Off the Beaten Path - Guadeloupe Travel Guide

Off the Beaten Track

Terre-de-Haut
Small, unhurried Terre-de-Haut is French in nature, Mediterranean in appearance and, all in all, one of the most appealing islands in the Caribbean. It's a tiny package with a lot to offer, including a beautiful landscape of volcanic hills and deep bays, though it can get overrun with tourists on weekends and in the height of the season. Many islanders still rely on fishing as a mainstay. You can often find them mending nets along the waterfront and see their colorful locally made boats, called saintoises, lining the shore.

Terre-de-Haut's history stands apart from other places in Guadeloupe; since the island was too hilly and dry for sugar plantations, slavery never took hold. Consequently, the population is largely comprised of 'blue eyes' who still trace their roots to the early seafaring Norman and Breton colonists. Home to most of the island's residents, Bourg des Saintes is a picturesque village with a decidedly Norman accent. Its narrow streets are lined with whitewashed red-roofed houses with shuttered windows and yards of flowering hibiscus. It's a bustling place at ferry times, quiet at others, and always fun to kick around in. There are small restaurants, ice-cream shops, scooter rentals, art galleries and gift shops clustered along the main road, which is pedestrian-only during the day. The well-preserved mid-19th-century Fort Napoléon, on the northern side of the harbor, is surrounded by cacti gardens.

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Marie-Galante
Marie-Galante is a rural island untouched by mass tourism. It offers visitors lovely uncrowded beaches and some great country scenery. Very few English-speaking tourists come this way, which is just as well, as few of the island's 13,000 residents speak any English at all. Twenty-five kilometers (16mi) southeast of Guadeloupe proper, Marie-Galante is the largest of Guadeloupe's outer islands, much of it planted in sugar cane. The undistinguished commercial and administrative center of Grand-Bourg, on the southwestern coast, has about half the population; most of the rest are evenly divided between its two smaller towns, Capesterre and Saint-Louis. The latter is a fishing village that's the island's main anchorage for yachts and a secondary port for ferries from Guadeloupe.

In the early 1800s, Marie-Galante boasted nearly 100 sugar mills, and the countryside is still dotted with the scattered ruins of most of them. Today sugar production is concentrated at a single mill, while cane is turned into rum at three distilleries, which are among the island's main attractions. The Distillerie Poisson, midway between Saint-Louis and Grand-Bourg, bottles the island's best-known rum under the Père Labat label. Distillerie Bielle, between Grand-Bourg and Capesterre, offers tours of its age-old operation.

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La Désirade
La Désirade, about 10km (6mi) off the eastern tip of Grande-Terre, is the archipelago's least developed and least visited island. It has a long history of isolation, having been a leper colony for over 200 years (the leprosarium closed in the 1950s). These days, islanders engage mainly in fishing, boatbuilding, agriculture and raising sheep, though there are some rustic tourist facilities available.

Looking somewhat like an overturned boat when viewed from Guadeloupe, La Désirade is 11km (7mi) long and 2km (1mi) wide, with desert-like terrain, coconut and sea grape trees along the coast and a large cactus garden at the eastern end. The uninhabited northern side of the island has a rocky coastline with rough open seas, while the southern side has sandy beaches and reef-protected waters. La Désirade's harbor and airport are on the southwestern side of the island in Grande Anse (also called Le Bourg), the main village. There are smaller settlements at Le Souffleur and Baie Mahault. All three villages have good beaches

Off the Beaten Path in Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe Off the Beaten Path

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