Between Storms and Snorkels

You might have noticed that my previous blogs about Guadeloupe have been on the less positive side. I usually like to keep my blogs pretty positive, but I also want to be realistic. To be honest, our time in Guadeloupe was quite challenging and our mental health was not the best. I think as a family we felt quite relieved when we left the island, we however always try to make the best of our time somewhere and do several fun things. Travel is not always easy, but I think that is where a lot of learning and growth comes from. Also, I am not advising you to skip your visit Guadeloupe because you might visit and have a whole other experience and love your time there.

So, let’s get into this more up lifting blog about some of the fun things we did get to experience.

The adventure had already started before we had even left the airport we were waiting at baggage claim, and they had put too many bags on the belt. All the bags piled up and started to fall off the belt, so people were trying to help. It took quite a while for the airport workers to see that things were not going so well. Once they finely came out, they pressed the emergency stop button witch ironically fell of the wall but did manage to stop the belt with all the bags. Looking back at this, it was almost like a sign of what was to come. But I still think it was a funny way to start our interesting trip in Guadeloupe.

The first night in Guadeloupe we at pizza during the sunset, this was fun and relaxing. We got chased in French as we left because my brother forgot to pay for his extra pizza, in hindsight this was pretty funny.

We did get to see a lot of the Island between medical appointments. The island is not very big, so it was easy to see things. On one of our driving days, we wanted to buy snorkels, but most shops were closed as it was a public holiday “the assumption of Mary” (this day honors the Virgin Mary's ascent into heaven in Catholicism). The same day we made our way to the ocean, which was supposed to have great snorkelling, which is normally indeed the case. When we arrived, the water was very choppy, this was because there was a level 5 cyclone several kms from the Island. We drove to another area of the Island and spend some time in the ocean where it was calmer. We also had a traditional coconut ice cream made with a special hand operated machine.

On another day during one of our driving adventures, we had lunch next to the mangroves which was very beautiful and peaceful. My mum really wanted to go paddleboarding through the mangroves, but it got cancelled because of bad weather and on the rescheduled day we had to cancel because of our changing plans based on the health scare.

We did go to the location where they have paddleboarding and although paddleboarding wasn’t happening that day we did meet a local who had a “fresh pot of mud”. The idea is that you cover your whole body with the mud which is very high in sulphur, this in turn relaxed the aches and pains in your body. Of course, me, my mum and brother wanted to do this. It was fun, we had to wait 20-30 minutes for the mud to dry after which we could rinse off in the nearby open water, this water was at a beautiful body temperature and our skins glowed afterwards.

During one of our afternoons of we managed to rent a kayak and go kayaking to a nearby Island. Once there we walked to a cool light house. Both on this kayak trip and on our final day in Guadeloupe we managed to do some snorkelling, not as much as we wanted but we still got to see some cool under water life. Especially David and my brother who both managed to see a poisonous lionfish up close. Luckily nothing went wrong there, I guess “the travel gods” felt, we had enough things go wrong for now, that is until our next big flights but that is a story for another blog 😉.