A stop in Guadeloupe

I was on the island of Guadeloupe twice within a week, the first time for the transfer from the airport to the port and the second for a brief visit before catching the plane again. The island gives its name to a French overseas department, so here technically we are not only in France but also in the European Union and the Euro area, as the circulating currency shows. Besides, among the Caribbean lands visited, this is the one that architecturally comes closest to our continent. In reality Guadeloupe, on which some smaller islands depend, is made up of two islands separated by a narrow channel: Grande Terre and Basse Terre. If during the first stop we stayed on Grande Terre and specifically at Pointe a Pitre, which is the most important city of the Overseas Department, on the second stop we pushed on, crossing the channel, onto Basse Terre.

With my travel companion and a couple of friends we met on the cruise, we took a modern taxi, obviously with a strictly French plate, and went south along a wide and very comfortable road. Our tour continued along a little mountain road that wound up and down through the green tropical forest up to a car park from which our brief excursion towards the Carbet waterfall began. The approach march to the waterfall allowed us to admire the thick vegetation before offering us the spectacular view of the water tumbling luxuriantly from the mountain. Having done the excursion in about an hour we took the taxi again, which brought us back to Pointe a Pitre on Grande Terre, not to the port from which we had set off but to the airport.