Cayamo Cruise: Day 5, the Island

[livingdeb]

Day five was our last island stop: St. Barthelany. Prior research told me we would be landing in the town of Gustavia, shaped like a horseshoe. Although it is now French-speaking, it has many Swedish historical sites including the renovated wall house (library and museum) on the far side of the harbor and Fort Gustov near a lighthouse on the outskirts of town with a breath-taking view. So we decided to walk around the horseshoe and keep an eye out for those two sites.

Getting There

Here is a beautiful rock. This is not the island we went to.





This time we we were not allowed to just park at the island but took some boats. The wave action made boarding these boats rather thrilling. Sometimes the boat would be a step down.



Sometimes it would be a step up.



And you never really knew until it was too late. But it turned out not to be hard at all the two times I did it. They would tell us to wait during the really choppy bits.

Grocery Store

One thing I really like to do in alien environments is to visit a grocery store. Admittedly, this is not as thrilling when you have prepaid for all the delicious food you can eat for a week. But we checked out this store anyway:



And it was still a little fun.



Hey, how do they get chocolate shredded wheat? And chocolate chip Special K?



And they have Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread) and the exciting new Spekuloos (basically spice cookie frosting) with the peanut butter. And the Ovo maltine crunchy spread? Hmm, that can't be healthy.

They have Dijon mustard and Dijon mayonnaise:



Those look like white beans at first glance, but based on what they are located between, I'm going to assume they are some kind of candy.



Walking Around the Horseshoe

Here is how to park on Saint Bart's, where space is tight:



Leave some sidewalk for pedestrians and some street for vehicles. Nevertheless, we dubbed this island "civilized," because we were never approached by salespeople.

It seemed like most of the streets had two names. I'm guessing one was French and one was Swedish. And I'm pretty sure they were rarely the same name in two languages, but two different languages. This was my favorite juxtaposition:



This also shows directions to (I'm guessing) the beach. Not the plague.

My guess is that these signs mean that this steep road is two-way, and you cannot park in the up-facing direction (i.e. on the right side of the road). Because it's two-way and there isn't room. No, I do not want to try parking here. With my manual-transmission vehicle.



I bet there is a witty way to describe this building:



One end is my favorite. The other end also appears to work.

Wall House

Check it out, we actually found the wall house:



Out back is, I'm guessing, an old kitchen.



There was a display about basket making.





They also had books for French dummies. Wonder how the word "Nuls" translates. Brief googling suggests to me that it means "useless" or "hopeless."



Heading Back

Back outside, we walked back around the horseshoe taking a mostly different route. Here is an interesting porch:



Here's an ancient relic and a modern house:



Are you wondering what's in there, too? It's this:



Are you still wondering what's in there? Me, too.

Here is what looks like another ancient kitchen:



So we saw some stairs that went up to who knows where. There was a sign at the bottom, but I don't remember what it said. It didn't really explain anything to me other than to make it clear that we were allowed to climb them.



And here's what's at the top:



Oh, you knew that? But here you can see the horseshoe shape of the land. And this:



The wild plants are actually the sort of thing you would expect to find in an arid landscape. My best guess on why is that the thin soil may not hold water well. Here's a fine plant:



Oh, you've probably been waiting for this view:



There was also some fine woodwork. Here's a close-up:



Here's a more full view:



This must be Fort Gustov. There is no lighthouse visible to me here, though.

Here is some architecture with stone, brick, and shutters:



Here is some architecture with bricks, stone, and wine barrels:



Here is a lighthouse on the other side of the island.



We did actually have a map of the island. It was very pretty, showing 3-D views of all the buildings and all the red roofs. But there were very few labels and both the stairway and the lighthouse were beyond the bounds of the map.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, a place where the breakfast cereals look even unhealthier than here. (I love looking at grocery stores when I travel, too.)

I still wonder what's in there, but it's rather shockingly clean. Strange.

-sally

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

That unhealthy look could have been due to the Debbie bias. Mmm, chocolate breakfast.

You wonder what's in where, that's shockingly clean?