Iles des Saintes, Day 2

We have a lazy early morning.  Johanne is a star and makes bacon butties for everyone again.  Around 10.30 we all go ashore – Mike needs to check us in and Johanne and I want to look around the shops.  I have also heard there is a good hairdresser here and as I have recently been lopping off chunks of hair, I am obviously in need of a haircut and need it urgently before I make a mess.  Heaven knows what I am going to do next year!

We get to the Mairie, the mayor’s residence.  The gendarmerie is around the back and apparently they process the paperwork.  We leave Mike and Steve there and Johanne and I go in search of the hairdressers.

Photo:  The Mairie

First impressions are a bit dubious.  We find the salon which appears to be a house.  There are numerous gnomes in the front garden.  Am I going to come out with a shampoo and set?  I wander around the deck of the house, calling out on my way round.  All the doors and windows are open and it is very obviously someone’s house.  Round the back I see a small sign to a building just up from the house – the salon.  We go in and it all looks proper with the same stuff I use on my hair for sale here.  A good sign.  The lady doesn’t speak English and although I can make myself understood in restaurants and shops, discussing what I want someone to do with my hair is another matter.  She says she can fit me in now for just a little cut and no washing and so we proceed.  She leads me over to a sink and proceeds to wash my hair.  This is where I start to worry.  She said “no wash” to me.  I now wonder what other failures of communication are going to happen.

It ends up being a little shorter than I would like but other than that we manage to communicate, with the aid of pictures and lots of hand flapping from me.

Johanne has wandered back to meet the boys and when I join them they are all having a strange brew called a Desperados, quite a strong beer with aromatics in it, and reading the label, a lot of sugar.  They all have another and I have fruit juice.  It is quite a cloudy morning so it is comfortable sitting outside opposite the little square.  Apparently the gendarmerie guys fax the clearance forms to Guadeloupe and you have to wait for them to come back, but today, the fax machine doesn’t work, and they don’t seem concerned about us staying without clearance. 

Photo:  A rest and a drink 

We decide to explore, and head across the island, passing some lovely little houses and a very ornate graveyard full of plastic flowers.  I tell you, if you sell plastic flowers on any of the Caribbean islands you can make a fortune!

  Photo:  A graveyard of plastic flowers

The sea on the other side of Terre d’en Haut is the Atlantic, and today it is windswept and the sea is rough.  Just like in St Barths, the airport runway ends up on the beach.  This one doesn’t seem quite as busy though.

Photo:  The end of the runway

As we stand and watch the sea it starts to rain.  Johanne is prepared for this and in the strengthening wind we all have a laugh watching her trying to get into a plastic poncho, which to be frank, looks more like a giant condom!  It stops raining before she’s successful, and it takes another couple of minutes to get her back out of it.

Photo:  Johanne fighting to stay dry

Photo:  A windswept, Atlantic beach

On the way back, we spot some steps leading up to the top of the hill overlooking the town and we climb, regretting the decision when we are half way up but glad we keep going when we see the views from the top.

 

Photos:  Views of Bourg des Saintes from the hillside

Johanne gets a hankering for pizza but after sitting ourselves down at a table in a little restaurant, I go and ask the lady, who obviously had no intention of approaching us English, if pizzas are available at lunchtime and she says ‘non’.  So we go back to the boat for lunch.  Funnily enough, all the shops which we wanted to look in this morning when they were open, are now closed for lunch.  The boys look smug.

After lunch and a little nap (again not me!) Johanne and I drag them out again.  The only shop they wanted to visit is open.  All the ones Johanne and I want to visit remain firmly shut.  So we eat huge ice creams as compensation.  Mike and Johanne get in a mess with theirs as they melt and drip continually in the heat.

Getting back in the dinghy, Steve demonstrates once again that he is not the agile mountain goat he thinks he is, more the cart horse.  As he clambers in the whole thing rocks precariously, nearly sending Johanne and I over the side.  He’ll probably succeed before the end of their holiday too!

Photo:  Steve and Mike modelling their new shorts

We are all too stuffed full of ice cream to eat dinner so I make hummus and Johanne fries flatbreads and we settle down to watch the last of series two of Gavin and Stacey.  How exciting is that?  But we all love it and just have the Christmas special to look forward to now.