Martinique: France in the Caribbean

St. Pierre is one of my favorite cities in the Caribbean. It boasts

restaurants, patisseries, shops, vegetable markets, a zoo, snorkeling, diving, underwater wrecks/statues, ruins and seaglass.

Mount Pelee, a volcano on the northern part of the island blew its top in 1902. Pyroclastic flows destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre and killed an estimated 30,000 people. We visited many ruins around the city during our stay. Our days in St. Pierre were filled with walking, shopping, talking to people, bagettes, croissants and ice cream. It was a beautiful stay.

On to picturesque Case Pilote and Anse Dufour, two small towns along Martinique's western coast.

While exploring Case Pilote, we met Gerald, a friendly man who had lived in New York City, Miami and Atlanta. He loved the US, but also enjoys his hometown, an "easy life", he said. We walked through the city and stopped at a patisserie for coffee and sweets. We also bought some fruit and vegetables at the covered market. Later, we went back to Liahona, for dinner and scrabble. It was a wonderful day.

Time to move on to Anse Dufour, where three boats from the Yacht Festival in Dominica were anchored. It's nice finding people we know when we arrive anywhere. We went snorkeling in a little cave in our bay. The reef was teeming with sea life. The temperature was perfect. It's wonderful to live on the ocean.

The bay right next door sports a black sand beach, much different from the tan colored sand of Dufour. We all went over to snorkel along the wall. The pier was not small boat friendly, so Tim waited in the dinghy while Maggie and I went to snorkel. Unfortunately, Maggie dropped and lost her mask. We spent quite a while looking for her mask, but, no luck. We signaled for Tim to pick us up and returned to the boat.

More Martinique in our next blog post. Thanks for reading.