Make no mistake, the Antilles are volcanic: conical mountains, lush vegetation, and the occasional town lost in an eruption. In the 1997 the capital of Montserrat, Plymouth, was completely destroyed by lava and volcanic ash and had to be abandoned. However, the other things you get with active volcanos are hot springs, and if you have any sense, geothermal energy. Guadeloupe has one geothermal power plant, which uses a bore hole to get hot water. It discharges the excess into the sea, while it is still heated to around 75C, 170F. This turns the beach at Bouillante into a huge hot tub.

The closer you get to the gushing stream the warmer it gets, but there are occasional eddies of cooler ocean water, and further out the warm water floats on top of the cold so if you stand up your chest is toasty and your legs are chill.

We spent a while soaking up the warmth and chatting to another couple there, then got out the snorkel gear. The visibility was weird because of the mixing hot and cold water but I did get a good view of four large calamari. They are such strange creatures in the water, switching direction from forwards to backwards seamlessly. I’m not even sure what counts as forwards as their eyes are more or less in the middle.

Paula spotted a lovely iguana soaking up the steam by the outlet channel.

This evening we heard live music from our apartment and wandered over to the local mini-park to find this going on.

The music was all percussion and voice, with a call and response pattern. The lead singer would say a line and then the rest of the band (and as many of the audience members as they could get to join in) would repeat the chorus line.

The lyrics were probably in Creole, so we couldn’t make them out. The drumming was great though, and the dancing was an interesting style, less openly sexual than Bahamian dance and with more fancy footwork.

At first I was concerned that one of the band would be mysteriously murdered before the end of the show, but as there were more than five of them they managed to survive.