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Caribbean Travel RoundupNewsletter - Paul Graveline, Editor |
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Trip: Oct 14 21, 2000 Air Canada ran a discounted Aero plan points special for frequent flyers to Caribbean destinations in September and October. It is not hard to figure out that the planes are flying with empty seats during hurricane season; hence the reduced points level for a free flight! Flying from western Canada, we had to over-night in Montreal, but the direct 4 hour flight to Guadeloupe the next day got us into paradise by shortly after noon. This was our first trip to Guadeloupe, one of the larger islands in the Lesser Antilles chain. We selected Guadeloupe as both of us are enrolled in French language training and we wanted an opportunity to practice our learning. The first two things to hit us when we landed were the heat and the fact that nobody was speaking English. It looks like we came to the right spot! Getting through customs and immigration was a breeze in the usual manner: just smile a lot and STAY BEHIND THE YELLOW LINE (actually, le ligne jaune) until called. We had to hurry as we had booked flights to Les Saintes on Air Guadeloupe, leaving within an hour of our landing at Pole Caraibes Aeroport. We checked in at the Air Guadeloupe desk and again my passable French got us through. We boarded the little 9 passenger, single engine prop plane for the short 30 minute hop to Terre-de-Haut, the more populated of Les Saintes archipelago. There was only one other passenger on the flight, a young man from Quebec who had made this trip several times before. The plane was straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, a single row of wooden seats down each side of the plane. This looked like an adventure without doubt. The flight across the open water was beautiful, but when I saw Terre-de-Haut, I started to wonder where we would land. Ah yes, there was a tiny airstrip down there, nestled between the mountain and the sea. Our fellow passenger told us we might want to close our eyes!! No way, I wasn't going to miss this for anything. After a pass over the strip to ensure there were no goats blocking the way, our pilot turned and flew directly at the mountain. As we just cleared the peak, he slammed the nose towards the ground and we virtually dive-bombed the inland end of the strip. This was no gliding onto the strip; there wasn't room to allow that. He literally flew the plane into the asphalt. As the tires hit the pavement, he laid hard on the brakes and we stopped within a stones throw of the ocean. Due to the prevailing winds, the landing has to be made from the mountainside, towards the ocean. When we got off the plane, we thanked the pilot profusely; his response was that after 4 times a day, it became rather routine! So there we were, standing on the edge of the airstrip, surrounded by goats grazing the lush grass. We hadn't confirmed any reservations, but I knew of a little inn that had been written up in the book The 100 best places to stay in the Caribbean LAuberge de Petits Saints. We had decided to spend a few days on this little mountainous 3 mile long island partly due to the comments we had read about the Auberge, but also because many people compare Terre-de-Haut to St. Barths before the rich and famous discovered it. The bay is ranked one of the most beautiful in the world, with a mini Pain de Sucre a la Rio, at one entrance to the bay. When we arrived at LAuberge de Petits Saints, we could see it was a very unique little hotel. The owner, Didier Spindler, is an artist and collector, and the main house and bungalows were filled with his artwork and all sorts of Caribbean collectibles very eclectic. The auberge is high on the hill (the one the plane had to fly over), and has a tremendous view of the harbour and village below. Being low season, Didier put us into one of the villas, for the same price as a room in the main house. Our villa was approximately 1500 sq. ft., 3 BRs, with a huge wrap-around terrace which overlooked most of the island. (certainly more than we expected or needed) We spent most of the first day at the pool. The next morning, I walked downtown to the village of Bourg, and rented a 2 passenger motor scooter. There are very few automobiles on the island; only the business owners are allowed to own them. The scooter was perfect to see the island. We visited the Pain de Sucre end of the island first, including the Bois Joli hotel and beach a spectacular spot. Other highlights of the island were the beach at Pain de Sucre, Crawen Beach, Pompierre Beach, the heights of Fort Napoleon and the quaint peaceful downtown Bourg. We had 2 memorable meals on Terre-de-Haut: lunch at Bois Joli on the terrace with a view of Pain de Sucre and dinner at LAuberge de Petits Saints, again on the terrace overlooking the town and harbour. We tried the local delicacy accras, which are deep fried cod morsels, farcis a mixture of crab, manioc and avocado, and the lambis, which are the meat of the conch shells. After 2 days on Terre-de-Haut, we were ready to tackle Guadeloupe itself. The take-off from the strip was not nearly as exciting as the landing! We got into Pole Caraibes aeroport just as it was getting dark and rush hour out of Pointe-a-Pitre was starting. We picked up our reserved Opel Corsa and navigated our way out of this very busy city towards Basse-Terre, the more tropical side of Guadeloupe. The 36 kms to our resort LHabitation Grande Anse took us more than an hour on the dark windy roads, dodging both pedestrians and the ubiquitous goats. We again managed to obtain a great suite without having a reservation. Our room was huge and overlooked the pool, and further down, the beautiful mile long arc of Grande Anse beach. This resort is located just outside