We were planning on snorkeling today up at the north end of the island, but the waves looked a bit rough and it was raining, so it turned into a two museum day. First stop was the Gauguin Center, devoted to the four months Gauguin spent in Martinique. It may not seem like a long time, especially as he was sick with malaria he had contracted while working as a navvy on the Panama Canal, but it was a critical…
I already mentioned that Napoleon Bonaparte’s first wife Josephine grew up around here. Today we went to visit what remains of her old family home. Not much as it turns out. That’s the foundations of the big house. The plantation sugar refinery still has some walls and a chimney, and the old kitchen building has been restored as a small museum. They have a collection of portraits of Josephine… … including the tragic, “Josephine signing the divorce papers after she…
We went out snorkeling today at a good location, though the sea was a little rough. We spotted a sea turtle in the distance. It went up for air… … then swam down… … and tried to sit in a big tube-shaped coral head. Then there was a strange transparent penis shaped thing. Paula thinks it’s a pyrosome, in which case it’s a glow-in-the-dark penis shaped thing. Apparently they are colonies of hundreds of thousands of zooids, which along with…
There are many things that are better here than in the Bahamas, but one thing that the Bahamas is way ahead on is fishing limits. Everything bigger than a grunt here appear to have been eaten. No grouper, no big rays, no sharks, no big barracuda, no tarpon, and the only big parrot fish we have seen were in the Cousteau reserve. Today we went out on a boat trip. Martinique looks lovely from the ocean, too. First stop was…
Yesterday was my birthday, so we went out to dinner, and I did not get the blog written. Today, however, I got hold of the latest book in the Rivers of London series so there is nothing to write about unless you like book reviews. Anyhow, here are some of yesterday’s pictures from the Jardin de Balata, a botanic garden. They have a great collection of bromeliads, palm trees, and bamboo. I’m not sure what the flower below is… ……
You may have noticed that the trip so far has been somewhat lacking in skulls, but we found one today (or at least a statue of one) in the Eglise Notre Dame de la Bonne Délivrance in Les Trois-Îlets, a nearby town. It’s quite a pretty church… … with big chandeliers and decorative stenciled paintwork inside. They are proud of the fact that this was the parish church of the young Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, who went…
Ontogeny, as they say, recapitulates phylogeny, one of those delightful theories like the luminiferous aether and phlogiston that seem to explain things neatly but are in fact completely wrong. Be that as it may, it was time for us to follow in the handprints of our hominid ancestors and descend from the treetops. I have to say, evolution would have gone a lot faster if our arboreal ancestors had had access to a freight elevator. Here’s some more pictures of…
Welcome to today’s thrilling installment of SPOT THE OCTOPUS. No, I haven’t gone crazy and started giving names to the octopuses as well as the squid. Octopuses are masters of camouflage and disguise. Imagine a cross between a chameleon and silly putty. They can change shape and color faster than Italy changes governments. So, the game is to find the octopus in this picture. Don’t worry if you can’t spot him, there’s a video later to help. Today we mostly…
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…
It’s been a busy couple of days, so I haven’t had much time to blog. However, now I am safely ensconced in a hammock about twenty feet up a tree in Martinique, I have time to write. Unfortunately, the quality of arboreal WiFi in Martinique is not that good, so I may get bored waiting for pictures to upload and cut the soles off my shoes and learn to play the flute instead. Friday was our last full day in…