Martinique St. Peirre Mar 21-22,2006

Sailboat | Voyages | Log

Our first stop in Martinique is St. Pierre St. Pierre: View from our boat What a change from Dominica One of the better internet cafe's Great coffee and great croque monsieur's What more could you ask for? Ruins of an eligant theater destoyed by volcano Mount Pelee in background Trying to get help with our broken sat phone On hold at home is one thing On hold at phone booth is something else Imagine Paris in the Caribbean, theater, botanical gardens, cafes, promenades. For two centuries St. Pierre flourished as the largest and most sophisticated city in the Caribbean. Then, in three minutes on May 8, 1902, a town of 30,000 people, with all of its inhabitants, vanished. The Mount Pelee volcano exploded with the power of a nuclear bomb, raining hot gas and rocks down the mountain side. Ships in the harbor instantaneously ignited. No one, except a lone prisoner deep in a stone cell, survived, and he became a freak in a Barnum and Bailey Circus. It is an astonishing story, all the more vivid for us after visiting the destruction of Montserrat. Wfhen danger looms, no one wants to believe it could be that bad (think Katrina). We rationalize; we delude ourselves, but nature does not work on our time table. Let’s wait until the elections are over before we call for an evacuation. The time of the eruption was random, but not without warning, and for those who ignored the warning, nature had no mercy. Once again, a failure of leadership. A fascinating, if macabre story. We are so glad to be back in a French island. One might question their security as we cleared customs at the tourist office and learned that we could have also cleared at the cyber café. I can’t quite imagine that in the US or the US Virgin Islands. Our impression is that they put emphasis in more important places. Sailboats, statistically, are not a terrorist threat. What a difference a letter makes: threat versus treat. Imagine making sense of out these words as a foreign language student. Previous | Next