of the village of Deshaies, where Jacques Cousteau spent many of his later years. Highlights during our 3 day stay at LHabitation were, of course the beaches, Grande Anse and La Perle were both great. We drove through the National Parc one day and hiked into the Saut de Lezard the Lizards Tail, a beautiful natural rock amphitheatre with a 50 foot waterfall cascading into a pool at the bottom. This must be one of the most beautiful and peaceful places on the planet. The icy cold water of the waterfall was very refreshing after the 45-minute hike in through the steamy rain forest. The hike out was even tougher and we arrived back at the road drenched in perspiration and covered with mud to our knees. (it is a rain forest after-all!) The most enjoyable meals we had while visiting Basse-Terre were at La Note Blue, an open-air restaurant on the water in the village of Deshaies. The langouste fricassee and the langouste grillee were out of this world. Langouste is the local Caribbean lobster, similar to our Maritime lobsters but minus the claws. After 3 days we moved on to the touristy side of Guadeloupe Grande- Terre. We checked out hotels in Gosier and Ste Anne, and ended staying in a large resort just outside of Sainte Anne, called Village de Pierre et Vacances, a French chain resort. This is a beautiful place with all the facilities you would ever need. Although the resort is quite large, it never seems crowded as there are 2 pools (the main one is huge), and 2 beaches, and the suites are basically self-contained apartments with kitchens and cooking facilities. It appeared we were the only guests who were not from France. The staff also spoke very little English, so it was a great opportunity to hone up on the French! We spent 2 very relaxing days here. We did make a side-trip to Le Moule and St. Francois. Le Moule is a very interesting community, with many restored buildings from the days of colonial rule. Our last night, we decided to have a special meal. We drove to Gosier and ate at a Vietnamese restaurant we both love Vietnamese cuisine and try to find it wherever we travel. This small family operated restaurant provided a great meal. It was a nice change after eating Creole for a week. The next morning we packed up, returned the rental car and boarded Air Canada for home. As usual, a week was too short, but long enough to know we would love to return some day. The weather was great all week and thankfully, no hurricanes! The highlight was definitely the Guadeloupeen people, we were welcomed with smiles everywhere we went. These people are very proud of their island and their culture, which has developed over the past 350 years with roots in France and Africa. Til next time
My husband Dale and I visited Couples Negril for the second time from Nov. 26 Dec. 2nd, 2000. We had been there in May and enjoyed it so much, that when we found a great deal; we couldn't turn it down. We thought that there would be benefits returning so soon, as we would already know the "lay of the land". I decided to do another trip report, as there were some things we didn't experience the first time. We booked with Go Classy Tours again, and as before everything was handled without any problems at all. I faxed our flight details down a few weeks before, so we would be able to get the complimentary flight from Montego Bay to Negril. We stayed at the Hilton at O'Hare, the night before we left. It was very handy and we would do that again. I happened to find a great deal on the Internet and it was so convenient being right at the airport. We just walked over to the airport in the morning. The Air Jamaica flight left only a little late, but we had great seats again, row 5 A&B. We were one of the first off the airplane which comes in handy with customs and immigration. This time because of the time difference, we arrived at 11:30 AM. Customs and Immigration were a breeze. We were shuttled to another part of the airport and in a few minutes we were in the small 6- seater plane to Negril. When we arrived in Negril there wasn't anyone there from Couples to pick us up, we just caught a taxi to the resort. We were at Couples by 1 PM. We waited a little while for our room, but that seemed to be because they were waiting for a bellboy, rather than the room not being ready and while we were waiting a couple buses arrived. We finally did go ask again and they called someone to show us to our room right away. This is the one thing I think Couples could improve on and when I completed the questionnaire the day we left, I mentioned it. The reception desk personnel, are not the friendliest, they're almost standoffish. They may be very busy, but the rest of the staff did not seem like that at all. Our room was exactly like the last one, although I asked for a room on the north side of the resort this time and got one. We enjoy the water sports, and we thought it would be more convenient to be closer to that area. I also asked for a first floor room and we were on the 3rd floor, but the stairs were good exercise. Our room was in the 3rd room block, overlooking the spa area. We were very happy with this location and would ask for it again. We noticed that they weren't putting anyone in the 5th block, close to the new RIU resort construction. I did not hear any construction noise whatsoever from our room. We did not bother to attend the orientation as we remembered pretty much where everything was. I also remembered that there was a listing on TV of the various activity times. It was nice knowing where to go and we started signing up for things we wanted to do the next day. It was almost like we had never left. I had planned out ahead of time that we wanted to do the sunset cruise on Tuesday, and we didn't go to Rick's Café in May, so we planned to do that this time. They have trips to Rick's