A Tale of Two Beaches

We set off in the morning for a day at the beach. Our first stop was Anse Dufour. There isn't really enough parking for all the visitors to this little slice of heaven, so Lee dropped us and our picnic supplies next to the stairs that lead down the hill to the beach.

There are a handful of restaurants, souvenir stands and, most importantly, public toilets next to this golden beach. Anse Dufour is known for great snorkeling, so I was glad my mom brought her snorkel gear. Our snorkels were...childrened to death.

 

The kids immediately got into sandcastles and splashing in the shallows with Lee playing lifeguard, my mom and I set off to snorkeling, and Pa alternated between standing in the shade and sitting on the benches which were, unfortunately, not in a shady spot at all.

The reef and fish did not disappoint. We did our best with taking photos and getting video footage underwater, but the struggle to keep the camera steady is real. Between the natural movement of the tide and needing to use all our limbs to move our bodies, it's pretty hard to keep the tiny little action camera from bobbing around.

The reef and most of the fish are along the rocky edges of the cove, but out in the middle in the sea grass is where the sea turtles can be found. I didn't see a sea turtle out there, but I did find this big ole sea star!

Lee and I decided to walk to the other beach. Just following the road up the hill to the next cove over, Anse Noire is a short walk and about 150 stairsteps away from Anse Dufour. With the large number of steps, we weren't sure whether the rest of the group would want to go, so we scouted ahead. But after doing the trek ourselves and snorkeling all around Anse Noire, we went back to convince the rest of the family to check it out.

We all had a little lunch and then Lee brought the van to carry the grandparents and kiddos as close as we could get--and we were able to park miraculously close! There was a little covered picnic table for Grandpa to rest in the shade without having to do an absurd number of stairs, and we took the rest of the crew down the hill, through the jungle, to my favorite beach of the whole trip.

As the name might suggest, Anse Noire is a black sand beach. The sand is about the softest powderiest sand I've felt. There were a lot fewer people than at Anse Dufour, which let us feel a bit like we were at the secret, undiscovered beach.

Paul and Laszlo had both said they were tired and done for the day, but they sure hit a second wind once they got here.

Laszlo thought the sand was so great, he filled his empty water bottle with sand to bring home with us.

This beach doesn't have all the amenities of Anse Dufour, but it just has an extra special something. And, for me, I thought the reef was even more beautiful and colorful.

And, come on! This little boat dock is just the most picturesque thing I've ever seen! I think you can tell I feel that way because I've captured it from every possible angle with as many different people as possible.

We'd had intermittent cloud cover all day, and now we were beginning to get rained on. So we gathered up the kids and headed back up the hill.

By the time we got to the picnic table where Pa Duane was waiting for us, it was raining pretty hard. We decided to stay put and have some snacks, hopefully waiting out the rain.

Just when we were questioning whether we'd just have to try and brave the twisty mountain roads with the rain pouring down, I saw a bit of pale blue. The clouds were thinning, the storm passing, and we were able to head back to the car and get on the road with barely a sprinkle of rain to bother us.

We made one more stop, a short one but a bit out of our way, to the Cap 110 Memorial. These statues were erected in 1998 to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the abolition of slavery in Martinique.

They memorialize a very tragic shipwreck. In April 1830, though the slave trade was outlawed, a ship carrying 300 enslaved African people ran aground in a storm in this bay near Anse Caffard. The ship was completely destroyed, the crew of slavers all died, as well as most of the trafficked people. 86 survivors made it to shore. The slavers bodies were recovered and buried in a cemetery, but the enslaved people were buried at sea. These statues are their headstones, their memorial, though we'll never know their names.

The survivors were freed, but were never to return to their homeland. They all stayed in Martinique. The statues are white as that is the color of mourning in the Caribbean. They stand in a triangle, representing the triangle trade, and they face 110 degrees east towards the Gulf of Guinea, the probable origin of the ship

And right off the coast from the memorial is the magnificent Rocher du Diamant: Diamond Rock. It's a but hard to convey how impressive it is, how imposing, but when we came round the bend in the road and saw it for the first time, even Paul said, "WOW!"

It was a spectacular end to a spectacular day! We went back to our hotel to cook some dinner and play cards, then Lee and I went for a little walk to around the beach and town near our hotel.