Gonna check out the area a bit today and check out so we depart early tomorrow morning. Want to be moving around 6 am so we have lots of time for the 8+ hour crossing to Antigua.
I’ve done the necessary website work and we already discovered the Customs shack down by the marina so this should be no problem, right? Wrong of course. Doesn’t seem to matter where you are, Customs and Immigration is always a struggle and nowhere is that more evident than in the French provinces. Although you can do almost everything online now (and I know how to do it, which took some time), you still need to get a stamp on exit or the other country might not accept your digital checkout paperwork. The customs shack is supposed to be open, but the door is locked. We learn later they may actually have been in there, they just don’t come to the door unless you actually knock. We assume it’s closed.
No matter, we’ll walk up the hill to the Botanical Gardens and swing by on the way back down. The book says it is straight up the hill for a kilometer and that is a pretty fair description. The weather is pretty cool though with small rain showers now and then so it is not too bad. It’s about a 20 minute walk.
The gardens are pretty, rather expensive at EU$18 each but very well maintained. Surprisingly, almost all the flora and fauna is NON-Guadeloupean, most not even Caribbean. The information signs are almost 100% French and it would be nice for EU$18 if they put some English in there. Even St. Pierre had multilingual headsets for the volcano museum. We walk around the park, it’s very nice, but we don’t stay any longer than it takes to walk around. I try to get Jacko the macaw to talk, sing or dance – apparently he likes music and seemed interested in Collector by Here We Go Magic but wouldn’t take the bait.
We eventually leave, walk back down the hill and check out the old battery about halfway down. In true Guadeloupe/Martinique fashion it is pretty much abandoned and no signage. Christy thinks we can walk back along the shoreline but I convince her that would be crazy, we walk back up the hill and then back down to the town.
It’s just after 2 pm, Customs is closed. Grrrr. We head to the Police Station, heard you can check out there. They have a sign on the door saying not to come here, go to the office by the marina, they are open until 2 pm. Grrrr. This means we can’t “officially” check out today, which means we can’t leave at 6 am tomorrow. Over the next 4 or 5 hours we check with our friends, online, all resources to see if Antigua will accept a digital signout from Guadeloupe. The answer is “probably” but not for certain so we eventually resign ourselves to one more day in Deschaies. It’s OK, we like it here.
We’re both hot and tired but figure we have to make the walk to the famous Grand Anse beach on the other side of the town from the marina and Botanical Gardens, apparently it’s about a 20 minute walk. So we do.
It’s not too bad a walk, you do have to go up a small hill and back down, but then it’s relatively flat after that. It is a nice beach, pretty steep so big waves and lots of kids frolicking in the surf. Fairly busy for a Wednesday afternoon but not too bad. We easily find a spot in the shade, Christy goes for a swim while I lay down and try to cool my shoulder which is on fire. Apparently you can dinghy here from Deshaies but I don’t know how you would land a dinghy on this steep beach. Maybe at the north end where is seems less steep.
We don’t stay long, but leave around 4 pm. Will come back some time and stay longer. Walk back to town, get to the dinghy at 4:45 pm (Perry wins the bet)
It’s during this time that we go through all the research to decide if we’re going to chance the trip to Antigua in the morning or stay until Friday. My original weather forecast said that Friday was a bad wind day but now it looks fine so that settles it, we’ll wait.
I rig up a DIY neck stretcher and use it while we’re on our zoom call with Laura and gang. Seems to help a bit.