Martinique

We arrived tomartinique on time. This was the only day that we used the ship's excursion. Martinique is a French island, claimed by France in 1635. Britain tried to capture it once in 1815 but lost. Slavery was abolished in 1848. It is considered a region of France.  Size – 425 square miles (50 miles long and 22 miles across at its widest point), or just a few blocks smaller than New York City. It lies between Dominica (where we were originally supposed to sail, but hurricaine Maria destroyed 90%  of the island) and to the south is St. Lucia. US & Canadian citizens may stay up to 3 months with a valid passport.
 We travelled in groups of 6 with a guide in a Toyota Land Cruiser.

The tour was called something 4 x 4. Our guide was Ricky. He was part French/African and part Carib Indian. He had the beautiful Carib indian shaped head and spoke with a rastafarian accent. His grandmother was 50% Carib and recently died at the age of 117. Her sister lived until 119. You can hear his accent here and I wish I would have recorded more of what he was saying. He was full of facts. (I think there is better video quality out there besides Blogger. I'll work on that)

 The island is known as the island of flowers and also hails as the Rhum capitol of the world with 12 different distilleries each employing various methods of creating rhum/rum. We saw many flowers. Ricky gave us a guide so we didn't keep asking "what kind of flower is that?" But Jack from Virginia, sitting up front, kept asking anyway.

                                          This is how a poinsetta is supposed to look and grow!

                                                               Bird of Paradise (below)

                      Can you guess why the flower below is called the little boy flower?

 We visited a park and had wild cats and chickens running around. The wood decks were really slick and were contiually being power washed. The brush also required constant cutting back.

 We visited a banana plantation and learned about how bananas are produced. A lot of work goes into this process! Flower up is an ornamental banana, flower down is the better/edible banana.

                                                   Baby banana flowers (above)

 Before we went to the plantation we stopped to sample the island fruits. Ricky showed us how to crack a coconut with a large rock, when the other team forgets their tools.

 When we were at the plantation the boss drove by and as customary, he gets to sample any rhum that you bring. I wonder how many tours a day he gets to do this and are they hiring? The rhum most like are made by this company, Neisson , and it's hard to find the Christmas/spiced wine (on right) in the stores.  It was very good.

 Our final stop was at a beautiful distillery called HSE Habitation of St. Etienne (St. Stephen). It was aged in barrells and had more of a caramel/bourbon taste to it. Jim liked one called "Black Sheriff" which is an older one and even I liked it.

 We returned back to the town, after driving through another river and back to the ship. A great day in Martinique!