Fort de France and Les Jardins de Balata

Fort de France and Les Jardins de Balata

Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th February 2024

We initially planned to visit Les Jardins de Balata on our second day in Fort de France. However, the guidebook suggested avoiding times when cruise ships are docked in town, and when we consulted the “inter-webs” it seemed that there might be a ship in on Tuesday, so we switched up our schedule and headed out to the gardens on Monday. We found the stop for the #25 bus, with only minutes to spare. We were excited to jump aboard only to find that there were no cash payments and we were supposed to buy tickets in advance. The driver seemed really friendly and waved us aboard. It was a windy 20 minute ride up into the mountains and by the time we arrived at our destination I was just about ready to lose my breakfast.

The gardens are spectacular, nestled amongst the tropical forest, high up in the mountains. They were more formal and structured than we expected, but beautiful nonetheless. We were also surprised at how popular and busy they were. We spent all morning wandering around, but by 1pm we were starving and tired, so we retired to the restaurant and had a three course lunch which was excellent. The French know how to live! Part of the attraction of Les Jardins de Balata are the aerial walkways. However, the queue to access these was so backed up in the morning that we chose to give them a miss. Fortified with lunch we decided to try and again. This time there was no one around we had fun walking over the suspended walkways. We got to pass through an incredible stand of bamboo, literally 100 feet tall (and beautifully named the "Bambouseraie").  Shortly after returning to the ground we saw people gathering round a particular plant … it turned out it wasn’t the plant but a massive tarantula spider that was creating the excitement! 

We weren’t sure how our return to Fort de France would work out. We still didn’t have any bus tickets and weren’t excited about hiking 5 miles back down the road to town. We explained our predicament to the bus driver, in horrible French, and he just smiled and welcomed us on board. The bus system seems excellent … we just need to figure out where you buy the tickets. It's also impressive that Google maps has all the schedules embedded into the maps. Cool !

Today, we did a bunch of boat cleaning jobs and then went ashore. We visited the local chandlery and found the exact shower sump pump / box that we need to replace our broken system. We were about to buy it, until we saw the price (300+ Euros), about 3 times what it would cost at Defender in the USA. We decided to hold off until our trip home in April. We did find a laundry and returned later in the afternoon to do some much needed clothes cleaning.

Gloria has a sore throat and a mild fever today. Hoping she will be feeling better by tomorrow. We do have some antibiotics with us, but it’s most likely viral.

Mike

Fort de France at night from Cotinga ... handheld 90 mm lens, F10, 20 s exposure

The same photograph but the negative image. Which do you prefer?

Gloria on the aerial walkways at Les Jardins de Balata ... they were quite high and bouncy!

Water lily at Les Jardins de balata (focus stacked image)

Not sure what these plants are called!

Back-lit fern leaves. There were giant ferns that could have come straight out of Gulliver's Travels

A massive Tarantula spider, maybe 4 inches across!

Purple Throated Carib, photographed next to a feeder in the gardens.