Stepping ashore in Madagascar

Madagascar is one of the poorest countries we have been in for awhile.  The people have very little, living in shacks with sticks for sides and thatched roofs.  They still use bullocks to pull carts to haul stuff around.  Today we were on a street that was lined with stalls for selling goods and Zebu cattle were driven down the street.  The fisherman go out in small wooden outrigger boats with sails, very few have motors. There are very few personal vehicles and all the taxis are old Renaults, it seems 80’s and 90’s vintage cars.  There are very few stores with fancy goods in them, although most people seem to own cell phones. 

Our first baobab tree, we must be somewhere close to Africa!

The government here is very bad, the last dictator was overthrown in a coup and fled the country taking whatever riches he could get his hands on.  There once was a viable sugar cane industry on the island where we are staying but mismanagement and corruption took it toll and it went bankrupt.  After three years without pay the workers started stealing pieces of the factory to sell and taking the tin off the roof for their own homes.  The land which formerly belonged to the factory owners has been given or taken by the workers and they are planting crops to feel themselves, casava, rice, bananas, potatoes and market gardening. 

Watching the cars stop for the bullocks is interesting

We did not take a trip to the mainland but had a small tour around the island of Nosey B today.  It was supposed to be a day tour but both Barry and I have been ill, I had a sore throat, fever and now a cough and Barry’s has had the runs for 3 or 4 days, so we only went for a couple of hours.  Our string of (I didn’t want to say it before, but will now) bad luck has continued.  We got our anchor stuck on a rock the other day and after half and hour trying to get it loose we called a fisherman over who was able to direct us on how to maneuver to get the anchor free.  We gave him the equivalent of $25 CND and I am sure it made his day.  The anchor windlass continues to give us problems, not having enough juice to pull the chain aboard by itself. We are checking out of the country tomorrow so hopefully we will leave all our misadventures here.   

A very old taxi cab

Okay, sorry about the sideline, but I was looking forward to the tour but we both needed to be close to a toilet (I got the runs this morning) and we have not had to use a public toilet yet so we are not sure what to expect!!!!  Most everyone here speaks French as well as the local language, Malagasy. We found a guide who spoke English so we happy to have him in the car today. His name is Barthelemy and if you want a guide to Nosey Be or the mainland you can get hold of him by e-mail at tantarabarthelemy@yahoo.fr   He was very knowledgeable about the history of Madagascar and gave us a good political overview. Barthelemy talked about the people being 80 % Christian and 20% Muslim although he says a lot of the people still believe in witchcraft and will go to see the witch doctor.  School is free here but it is not compulsory so there is a huge illiteracy problem. Last year the school teachers went on strike for 4 months to gain better wages and because of it many students were unable to pass their exams at the end of the year.  There is very little industry in the country due to the poverty and gov’t mismanagement, Barry says the work force is poorly educated as well.  

The fishing boats sailing home at the end of the day, notice the interesting rig!

In the smaller ports we have been in we have had fishermen coming up wanting us to give them whatever we can.  We also were able to trade for some delicious lobster and the ever popular bananas.  I went to the second hand market the other day and bought 5 shirts to trade and we have extra sugar, milk powder and salt as well as some fish hooks to barter with as we head further south, that lobster was very good, on of the best ever!

We will probably take a week to 10 days before we cross the Mozambique Channel.  We will drop our anchor in Mozambique waters but will not check into the country, just hopping down the coast and make our landfall in South Africa at Richards Bay, sometime in the middle of October we think.  We have been unable to connect to send mail using our ham radio very often so hopefully things will get better as we head further south. 

Fish stretched and drying in the sun. 

MADAGASCAR

Notice how dry it is, there was a lot of evidence or erosion too, the natural vegetation has been stripped from the hills. 

When we arrived after a good fast trip over from Renunion, the boat seemed to be in good shape.  I commented on it and immediately things began falling apart.  The most serious was the winch refused to work announcing its departure from a functioning machine with a big bang.  For 2 days Barry had to haul in the chain using a variety of methods, all which involved much manpower.  The most effective was the manual lever we got with the winch, after we had shortened it so  it wouldn’t hit the deck, it would bring up 4 links at a time, a very tedious manner in which to raise 40 or 50 meters of chain.  We arrived in Helle-Ville where we had to check in and Barry took the whole thing apart and discovered that the mechanism inside had just come unbolted so he searched around in the anchor locker for the bolts and managed to find them all.  After he put the winch back together, it worked, hurrah for the ingenuity of the cruiser.  

