December 31 Ilet de Gosier, Guadaloupe

On December 31st, we went into Terre de Haut again to check into Guadaloupe. This time the office is open but alas, their fax machine is broken (they send check-ins by fax to the mainland). Check in is “not possible” here and we are told we have to go to Point de Pitre, only 30 miles away on the mainland. Huh? We return to the boat with another reason to be pissed off at French people. The holiday is upon us. What to do? We pull the hook at 10am and make a run to Point de Pitre, a hard upwind trip. We arrive at 3:45 and yup, you guessed it, customs closes at 4pm, even if they’ve made it through a full workday…highly doubtful. What to do? Tomorrow is a holiday and then it is the weekend. Customs will be closed the entire time. We don’t want to hang around here because it is an industrial port.
We are outta here. We did our best and we are done trying. We motor down the coast 3 miles to Ilet de Gosier, a small island just off the mainland with a beautiful anchorage in between. We settle in for the evening, having treated ourselves to a bottle of Crown Royal for New Years Eve. We have a nice dinner and set up the nest in the salon for an Indiana Jones movie marathon. We go up to the cockpit at midnight to enjoy several fireworks shows along the coast.
In the morning, it is cloudy and rainy for New Years Day. Fortunately it burns off in the early afternoon, so we dinghy over to the island to check out the lighthouse. Everybody acts like they don’t speak English here but all the graffiti is in English. It is rude so I won't print pictures. Help me understand...You are telling me that your average educated Frenchman only speaks French, but your average spraypaint-toting, crack-smoking gangbanger is bilingual??
(To Georgia: Cipher that, Jethro.)
Then we go over to the town to walk around and check it out. Evweesing is cwosed.


The other side of the lighthouse coast:

Gosier:

Not all churches are created equal:

Views from the boat:

Elusive and mysterious ground hawks, also common in Key West: