our local pilot before we sailed out to sea.
Sunbeams in the sunset
Photos don’t really do it justice – it was a very pretty sunset!
Here’s Adam at dinner. Susan took this photo because she thought the woman in the background might be an actress, but the consensus was ‘no’

After a relaxing night we headed to our next port: St. George’s, Grenada.