While we were still reeling from the loss of the anchor winch Barry lifted down the dinghy motor and it managed to turn upside down in the dinghy.  He tried for half an hour to get the damn thing started but no go.  Then we were rowing away from shore the next day and the plastic seat on the dinghy cracked and broke.  The blue UV cover on the genoa was coming unstitched and flapping about alarmingly and our top life line on the port side had broken and no replacement was in sight until South Africa.  Fortunately the dinghy just needed to stay upright for a night and it decided to work again, Barry figured the carburettor float got stuck when it was upside down.  The dinghy seat was repaired with some lovely teak boards we salvaged from wrecked catamaran in Chagos .  We spent 3 days hand stitching the UV cover on the sail in Helle-Ville and Barry put a thin rope in to act as a temporary but not very supportive life line (the life lines are normally stainless steel wire). To top it all off, after three days at anchor in Helle-Ville the wind came up at night while we were in bed.  I was still reading and felt that we should have the anchor alarm on.  Waking Barry to put it on he went up the check and we had already dragged our anchor ending up very near to shore.  Thankfully the windlass was fixed by then and we raised the anchor and motored over to a safer spot after scrapping the bottom a few times as we pulled forward toward the anchor.  I hope this is the end of the string of mishaps for a few months.  

The lemurs, the black one is a male and the brown a female. 

We have been taking in the sites around the island called Nosey Be on the west side of Madagascar.  We really enjoyed visiting the lemurs which are rare and found in Madagascar.  We were given bananas to feed them and if you turned your back they would  hop on your shoulders and devour the bananas.

Last weekend we entered in a local regatta. There were sixteen boats involved the and race was 14 nautical miles. It was beautiful sailing, hard on the wind on the way there and just off the wind on the way back.  We ended up finished 7th out of 16 boats on uncorrected time and we figured that was great because there were only 6 monohulls in the race and rest were cats. We were the second monohull across the line and were pleased with the boats performance. There was a dinner served onshore at the bay we raced to and it was delicious with crab and wonderful fish on the menu.  The party onshore was enjoyed with a couple of guitars making music and people singing and dancing. The next morning they had some tasks all boat had to complete that generated prices.  Barry was behind in bucket on the head race but managed to hit a target (a beer can on a stick) with the air pistol.  We didn't do so well in the egg toss, I figure I should have got a prize for the person with the most egg on her!!!!!

Gotta go the computer is out of power!

We are 2 days into our crossing to Madagascar and we have been having great winds, it is about 15 knots on the beam to on the quarter and you can't ask for very much more. The waves are about 2 meters so the boat is handling them very well, the wind vane is steering so life is good.  The boat we are traveling with, Mojombo asked that we not put our position on the page that everyone can access for safely reasons so I will report it here.  We are currently at 17 26S and 54 28E and heading north at about 6.5 knots. It is hard to believe that the summer is almost over in Canada, hope you are all well.

There's me on the stairs, the 1751 old volcano on the floor in front of the huge new  volcano. 

We rented a car for the weekend and it coincided with Barry’s birthday so off we went on another adventure. We drove along the south shore of the island then halfway up the east side before turning west and driving up to the middle of the island where the volcano is located, the top being over 8,000 feet.

Our first discovery was a lovely waterfall; we left the main road and wound through innumerable switchbacks across three narrow one way bridges and happened upon a lovely pool about 200 m below the falls, scrambling along the boulder on the bank we saw the horseshoe shaped falls. The east side is where the previous lava flows from the volcano have flowed into the ocean.

Barry with the car we rented in front of a fairly recent lava flow.  

The years of the flows were posted and there have been eruptions regularly in the last 50 years.  It was interesting to note the differing amount of flora that accumulated, a huge difference being perceived from the most recent eruption in 2007 and some lava that had been left in 1957 but even in the space of 10 years the difference in the amount of plant life was astonishing.

We came across a suspension bridge that was no longer in use.  We strolled along taking lots of pictures and took one look over the edge and figured out why they chose to close it!!!

The cable holding up the bridge, YIKES!!

As we drove up towards the volcano the fog closed in.  We had come up out of the main area of the switchbacks and were driving along a relatively flat plain.  The fog became very thick and we were crawling along about 15-20 km an hour, cars appearing with very little warning, the visibility was down to about 5 meters in places.  Thankfully we eventually came out of the fog and drove along in bright sunshine above the clouds for the rest of the way to the volcano.  One of the viewpoints was from a long high cliff top. There was a big flat wide plain, with very little vegetation, that the dirt road stretched across; it reminded us of the Dempster highway.  Once we crossed the plain we came to the volcano, we went and had a good look in case it was clouded over the next day.

