Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe has been amazing so far. It is a constant challenge deciding whether to do school, or take the kids snorkeling and hit the zoo instead. I’m not entirely sure that going to the zoo doesn’t count as school anyhow.
The Parc des Mammelles was excellent. It it a smallish zoo without some of the usual attractions, but it makes up for it by incorporating the surrounding rainforest into the exhibits. Great shade is provided by the jungle and the organized layout keeps the foot traffic flowing. We rarely even rubbed elbows with the other visitors. The exhibits provide fairly close access to the animals unlike some other zoos.
After visiting the zoo, we spent the afternoon on a black sand beach on the west end of the island. The kids had a great time snorkeling, even though there wasn’t that much to see. The water made us ridiculously buoyant, so much so that the kids could sit on us while we snorkeled without trouble. The tradeoff is that we’ve got fine grain black sand all over everything now. We’re going to go back and try kayaking out to the island in Reserve Cousteau so we can show the kids what snorkeling is really about.
The Chutes du Carbet provided another fun afternoon. We skipped the easiest waterfall and tried to make it to the next. This hike proved to be more challenging than we were really up for, but we still had a great time checking out all manner of interesting flora and fauna in the forest.
We were all pretty sore after this hike, so we took today off to lay around the boat. The kids are enamored with the idea of climbing the volcano so I suspect that we’re going to have to dust our calves off pretty soon.