Friday - The Turtle and the Rooster
We started the day with breakfast on the sun deck, with orange juice, I had overnight oats, and coffee. We were soon ready to go ashore onto the beach at Colombier, a lovely cove that is only accessible by boat.
The cove is observed by a mansion on an outcrop, which was built originally for the Rockefeller family, who also built the village of Colombier! The beach hides a private road, that leads up to the property with big aggressive "Prive" signs all over it! The sea grass under the water is a perfect feeding ground for the Turtles that live in these waters, and so snorkelling is a must while here!
The sand is idyllic, and the water warm, and our trip in the dingy allowed us a chance to patrol the beach before choosing a spot. All out, then if was all hands on deck to drag the Dinghy up out of the water, and anchor it to some rocks!
We set off for a walk up onto the ridge, and around to the next hamlet called Flamands. On the way, we saw the much choppier side of the island, and as the coastal path wound around the headland, animals sprang forth! There were lots of sea birds, butterflies, and then as we rounded the corner to the town, we found the highlight, a family of Green Turtles, flanked by some roosters!
The Turtles clearly enjoyed human contact, someone having provided a trough to fill with some of your bottled water on the way past. It had clearly been breeding season recently, and there were several tiny baby turtles flanked by their parents. Oddly enough the chickens/roosters were also bemused by our presence, but didn't chase us down for grain either!
We photographed and watched the animals for a while, and then headed down to the beach.
This beach was also blissfully soft, warm, and sparkling in the midmorning sun. We wandered along until we reached a spot for some to swim or paddle, and then found ourselves fancying a drink, heading to the bar at a beach hotel, and gulping at the offerings!
For a mere €12 one can have a 150ml coke, for €90 an espresso martini, or for €2678 you can have a 250g tin of caviar! I'll leave you to decide which we had!
Satiated, we walked back across to the beach, promptly launched the dinghy with only a slight splatter of water on getting in!
Lunch was avocado, bacon, bread, poached eggs, followed by pastries and pineapple, and I topped mine with a marachino cherry for the bants!
The afternoon was leisurely spent going on the water, a mixture of snorkelling, swimming, and trying out my new inflatable from Temu which was nice, but did feel like you were doing a constant sit up!
In the evening, we headed out into Gustavia for dinner. Before we could leave the boat we had to anchor there, which was a slight polava given the proximity of boats to each other, and people giving us glares when we were too close to them.
I learned a lot about the process of anchoring, it's much longer than you'd think, you need between 3-5 times the depth, so at 8m we had nearly 40m of chain deployed. On the second attempt, we managed to anchor soundly, and then scampered about getting ready for dinner.
I then experienced the slightly surreal experience of going ashore in our dinner clothes, but via the small dinghy again! This was very odd, and surprisingly dark with just a torch to guide us/make us visible to other people.
We ate in La Carina, who offered a mixture of meats and fish, Tim and Colin shared the rib of beef, Katie and Pete the Mahi a la plancha Avec Legumes Glacés - not frozen veg as we'd feared, but glazed pal choi and carrots, Suzanne had mussels and I had one of the nicest fillet steaks I've ever had, with frites!
It was then off to the boat and bed, needing to run the generator and engine for a bit to get a bit more power and water, the house batteries struggling with the double fridge freezer situation, as well as all the boat necessities!
Tomorrow we're full sail, making our way towards Anguilla via St Martin and Tintmare