Notice the switchback road in the foreground partly in the shadows.

We stayed at a gite or a rural house, what we would have called a backpackers hostel. There was a central building where there was a bar and served the meals.  They had about 4 of 5 cabins where there was a bathroom, a small sitting room and numerous bedrooms.  The room we stayed in was quite tiny and had 2 bunk beds stuffed in it, with very little room to move about.  We shared the room with a single English male and a single French woman.  It was not quite the romantic double bedded birthday treat I had imagined. The view was stunning though and we sat out on the balcony before dinner and shared a bottle of red wine and some nuts.  The evening meal was quite tasty; there was a soup and a creamed cauliflower entre then curried pork and a fish stew for the main dish as well as small slices of cake and the local rum liqueur for dessert.  Remembering we were over 7,000 ft high it was quite chilly, there was no heating in the cabins so I was very glad for the four blankets they had provided.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny and we set off for the volcano.  There was frost on the ground and I had socks, longish pants, a shirt, a sweatshirt and my jacket on to start the hike.  At first you went down a huge set of stairs over the edge of a cliff to the floor around the volcano.

A lava vent

The inside of this volcano

Notice the new darker lava flow. 

The path across the flats consisted of painted dots on the lava.  There were numerous vents along the way and a small volcano that had erupted in 1751. The walking wasn’t too bad, mostly on fairly flat smooth lava, occasionally going across newer jagged black lava that was a bit tricky to maintain your balance on.  Once we reached the base of the volcano we wound up and around to the opposite side to where the view point was.  This volcano is currently dormant on the surface, there were no bubbling pools or rocks being spewed up over the edge, but the hole was over a kilometre wide and over 400 m deep, a truly impressive hole in the ground.  Thankfully the interpretive signs were also in English so we were able to find out all sorts of interesting facts. Once again we were above the clouds, so although we could not see the surrounding mountains we enjoyed a clear view of what we had come to see.  Barry said this 5 hour hike was easier on his body than the last one we did.
We drove back down the mountain passing through the band of clouds again.  It was not nearly as thick as before and we were thankful.  It was a Sunday and we encountered lots of Reunionaisse as the locals are referred to, enjoying the day with a family picnic.  We had a lovely lunch in a local café we found and afterwards sat and sipped our coffee’s in the accepted leisurely French manner.
We are planning to head to Madagascar in the next few days.  Once we leave I will try and post our position daily so check on the link called “our position” to check where we are.  We are going to sail up to the north end and spend our time cruising along the west side, out of the prevailing winds.  We will be sailing with at least one other boat so once we arrive will have company in the anchorages.  Theft from yachts has been a problem there so we are hoping to discourage them by being in the company of others.

The marina, look at the whitecaps, and the surf, it blows like stink here most days,
we are glad of the seawall and the protection it offers. 

We have been quietly whiling away the time until our next voyage, which will be to Madagascar. We are going to head around the north end and visit there for about a month before we head to South Africa. The favoured time to head to South Africa is in October or November.  It is very expensive here on La Reunion so we have not been eating out as much as we have been used to.  Since leaving Australia it has been almost as cheap to eat out as to cook a meal on the boat.  I have convinced Barry that we should rent a car and go and see the volcano, apparently it is the same type that they have on Hawaii. 

The other day we took a stroll around to look at the old architecture in town.  We found city hall and then walked down a street that had lots of old buildings on it.  Crime must be quite a factor here because all the houses have big fences and then railings on top of the fences so that entry over the fence is almost prohibited, but the big thing for us is that you cannot see the houses.  Sometimes if you walk on the opposite side of the street you can catch a glance at the gems lying behind the walls.  I have enjoyed both here and on Mauritius taking note of the different types of railings, some are quite intricate, bent in different shapes and styles.  All the stores have pull down metal doors that cover all the windows and the doors on the shops once they close. 

St Denis old City Hall 

Yesterday we headed to the capital St. Denis on the bus.  St Pierre where we are staying is on the south coast of the island whereas St. Denis is on the north.  It was a lovely trip on the bus.  There was a double lane highway most of the way so traffic was not a problem.  We travelled along the coast line seeing beaches and the rocky shore. For the first half of the journey the land gradually sloped up until the mountain steepened.  There was a lot of housing in the sloping foothills, most of the population be concentrated along the shoreline before the mountainous region begins. As we got close to the northwest corner of the island the hills came down to meet the shore and there were dramatic vistas of the sheer drop offs from the tall hills into the sea. At one point the bus went through a 200m long tunnel, thank heavens it was quite a bit larger than the one we went through going up the mountains. 

