Bristol Buzz: Le Sainte = Guadeloupe!

So here's how the story goes. Emily, Margo and I decided to plan a little trip to another island over the break for the husbands. We decided on a small french island off the coast of Guadeloupe called Le Saintes. Their are ferry's that leave from Dominica that go to the neighboring islands for much cheaper than flying there. We planned to take the ferry from Portsmouth (Dominica) to Guadeloupe then another ferry from Guadeloupe to Les Saintes. When making the reservations at the hotel that we spent a good 3 weeks picking out we called the ferry company and asked them for literally the 20Th time if there was indeed a ferry leaving from Guadeloupe to Le Saintes on the day we had planned. The company reassured us there was a ferry that leaves every hour to Les Saintes since it is so close. So when the day comes we are all excited!! We take the ferry ride to Guadeloupe and we stopped in Marie Galante on the way to pick up some more people. Upon arriving in Guadeloupe we struggled to find someone that spoke English to ask where the ferry left from. There was a gentleman that worked for a different ferry company that actually grew up in Dominica and told us that the ferry we were asking about stopped service 10 years earlier. GREAT! We were extremely angry with the company and even more so that we could not communicate with them to ask how we can get there. The young man from Dominica decided he was going to help us and we found out we could not leave until the next afternoon which meant we were stuck in Guadeloupe with no hotel, no idea where to go, and hardly anyone that speaks English. Then we are approached by some slimy ( I really mean slimy, greasy) gypsy cab driver smoking a cigar telling us that he can take us wherever we want on the island and pointed to his van with no windows. (can I say, um no!) The guy from Dominica got us a cab driver that he said would take us where we needed to go, which was well, heck I have no idea. So we all got in this cab and just asked the guy from Dominica to tell him to take us to a hotel. In the meantime, I am calling our friend Anna that is watching mason and having her look up hotels in Guadeloupe. After some research work from Anna we decided to go to the closest tourist area which we now had to write down on paper in french (which Anna had to look up on the computer) to tell the cab driver what we wanted to do.

Although we never really quite communicated with the cab driver he was very patient and friendly with us. After checking out 4 hotels we decided on the last one we saw, La Creole! After seeing some run down hotels with no view, no beach, and dirty rooms and not being able to get to le Saintes, we thought this vacation was going to turn into quite the nightmare. As soon as we walked in this hotel, we knew it was the one. It was gorgeous. The girl at the front spoke English (JACKPOT!) and we sang her our sad song about our experience so far and she gave us the local rate for the hotel which knocked off quite a few dollars or should I say euros. The six of us decided that we were going to stay in the hotel for our whole trip instead of making our way to le saintes, we had enough adventure at that point! The trip turned out to be great. We did struggle with communicating since all the workers besides the front desk spoke french. I was extremely good at pointing and putting up how many I wanted of something with my fingers. It was an interesting trip, one I will not soon forget. I will tell you all someday about the massage our friend Dave received while at the hotel, let's just say the french do it a bit different!

Here are some pics:

The crew waiting in the customs line to board the ferry!