It doesn't take long to figure out we are in France again. The roads are impeccable, the cafe is strong and the croissants are fresh and crisp. We had croissants and a baguette delivered to the boat this morning at 7:00, by a young man from Nantes who takes divers out and lives on a small sailboat closer to shore.
The computer on which I have to fill out Django's clearance has a french keyboard. Everything in the wrong place, so its a slow hunt and peck to transfer the data subsets of Django and her crew from one form to another, yet again. I think they need to make me do it to make sure I understand that they are the masters and I am the serf. Surely they have seen our minutiae enought times, errors and ommissions excepted. How many times must they have it re-entered, perhaps correctly, more likely not, given the damnable french keyboards?
In any case, K and I decided we would make a side trip. First thought a rented car to visit the Musee du Rhum, some 15 Km distant, near St. Rose. The bus, we are told, makes frequent passes through Deshaies, and there is only one "correspondence", to get to close by the Musee. So we think adventure and stand by the stop as a taxi pulls into view. I am interviewing the driver as the bus pulls in behind him. Sixty Euro, he says, two each by bus, so its rather a no brainer and off we go to St. Rose in a lovely minibus with an automatic side door with a step that slides out, not to mention a fare machine which is guaranteed to work and the sign says we must be sure to take our tickets.
We make our correspondence in St. Rose and two stops later we are at Viard, 200 metres from our destination. The Musee is in a lovely park with tall tropical trees and red ginger on either hand. Guadeloupe is so much lusher than Antigua, and so much cooler in the evening. I think the cool air slips down from the high hills and cools the lowlands. We are at anchor and as soon as the sun sets, the temperature drops 8 degrees C.
The Musee is surprising. For a rum distillery, there are remarkable collections of exotic insects and beautiful scale models of the world's most famous ships, triremes, Napoleon's wonderful barge, the 'Nina', 'Pinta', 'Sta Maria', the 'Beagle'! which carried Charles Darwin out to the Galapagos, stopping on the way in Buenos Aires to stay with one of my forebears. Really very good. The rum part was very well presented but less interesting and the tasting we could have done without. Barbados rum is better.
We walked back to St. Rose, K not entirely happy with the plod along the main road in the noonday sun, but I like a walk. There we had a nasty sandwich and a beer, before visiting the local grocery emporium. We figured that St. Rose being considerably larger than Deshaies, we could expect more of the french exotica. There was that. Fine cheeses, many french wines at a fraction of the price we would pay at home, fruits from Europe fresh and cheap. Later I discovered that our smaller Deshaies grocery had all the same amenities.
Home again in the bus and back aboard Django for an afternoon swim. Dinner was a fresh baguette with hard sausage and a selection of fine cheese, including a ripe Camembert the likes of which I have not seen in Montreal for 30 years. A beatiful ripe Italian pear rounded out the meal and inspired me to this post. It is amazing to me that Guadeloupe can provide such excellence to its population at a pretty good cost, all fresh and perfectly ripened. Where do we go wrong? I realise the cost must be subsidised by mother France, but the quality, why is that so much better? Its a mystery, and as the bard says, 'I think I'll jess let the mystery be'.
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