My perspective from the second floor

Barry's lovely shot from the ground floor, what an eye he has!

St Denis had some lovely colonial buildings and we were able to tour through one of them learning about the life and houses along this interesting old street.   We headed toward the natural history museum thinking that our lack of French would not matter quite so much in there.  Unfortunately it was closed for renovations but we wandered around the lovely gardens instead.  We were fascinated by the old hotel de ville or city hall. It was very grand inside with a sweeping red carpeted staircase extending up to a grand ballroom on the second floor.  There was a lovely courtyard that contained a fountain with the statue of a maiden. It was diffused with sunlight and the beautiful curved portals and windows made a lovely picture.  For the most part the modern buildings here seem very stark and have ugly lines.  The roofs have no eaves which in my opinion make the houses and apartment buildings seem chopped off and have no flowing lines, the roof comes to the edge of the building and it just stops, yuck!   

St Denis valley, check out the apartment blocks with the roofs that just end

St Pierre is a party town.  The marina is located just opposite the main street, a strip of bars and cafes.  Each weekend night the music booms on until the wee hours, we have been woken at 0400 by screaming, hollering party goers.  Even if it is not the music in the bars the cars do a continuous loop around the waterfront with the tunes just cranked. As you know, sound carries across the water but when the cars take a left off the main drag and crawl through the parking lot located below street level the sound reverberates off the stone wall and thumps into our ear drums on the boat. There are few places to anchor around the island so maybe we should just go and join the party!

After our walk around town the other day there was a local Creole concert.  I had been hoping for some local music and this was my chance.  I stayed for about 6 acts, the first one was the only one with live music, actually just a rhythm section but it was very catchy.  The rest just sang along with a CD(boring), they had dancers as well and that kept my interest.  Lots of people in the crowd knew the songs and sang along so they must have been well known on the island.  It was a huge crowd and it was great to be part of it. 

We have been trying to get our fill of Olympic coverage, but our idea of what is of interest does not seem to correspond with French TV networks, unfortunately for us. Last night we were hoping to catch some more track and field and ended up watching the last half of the French vrs Spain team handball game.  This is not a game that I am very familiar with but it turns out that it is quite vicious.  We saw guys grabbing uniforms and hauling each other down, followed by the innocent “who me” look at the referee.  The elbow to the head and the finger in the eye gouges were a bit over the top but seemed to be par for the course.  We had found a great spot to watch, the local Walmart type store with a whole array of TV’s (about 12) tuned to the track. When a customer would walk in front of a set near the floor, which had great graphics, and pause with their shopping cart, I would switch to as set over their head and continue my viewing.  We watched all the heats of the men’s 200m and some women’s javelin as well as some diving.  We would be glued to the TV and then once the commercials started would wonder off into the store and examine other merchandise.  I think we bought some dental floss to justify our presence there.

Fording a small stream

Yesterday we took the bus up into the mountains and went on a 5 hour hike.  The bus trip was unbelievable with the driver blaring the horn around every hairpin turn warning the potential unseen drivers coming towards us to beware.  There are supposedly 500 curves in the hour and a hour and a half bus ride so there was a lot of honking going on! We went through 2 tunnels that must have constructed before the buses were built, they barely fit.  I am not joking, if you put your fingers out the window (your fingers, mind you not your hand or your arms) you could scrape the stone walls.  I cringed each time we entered the tunnel sure that I would hear the bus scrapping along the side.

The scenery was spectacular on the strenuous hike.  We wound down into a ravine where there was a lovely waterfall and then ascended. I figured we would then just hike around the lip of the gorge and end up back in town, but no, there were 2 or 3 more ravines in the way and we ended up going down into and climbing up several long steep mountain sides.  The paths and the footing were pretty good, it was just a long way up each time.  I am glad that we had the hikes in Rodriguez and the climbs in Mauritius in the bank to get our legs and lungs in shape before we tackled this trek. Barry’s ankle took a beating however and he is not anxious to do much more of that kind of hiking.

We have a map with a lot of other hikes on it. It is a big tourist attraction here.  There are houses along the way where you can stop for the night. There are 5 and 6 day treks you can go on but Barry’s body just won’t handle it.  I am really happy that we were able to do one and that he is not hobbling around with a cane like he was before we got to New Zealand. It was a gorgeous sunny day and we experienced a beautiful part of La Reunion.

We are now in Reunion, a island 100 nm to the west of Mauritius, that belongs to France, they fly the French flag.   We made a very boring passage the other day, so that we would get to the entrance to the marina when there was very little swell.  There is a surf break about 100 m from the entrance to the marina and it looks pretty hairy when you enter.  We wanted to enter at a low swell level so there was very little wind on the passage, we motored, then motor sailed for about 2/3 of the journey, sailing from the middle of the afternoon until the wind dropped before midnight.  Looking at the entrance yesterday with the swell surging in we were happy we had arrived when we did.  We are busy visiting bars and restaurants trying to find the best Olympic coverage, our favourite just refused to put the Olympics on so we will walk down the road to another spot.  It is very mountainous here so we are planning on doing some inland travels which involve hiking.  The money in Reunion is the Euro and French prices are in effect, we are currently coming to grips with the fact they want about $140.00 CND for internet connection for a month, thus we are in the pub using the free wifi along with quaffing a few French beers.  We are hoping to find somewhere to watch the 100m semis and finals tonight.

And they are at the gate!

The races were fun!  I ended up even for the day, having picked a few winners and a few losers. Barry was ahead for the day until the last race when he put his money on what he thought was the correct horse but he made a mistake.  The horse he thought he had bet on won but when he went to collect his winnings he realized he had made a mistake. The racetrack is celebrating it 200th anniversary so it felt like we were following in the steps of centuries of Mauritians when we were placing our bets.  The turf looked like it was in great shape, and we had great fun joining in all the hooting and hollering at the finish line!

We have been busy since then, we took the boat about 15 km north to a spot called Riviere Noire, where we had great access to the National Park.

The boat is anchored in the bay furthest from the camera.

We climbed the tallest mountain in Mauritius at 823m. While going up this peak we had to use chains and ropes to help us up and down some of the steepest parts.  On the windward side of the mountain it was very mucky and our shoes became covered in slimy mud. I felt at times as if I was hauling around twice the weight of my ordinary shoes.  The footing was a bit treacherous in the greasy conditions and Barry and I were glad we had sturdy walking sticks.  On another day we hiked down the front of different peak for a great day's outing. Once we got to the bottom of the mountain, it was another 6 and 1/2 km to get back to the boat.  There never seemed to be much traffic on the road and we able to catch a ride.  It was a very boring, long bit of  walking at the end of a enjoyable mountain hike. 

We were on the boat and one of our fellow cruisers spotted a very weird looking roof on shore.  There is an endangered species of bird on the island called a pink pigeon.  He was sure he looking at a roof that shaped like pigeon.  One day we went out walking to clear up the mystery of the unusual roof.  We tried to get in a gated community, but the guard that was there to keep out the riff raff took look and denied us entry.  We walked along and down the road we saw a tour bus, sure enough it was stopped before the building that had the bird roof.  It turned out to be a dove and it was on a church, just when you thought you had seen everything!!!!

Here is a video that Barry took on the top of the hill overlooking Port Louis, Mauritius.  It gives you a good perspective of what the island looks like. The suburbs of  Port Louis go on for miles, it is amazing that a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean would have so much population. Historically, Mauritius or Isle de France was a stopover to reprovision and get fresh water for sailing ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope before heading to India.  The islands symbol is the dodo bird which became extinct in the 1600's shortly after European's landed.  Their demise was precipitated by the introduction of non-native species such as rats which ate their eggs as well as humans which ate their approximately 22 kg bodies.

The other day we took a tour of the southern part of the island. We engaged a local taxi driver and his car to conduct the four of us (the crew of Cat's-Paw IV and Tagish) around. We headed to Curepipe, a town where we visited a carpet store.

 As we sat enjoyed a cup of tea, they explained how the cashmere carpets were made, the emphasis being that the carpets were hand knotted.  They were stunning, the salesman showed us how each knot was made and he explained that a 30 year veteran would trim the carpet with sheers by hand when the knotting was finished.  He said they were magic carpets and rotated it under the light, the difference in shading was magnificent as they moved the carpet. I managed to resist buying one, but wonder if I will be sorry one day.

Our next stop was at model ship building factory. A couple of ladies were threading the rigging on the 3 masted ships. It was amazing to me that they could figure out where everything went.  One fellow had small .05 cm. sq. pieces of wood that he was sandpapering, they would be the ports for the canons, one ship we saw had 3 decks of canons on the ship.  They had all the famous ships from years gone by including a model of the Bluenose, I was impressed.

