[Excerpt] Contrasts like that mark the French island in the Lesser Antilles chain. Grande-Terre is flat, hot and bright. Its long, straight beaches are a natural extension of low-lying terrain, full of light green sugarcane fields and grassy marsh.
Basse-Terre is a forest green, made somber as the sun rotates the shadows of its high central mountains past the villages below. Only the narrow belt highway around Basse-Terre separates its curving beaches from steep foothills. At every turn in the road, a tiny stream carries the runoff from the mountains, where there are waterfalls and deep pools and springs. Here, instead of the high, classic rainbows of Grande-Terre, the coincidence of sun and rain makes for a thick, stunted rainbow seemingly imbedded in a hillside, like a pre-Columbian slab worshiped by an ancient tribe

Compa, Lance A

English

[Excerpt] Contrasts like that mark the French island in the Lesser Antilles chain. Grande-Terre is flat, hot and bright. Its long, straight beaches are a natural extension of low-lying terrain, full of light green sugarcane fields and grassy marsh.  Basse-Terre is a forest green, made somber as the sun rotates the shadows of its high central mountains past the villages below. Only the narrow belt highway around Basse-Terre separates its curving beaches from steep foothills. At every turn in the road, a tiny stream carries the runoff from the mountains, where there are waterfalls and deep pools and springs. Here, instead of the high, classic rainbows of Grande-Terre, the coincidence of sun and rain makes for a thick, stunted rainbow seemingly imbedded in a hillside, like a pre-Columbian slab worshiped by an ancient tribe.Compa149_On_Guadeloupe.pdf: 193 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Compa, Lance A.

eCommons (Cornell Univ.)