on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so we decided to go on Wednesday. We had gone shopping last time, so we didn't do that again. Dale wanted to get a few dives in, so things kind of fell in to place. We did not attend the returning couple's dinner on Monday evening. We went in May, and enjoyed it, but we remembered that it was Caribbean night on Monday. They had a Caribbean buffet and steel drum band. We really didn't want to miss it again. The management left us a bottle of rum and bag of Blue Mountain coffee in our room, a nice surprise. We ate at all of the restaurants again. On Friday night they had lobster in every restaurant. As before the food and drinks were excellent. One of the things I had heard about on the Internet, was a make shift tent on the other side of the RIU construction and Negril Cabins, just off the beach. Some young guys have an out door grill and will cook a lobster dinner. If I hadn't heard about it on the Internet, I would have been afraid to go exploring, but many different people said if you want a great lobster dinner, look for this tent, called the "Office of Nature". We did manage to find the tent the first day. We told them we'd be back, and on Tuesday, we had lobster for lunch. It was a great lobster and we got to talk to some of the Jamaicans who don't work at the resort. These guys all live in Orange Bay and are characters, but very friendly. We talked to the guys for quite awhile. The lobster cost between $10-15 for each dinner, we spent $40, which included both meals and drinks for everyone. We also made friends with Christine, who has a vendor stand next to them. I had read about bringing gifts for the staff on some of the Caribbean bulletin boards. Of course it's difficult to know what to do, but they especially suggest school supplies as all schools need just about everything. I brought several things along this time and gave many of them to Christine's daughter who attended a nearby school. I also brought some things for little children and gave them to our housekeeper. When we return I'll bring more school supplies, things that we take for granted mean so much to them. We enjoy water sports and we took the Hobie cats out again a couple times. We also went for a long kayak ride. Dale went diving several times. It was no problem to ride along on the dive boat. I brought a book along and read during the dive. We went snorkeling again this time. The reef is not as nice as many other places in the Caribbean, but we saw several colorful fish. We heard from someone that Couples would give you a pass to Swept Away for the day, as they are under the same ownership. We decided to ask about this, as we thought that we might like to stay there some time in the future. I talked with Dwight at the guest relation's desk and it took some checking with him a couple times but he set it up for us to visit for lunch on Friday. A Couples van brought us over and picked us up a couple hours later. When we got to Swept Away, they gave us bracelets and then let us walk around on our own. We spoke with some of the water sports staff and looked the whole resort over. Everyone was very friendly and the guests seemed to be having a good time. The fitness center is awesome. We had a delicious lunch in the Feathers restaurant. The restaurant, spa, and fitness center were across the road. They had other restaurants on the beach side too. The rooms looked very spacious with large patios. The taxi from Couples showed up right on time to bring us back. On Tuesday, we went on the sunset cruise, because we had enjoyed it so much in May. There wasn't any sunset, it was a cloudy day, but the cruise was fun. On Wednesday, we went to Rick's Café. The trip wasn't anything special and the drinks were expensive but we enjoyed watching the cliff jumpers and listened to the music. It was interesting to drive up to the cliffs and see the other resorts and bars. I noticed there weren't as many weddings during the week. When we were there in May; it seemed like there were several weddings every day. We saw a few, but not many. For the week after Thanksgiving, I really noticed the lack of Christmas commercialism. We saw very few Christmas decorations anywhere. Maybe when it got closer to Christmas there were more. It was kind of nice to get away from all the commercialism for a week. It started raining about mid morning on the day we left. We had decided to take the bus back, as it works good for us to take the commuter plane there and then ride the bus back. We were told on our last trip this is a good way to do it, as in the afternoon storms can come up fast and the plane ride could get rough. It happened that the commuter flights were all canceled because of bad weather and our bus was late leaving the resort. Several people came back to the resort and they needed to find transportation at the last minute. By the time we got going it was raining harder and we had a full bus. One guy in particular was a complete idiot. He kept telling the driver he was going to miss his flight so he wanted him to drive as fast as possible and not stop anywhere. He kept asking him how much farther it was to the airport and all in all acted like a complete jerk. The driver really did a good job, the roads were completely flooded in some areas and it was pouring. The simple wood frame houses of the poorer people looked especially bad in the pouring rain. We made it to the airport in 1-˝ hours and of course every single flight was delayed. We needed to be bused from the terminal to the plane and it seemed like they only had 1 bus in the whole airport! We finally left and got into O'Hare about 2 hours late. This was our fourth visit to a Couples resort; we have also been to Couples Ocho Rios twice. Both resorts are excellent and we would not hesitate to return to either one.