We headed out to southeast side of the island and visited the site of the first European settlement on the island, the Portuguese discovered Mauritius but the Dutch were the first to name and settle the island. The Dutch had a hard time with plagues and cyclones and were unable to maintain a lasted settlement.  

The French took over and colonized the island with slaves from Africa and introduced sugar cane.  The  British attacked and took over the island in 1835, they abolished slavery and indentured servants from India were brought in to continue to harvest the sugar cane.  The British were very benevolent conquerors, allowing the islanders to maintain their language and religion to this day the dominant language in French but English is learned at school and most officials, thankfully, are bilingual.  

Our tour continued with the natural beauty of the island.  We stopped to see a natural bridge made of volcanic rock.  The bridge was on the sea shore with waves pounding through the opening under the bridge, it was quite spectacular.  Standing on that bridge you could feel and see and hear the power of the waves. I was glad to be over top rather than underneath them. 

Our next stop was at a valley that bisected the island.  It was quite a deep rift and there was a long waterfall spilling down one side.  The mist gives this picture such a haunting feeling.  

Our next stop was at an unique spot.  It was called the coloured earth, apparently the basalt in the area had broken down and given it's colour to the dirt.  No vegetation would grow so the grains of dirt would blow around and form these fabulously coloured mounds.  I haven't seen anything else quite like it in our travels.  

We headed home after looking at a possible anchorage about 20 km down the island.  I think we might head there next week.  I went on another big hike up a hill called the Corps de Garde, it was a great day.  Barry figured his ankle might not like the climb so he stayed on the boat. We managed to extend our visa today.  It was the most bureaucratic experience we have had in awhile, having to provide proof of our finances as well as copies of all the documents we were given when entering the country, custom and health clearances. (I do not think these are computerized so not easily accessed.) It took us a very long and boring 2 hours of sitting around to meet all their requirements.  Horse racing is quite a tradition on the island so on Saturday we are heading off to the races. I don't think I have ever laid a bet at a race track so this may be a first!

 HAPPY CANADA DAY 

There are three Canadian boats in the harbour and we are planning a pot luck for later in the day.  I have made a potato salad and will bring burgers and buns so we can have a little taste of home on July 1st in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  I hope all of you at home have great weather to celebrate our nation's birthday. 

Port Louis, Mauritius, looking over the harbour

Development along the waterfront

We are in Mauritius now.  It is an island which is home to about 1.4 million people.  While Mauritius was home for the descendants of African slaves and the population was 90 % black, the people here are a mixture of the offspring of African slaves and indentured servants that were brought over from India to pick the sugar cane after the slaves were freed in the early 1800's. The Indian descendants seem to be in the majority here in the capital of Port Louis.

  Mauritius has more wealth than Rodrigues and there is an economic base here, clothing is manufactured as well as a booming IT industry and lots of tourism.  There seems to be the remains of a sugar cane industry as well as the production of alcohol.  We are moored at a marina tied up to our buddies Tagish, because there is no more room at the dock.  We have access to electricity, water and best of all HOT showers. 

                                        

Buildings in the older section of town, close to China town. 

As you can see there is a huge variety of architecture in the city, from very old fashioned structures to the latest in sky scrapers.  It is all in the space of a few blocks and give the city a very unique feel. The town in surrounded by large hills and mountains and has a great natural harbour.  We went hiking up one of the big peaks just to the east of town. 

La Pousse or The Thumb, our destination.

The crew of Tagish and Barry and I took a 45 minute bus ride to the other side of the mountain and set off for the summit.  It was a glorious day, it took us about 1 and 1/2 to get up and about 2 hours to get down, as we walked all the way back into town. We met this fellow on the way up, he was on his way to market from his garden, he has fresh cilantro and green onions in his basket.  It was an easy walk through cane fields at first and then the trail became rocky and steeper up through the trees on the mountain side. Some of the footing was tricky because in the trees the soil was still wet and it was very slimy and my shoes would slip and slide. 

The last bit was very steep, and you wouldn't have wanted to slip off the edge.  There were fantastic views from the top and you could almost see clear around the island. Barry could see the boats in a harbour over 15 kilometers away. 

     

Yesterday we walked up to Fort Adelaide built in the 1830's but never really used in war. It was a much shorter walk but quite steep and I was out of breath by the time we reached the fort. Once again it had great views of the city and the harbour.  The picture at the top is actually taken from the fort.  

Notice La Pousse in the background, that really was quite a hike!

Can you make out the date on the cannon?