On Guadeloupe, A Fine Blending Of Contrasts

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11-16-1986 
On Guadeloupe, A Fine Blending Of Contrasts 
Lance A. Compa 
Cornell University, lac24@cornell.edu 
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On Guadeloupe, A Fine Blending Of Contrasts 
Abstract 
[Excerpt] Contrasts like that mark the French island in the Lesser Antilles chain. Grande-Terre is flat, hot 
and bright. Its long, straight beaches are a natural extension of low-lying terrain, full of light green 
sugarcane fields and grassy marsh. 
Basse-Terre is a forest green, made somber as the sun rotates the shadows of its high central mountains 
past the villages below. Only the narrow belt highway around Basse-Terre separates its curving beaches 
from steep foothills. At every turn in the road, a tiny stream carries the runoff from the mountains, where 
there are waterfalls and deep pools and springs. Here, instead of the high, classic rainbows of Grande-
Terre, the coincidence of sun and rain makes for a thick, stunted rainbow seemingly imbedded in a 
hillside, like a pre-Columbian slab worshiped by an ancient tribe. 
Keywords 
travel, Guadeloupe, resorts, Caribbean, vacations 
Comments 
Suggested Citation 
Compa, L. (1986, November 16). On Guadeloupe, a fine blending of contrasts [Electronic version]. The 
Philadelphia Inquirer. 
Required Publisher Statement 
Copyright held by the author. 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/380 
On Guadeloupe, A Fine Blending Of Contrasts 
November 16, 1986| By Lance Compa, Special to The Inquirer 
Americans think they know enough to come in out of the rain, but in Guadeloupe they stay put. Once an 
hour, light clouds spray the resort beaches of Grande-Terre, the eastern wing of the butterfly-shaped 
Caribbean island, cooling sunbathers below. The clouds are passing west to Basse-Terre, where high 
volcanic mountains attract a permanent shroud. 
In late afternoon when the sun starts to descend, the result is wide- arcing rainbows high in the eastern 
sky. For some of us, the simultaneous sensations of a toasting sun, a tickling rain and a storybook 
rainbow approach a religious experience - except for the decidedly secular distractions of the topless 
beach clientele everywhere. 
Contrasts like that mark the French island in the Lesser Antilles chain. Grande-Terre is flat, hot and 
bright. Its long, straight beaches are a natural extension of low-lying terrain, full of light green sugar-
cane fields and grassy marsh. 
Basse-Terre is a forest green, made somber as the sun rotates the shadows of its high central mountains 
past the villages below. Only the narrow belt highway around Basse-Terre separates its curving beaches 
from steep foothills. At every turn in the road, a tiny stream carries the runoff f rom the mountains, 
where there are waterfalls and deep pools and springs. Here, instead of the high, classic rainbows of 
Grande-Terre, the coincidence of sun and rain makes for a thick, stunted rainbow seemingly imbedded 
in a hillside, like a pre-Columbian slab worshiped by an ancient tr ibe. 
SCANTY BEACH WEAR 
Vacationing in this overseas department - the French equivalent of Hawaii - is really three or four 
vacations in one, including island spices and tropical weather, African rhythms, French cuisine - and a 
Riviera-like lack of restraint. 
The beaches of Guadeloupe are not for the modest. Most public beaches have large nudist sections. The 
more constrained hotel beaches are topless, a riot of chests and bellies of all shapes and sizes. Topless 
does not say enough; for most sunbathers, there is not much bottom left to the imagination either, no 
matter the sex. 
The French-speaking traveler has an advantage in Guadeloupe. Not much English is spoken beyond the 
airport and hotel desks, either by natives of Guadeloupe or by the typically insular French tourists who 
come in large numbers to one of their Caribbean outposts (nearby Martinique is another). But a tourist's 
high school French will suffice for the basics, and you might have better luck striking up a conversation 
with bilingual visitors from Quebec, of whom there are many. 
If you don't mind crowding, the local bus service is the best way to get around the island. Three francs -
about 45 cents - takes one from the tourist hotels of Gosier and Bas du Fort on the southern shore of 
Grande-Terre to the port city of Pointe-a-Pitre, at the joint of the butterfly wings. Eleven francs (about 
$1.70) will take a traveler from Point-a-Pitre to St. Francois, near the eastern t ip of Grande-Terre. 
The size of large vans, these buses provide a visitor's quota of local color. Stops are unmarked. You just 
look for other riders waiting at the side of the road, or signal to an oncoming bus headed in the right 
direction. Like the subway, however, there are local and express buses; this is where some knowledge of 
French is a help. 
Most passengers enter by a rear door manned by a driver's assistant, then pay at the end of their tr ip. 
Drivers make change from a coin-encrusted magnet mounted on the dash. More often than not 
passengers leave from the back, too, then walk to the front to pay through a window. They have to, 
because the aisles have spring-hinged seats that fold down across the center aisle, providing wall-to-wall 
seating. 
The first t ime we tried it, headed from Bas du Terre to Pointe-a-Pitre, we hopped in the front door of a 
crowded bus and immediately paid a surprised driver. Turning to f ind a seat, or just move back in the 
aisle, we found a solid mass of seated passengers from side to side and front to back. How did they do 
that? We were mystified until we discovered the swinging aisle seats. 
Bus fares are fixed by the government, but ownership is private and drivers compete for riders. 
For longer trips to explore the island, a car can be rented by the day or week ($35 to $40 a day, $180 to 
$200 a week). One day can be spent touring each perimeter of the two wings of Guadeloupe, wi th their 
natural beaches and pretty fishing villages. 
Driving along the north coast of Basse-Terre, a stop at Clugny beach, gives a nice view of English Head 
Rock - an odd-shaped protrusion a mile out at sea. (It got its name from history: French colonialists 
warred with Britain over possession of Guadeloupe). 
Turning past the Club Med center at Fort Royal to Basse-Terre's west coast, the belt highway begins a 
sinuous path that continues for three-fourths of the island's circuit. At each peak, the view to the ocean 
is like onefrom an airplane, wi th varied shades of blue reflecting depths and currents below. Then 
comes a reciprocal descent to the next village at the midpoint of the bay below. 
A HAVEN FOR FISH 
Villages like Deshaies, Ferry, Bouillante and Baillif lie hard by the sea. Here the highway borders a 
narrow, rocky beach, or a retaining wall that drops straight to the water. At the point where the road 
starts to curve away from the shorelines and a new ascent begins, the modest houses of local residents 
fill the land along the beachfront. 
The tiny islands of Goyave and Pigeon are midway down the west coast of Basse-Terre, just off the 
beach at Malendure. A marine-life reserve surrounds the uninhabited islands - rocks, really - making a 
haven for hundreds of species of fish, sponges and vegetation. Glass-bottomed boats, named Nautilus, 
provide a lazy way to see the underwater attractions. Other boats anchor between the two islands to 
provide tourists wi th hours of snorkeling. It's worth it. The undersea world is beautiful through the tour 
boat's glass bottom, and spectacular for snorkelers. A Nautilus, too, will stop for a half- hour's diving, 
even providing masks, flippers and tubes. 
Another day should be devoted to the Parc Naturel in the mountainous interior of Basse-Terre. 
Surprising to Americans plagued by the varmint, the raccoon is Guadeloupe's equivalent of Smokey Bear. 
Raccoons are a major attraction in the park and in danger of extinction on the island. 
De rigueur are visits to three-tiered Charbet Falls and nearby La Soufriere, a volcanic peak that still 
occasionally belches puffs of steam. Wet-weather gear will be needed, for there is a rain forest under 
the big, water-laden clouds drawn by the heat and elevation of Basse-Terre (it's named Low-Land only 
because it is south on the map; Grande-Terre is neither larger nor higher We tried restaurants in each of 
the tourist clusters along the south shore of Grande-Terre: the Marina just east of Point-a-Pitre; Bas du 
Fort, site of the large Frantel and Novotel chain hotels; Gosier and St. Francois, where the island's only 
golf course is found. The restaurants were uniformly small, uniformly filled but without a wait for a table 
(some kind of economic equilibrium has apparently been reached or arranged - prices were uniform as 
well) and uniformly slow in service. 
Still, you cannot go wrong with the local seafood specialties, either the poisson grille, the grilled catch of 
the day at 50 to 60 francs (about $8 to $9.50), or the langouste, the Caribbean lobster, at twice that 
price. The French cuisine is fine, and there are also good Vietnamese restaurants, but either of those can 
be found in the United States. Stay with the island cooking, wi th torr id Creole sauce on the side for 
seasoning to taste. 
The langouste was a one-night special. Other nights, dinner for two ran $34 to $45, including wine, 
appetizers, main courses and desserts wi th coffee. We returned to one restaurant, the pleasant Ti-
Quebec just past the Hotel Frontel at Bas du Fort (ti is local slang for petit). Arriving early, between 7 and 
7:30 p.m., you are seated at a rail above the water's edge, wi th small but quick waves tossing spray over 
rocks 20 feet below. 
At that t ime, wi th the restaurant still uncrowded, the Parisian owners who have settled themselves 
outre mer (overseas) will engage guests in lively talk of food, wine and life on the island. And all are fine. 


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