Day 5 -- Excursion to Bouillante
Wednesday 2/25/2004
We woke up around 7:30. Lilli went out to get some breakfast bread in town. When she got back we setup our breakfast table. It was raining outside and the sky looked really gray, as if we had a solid cloud cover. After breakfast Bengt and I drove down to town to do some shopping. Bengt brought Adam with us. It rained heavily for parts of the trip. We first stopped at Carrefour, and it was closed (due to Carnival) as expected. We continued down into Point-a-Pitre and parked not far from the fish market. A new cruise ship had arrived, with town swarming with boat tourists again. By the time we got down here the rain had stopped.
The vegetable market had only a few stands. We first walked over to the fish market. I tried to buy a Vivano, but they were out. One of the local fishermen sold me 2Kg (4 lbs) of Cola, another local fish, saying it was equivalent. It cost 10€ per Kg. We walked back through the vegetable market, where we picked up bananas, oranges, lemons and a couple of root-fruits that are supposed to be good with local fish. But now we were short of many things on our shopping list. There are two smaller marts along the sea-board, but they look rather expensive. I asked one of the ladies working in the vegetable market for which one she thought less expensive: EcoMax. And so we loaded up on other things there and then headed back home. The sky was somewhat clear down in town, but we could see a big cloud cover over the mountains. Before we got to Vernou we were in the middle of a big rain. We drove slowly back to the bungalows.
The kids were in the pool. We talked about what to do next. We needed to swing by the dive place to lay out our week so we proposed we'd take a trip down to Bouillante. Everyone was ok with that. We ate a light lunch at the bungalows and then headed down. We brought our walkie-talkies with us, which amused the kids. The weather was not that great on the other side of the mountains either. As we approached the parking area by the dark beach, Lucas yelled in the walkie-talkie that Adam was about to barf. Not sure what I could do about it, though. We parked just after the beach, half-way up to the diving place. The beach parking area was full. Bengt and I walked up to the diving place while everyone else walked down to the beach. I mapped out a basic diving schedule. When we got back to the beach, the kids were out snorkeling. It started to drizzle and we moved in under a roof.
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| Lucas holds up the fish Bengt and I bought at the market |
When we got back we started to prepare dinner. The root-fruits were hard to peal. Bengt prepared the fish while Lilli and Lotta prepared the stuff in which to cook the fish. The fish had to sit in marinade for about one hour. We used a zip-lock bag. That was quite practical. The root-fruit came out rather dry. Lotta tried to mash it by hand, but it did not mash very well. The fish was ok, but it was full of bones. The skin did not come off easy so we ended up with quite a bit of waste on our plates. Nevertheless, it was quite good. Next time we should probably follow the lady's advise and go for the Vivano fish instead of the Cola fish. We went to bed after 9.
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| Preparing a Creole style fish dish for dinner |