I mentioned in the last post that I was writing it twenty feet up a tree. This is not as precarious as it sounds. We are staying in a well appointed tree house.

At least fairly well appointed. It doesn’t have air conditioning, or even glass in the windows, but there is electricity and plumbing, and a large four poster bed draped in mosquito netting. Carib grackles and lesser Antillean bullfinches come and perch on the kitchen window ledge. There is a deck on the other side with hammocks and a dining table. The shower cubicle has its own door to the deck, so you can come straight from the beach and shower off without getting sand on the floor inside.

The only catch is that the approach is a little rustic.

It’s a good job we had all that practice with the suspension bridges in the zoo in Guadeloupe, because this one is much worse. First it gets really steep near the top, and secondly the hand rails are loose, so they don’t help you to balance much. Then when someone is coming up the bridge, the whole tree house rocks a little. Luckily there is a little freight elevator to bring the luggage up.

Finding the place in the dark was challenging, as the parking lot is several hundred yards uphill. I finally found Gérard, who we were supposed to meet. He doesn’t speak much English, and we don’t speak much French, but we discovered we had all been using the Duolingo app, so communications were established. Gerard drove me back up to the parking lot along a precipitous and winding private road. “Disneyworld!” he said as we tore around a hairpin bend at speed. I made Paula sit in the front seat as he drove us back down.

There is great snorkeling just off the beach here. This morning we saw a couple of new to us species of fish, and an octopus galumphing from crevice to crevice and turning into a rock every time they stopped moving. There was also a school of fifteen squid, but they did not stay around for long enough for me to give them all names.

We went out to do some shopping and sightseeing at lunchtime. The beachfront towns here feel more prosperous and less Caribbean-shabby than Deshaies. I was reminded of California beach towns, except the roof tiles were flat rather than the curved. Of course, this part of the world has a bit more recorded history than California. We are in the commune of Les Anses d’Arlet. Anse is a cove, and Arlet was 17th century indigenous chief, whose people were dispossessed of the homeland in the north of Martinique and move here for a while before being chased ever further south by the arrival of Jesuit missionaries.

This is the local catholic church…

… rebuilt in the late 18th century after the British burned down the original one in 1763. I didn’t even know the Britain was at war with France in 1763, but it turns out that was towards the end of the Seven Years War. In the 18th century Britain was at war with France for a total of forty six years out of the hundred, so even in peacetime they were probably burning down French colonies just to keep in practice.

After lunch Paula went out snorkeling again and saw the local hawksbill sea turtles, while I sat in a hammock and caught up with the blog.