Saturday – Fort de France, Martinique

Today, we arrived at our penultimate port-of-call, Fort de France on the island of Martinique.

While Fort de France is the ‘capital’ of Martinique, its true capital is Paris, since Martinique is French. It imports everything from France and doesn’t export anything; in fact, even tourism is something that they don’t quite seem to have mastered yet. Some years ago, they had a massive transport strike, which meant that visiting ships had no excursions and no means to get around the island. As a consquence, cruise ships stopped coming, and have only started to return in the last four years. Today, we will be the last-but-one cruise ship to visit until October.

All of this was explained to us by our guide today as Tracey and I were once again escorting a tour to yet another botanical garden.

My guide explained that while living on a Caribbean island might seem like paradise, Martinique, which has a popoulation of 400,000, is prone to earthquakes and hurricanes, both of which have devastated large areas of the island over the years, and the volcano on the island (which is dormant, but still active) lurks in the background just waiting to spoil things should they become too cosy.

When we arrived at our destination, Anse Latouche, I don’t think it was quite what folks were expecting.

In the blurb for the tour, Anse Latouche is described as follows:

‘Founded in 1643, the Capitaine Latouche habitation is surely the oldest plantation on the island of Martinique. This old sugar plantation… has been converted into a superb botanical garden by the creator of the Balata garden (also on the island), landscape architect Jean-Philippe Thoze. In this enchanting setting you can also discover Martinque Zoo…’

Which all reads as if it’s primarily a garden with a zoo tacked on…

Except, when when we arrived there, it was clearly a zoo, with a botanical garden integrated into it of sorts, but primarily, it is a place to bring children to see monkeys, cougars and flamingoes.

Actually I rather enjoyed the visit; the old plantation buildings, mostly derelict and massively overgrown, had an ‘Iles Du Salut’ feel to it (one of mine and Tracey’s favourite cruising destinations, on the Amazon trip… Devil’s island in French Guyana). Its ancient beauty had a dark undertone to it, since slavery was a fact of life in its heyday.

Wobbly rope-bridges and winding pathways led us through the gardens, past the old plantation buildings and an impressive aqueduct. The animal enclosures seemed well-managed and the animals content enough, although animals in cages really don’t hold any appeal to me whatsoever. I just feel this overwhelming urge to take a pair of pliers to the netting and let the tropical birds fly away to freedom…

So… it was a zoo. Sure, there were gardens there too, but I saw no signs telling folks what they were looking at. The only signage that there was related to the animal exhibits, none of which were in English. Even a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ exhibition was rather wasted on me since it was all written in French.

After the zoo, we drove back to Fort de France via a very windy road through the rainforest, alongside the volcano and the mountains known as ‘Pitons’.

After lunch at the ship, Tracey and I went for a walk into town, on the hunt for a beach.

Unfortunately, the only beach we found was small and quite uninviting. Ferries to the beaches on the opposite side of the bay were available for $7 return, but as the last advertised times of return were around 4:30pm, and it was already 3:30pm (and the journey across the bay takes approximately 20 minutes), it didn’t seem like a good idea.

The town of Fort de France seemed closed, and the fact that the Voyager was visiting didn’t seem to spur the locals into wanting anything to do with us. I hope the next ship, whatever it is (the last before October, remember) gets a warmer welcome.

With no other options available, we went for a walk along the seafront as far as we dared go. There was a path, but it was overgrown and eventually petered-out, so we doubled-back and walked along the road, looking at the houses perched on the very edge of the crumbling cliff. We came across a bar and figured we’d stop for a drink before heading back, only when we walked into it, we were told that by a couple of guys hanging out in there that they weren’t open… why weren’t we surprised?…

We headed back towards the ship, along the front. We passed a massive new office development that has been constructed right on the sea-front, directly in front of an older apartment block. Many of the apartments were displaying orange flags in protest at the office block, yet their protest appears to have been in vain. After all; the office block is there… I can’t imagine anyone at this point saying ‘yep, you’ve got a point… we’ve really spoiled your sea view… sorry about that… pull it down…’

Oh those French… they do love a protest…