First impressions of Gwada

• Easiest international country entry ever. No forms, no stupid machines that take your picture, just a quick rubber stamp and our bags were already on the carousel.
• Hey, they have cows here! First cows of the day just a few kilometers from the airport.
• Yuck, ugly billboards.
• Hey, I know that island, someone was murdered there in Death in Paradise.
• Ooh, look at that hotel, someone was murdered there in Death in Paradise.
• There’s the headland where someone was murdered in an ingenious way involving changing the time on someone’s cell phone.

We are staying at an AirBnB in downtown Deshaies, which is one of the main locations for filming Death In Paradise. Neither of us have been murdered yet, probably because there are only two of us, and not the more traditional four suspects and a victim.

When I say we are in downtown Deshaies, that means our front door opens onto a street full of shops, and our back stairs lead down to a bay full of sailboats. Remember that murder on a sailboat?

It was probably one of these. The image above scrolls from left to right so you get the full panorama from our deck.

There are pelicans roosting on the dinghies moored just offshore, and feral chicken stalking the streets of town. We saw an interesting drama on the back street of town. (That’s back street singular. There are only two streets in town.) A vacant lot was alive with land crabs, but the suddenly froze when a rooster approached, and plopped into their burrows when he got within a meter or two. The crabs vanished one by one as he stalked across the dirt.

In another spot we saw a mother hen scrabbling in the leaf litter for grubs for her chicks (who were hiding in her shadow apart from one adventurous one. Meanwhile dad was keeping a wary eye out for stray cats.

There is a great boulangerie and patisserie across the road. Looks like we will be putting on even more weight this trip.