The travel reports posted by all the people on this newsletter helped us so much that we felt it was only fair to share our experience with others. This was our first trip to the islands, but hopefully will not be our last. We decided to spend our honeymoon on the lush island of St. Lucia, and more specifically at the Sandals St. Lucia Golf Resort and Spa. The day we landed (Christmas Eve 2000), it was pouring rain. I had read that it rained often in St. Lucia, but I thought it was just rain showers. As it turned out, this would be the only rain we saw except for 2 five minute showers during our 2 week stay. Immediately after passing through customs (which took all of 90 seconds), we were greeted by the Air Canada Vacations representative who gave us an envelope and our "suite concierge" voucher. and led us to our taxi. The drive was about 1 hour on rather windy roads, but really wasn't as bad as a lot of the other reports make it out to be. When we arrived at Sandals, we handed our suite concierge voucher to the bellman and were whisked away to the suite concierge while the others on our taxi were forced to wait in line at check-in. The suite conciere building was well-appointed and air conditioned, we were greeted with some champagne and moist towels. We were also explained about the way the resort works (all inclusive, no tipping etc...) We were then told that our original reservation (a one bedroom oceanview suite) was upgraded to a sunset bluff oceanview one bedroom suite. The room was magnificent, just as described in the brochures and on the website. we had a large sitting area, a large bedroom, marble bathroon with jacuzzi, mini bar (with full bottles of booze (replensihed everyday) and two TV's. Our view was amazing - especially in the late afternoon when the sun was setting. The restaurants were all great. The only problem was that my wife is petrified of cats and three of the restaurants (which are open air) have cats roaming around all the time, so we could not really eat in peace. Our favorite food was at Arizona's, but there were two cats there, so we had to get our food and eat somewhere else. All the restaurants were good. We went to the Pier restaurant at Halcyon one night but the food was not so great. The activities were fun, the playmakers are a blast, they really get you into the activities. One of them, Patra is 100% pure energy. We preferred to relax for the most part of our two week trip and the playmakers were understanding, they don't pressure you to participate. The motto over there is "No pressure, no problem". The sports were great. I golfed about 8 times, you have to pay for a caddy which costs $5 for 9 holes, plus a tip if you were happy. Rusty was my caddy, a great kid who can read any putt. He was also very patient when my wife played. She's a beginner and he really took the time to help her out with her swing. We went snorkeling, waterskiing and kayaking, all of which were a lot of fun. We also took a day sail called the "soufriere day sail" which takes you down the west coast of the island to the Pitons, and a town called Soufriere, where you board taxis which take you to sulfur springs (the drive in volcano) and the botanical gardens. The trip costs $80 US per person, you get an open bar on the catamaran and a buffet lunch in Soufriere. We also stop on the way back for about an hour to snorkel and swim. I thought it was well worth the cost. As for the spa, we did the "couples massage" ($140 US) and my wife had an "essential oil body wrap" ($60 US). The massages were good, but not the best we've ever had. As for the body wrap, my wife was very disappointed and addressed her complaint to the spa manager who reversed the charges and offered her another complimentary body wrap treatment the very next day. As a word of advice, before any treatment, ask the MANAGER what the treatment should entail. Then make sure you get what you were told! Shopping is a complete waste of time, unless you are into the wood carvings and such. the duty free shopping is not worth the effort. We spent most of our time at the Sunset pool which is the second largest pool and is located on the bluff. it's much quieter and there are no cats roaming around. The swim up bar is also a lot less crowded up there. You wont need to exchange US dollars to EC dollars, everyone will quote you a price in US dollars event the street vendors. The nightlife is just OK, the bands were pretty good but i found the "showtime" stuff rather dry, except for Friday night which was talent night, where guests would get on stage and display their talent. We were late eaters so we missed most of the shows which was fine with us. it also gave us a chance to rest after frying in the sun for the day. Staying on the bluff was great. We didn't have to put up with all the loud music in the evenings and late night. The only drawback was that we would have to get a shuttle to take us back and forth from the main pavillion and our room. I would rate this island a 10 on 10 and the resort a 9 on 10 (it lost the perfect score because of the cats)
The official The Caribbean Travel Roundup World Wide Web site is http://caribtravelnews.com. The CTR is also available on America Online. Contact: Paul Graveline, 9 Stirling St., Andover, MA 01810- 1408 USA :Home (Voice or Fax) 978-470-1971. E-mail via editor@caribtravelnews.com or CTREDITOR@aol.com