Kristi O'Brien, one of the frequent customers of Boomerang just returned from staying at the Park Royal Cozumel. Her experience is typical of what you would expect if Boomerang arranges your next tour. In her words is a critique I am sure will give you a flavor of the experience she just had: "I will compare things on a numerical scale with the Queztal to help with a quantatative comparison. (The Quetzal will be a 5 for comparison.)
ROOMS
The hotel has been renovated very recently. The basic suite that we stayed in was very similar to our room at the Quetzal. My parents were in one of the time share units and had a nice little side room with hide-a-beds and a good sized closet. We saw a few more elaborate suites with sun beds and larger decks that looked very cool. (The rooms were a 5 on par with the Quetzal.)
FOOD
They have one buffet which I would say was smaller, yet comparable to one of the Quetzal's. (A 4 if the Quetzal was a 5.) The other thing that I did not love was that the buffet had themes and if you got on the wrong rotation with the reservation restaurants, like we did without knowing, you have a reservation dinner one night and then the following night is that same theme at the buffet. We did that twice.
There were 3 reservation restaurants. Mexican, Italian, and Caribbean. (In comparison, I would say these all compare very closely with the Quetzal. The Caribbean was the best, followed by the Italian, and finally, the Mexican.)
Of course, the benefit of the Quetzal was the Japanese Restaurant and the Steakhouse which were our two favorite reservation restaurants when we were there.
There were two lunch bungalows, one by one of the infiniti pools by the water and one at the interior pool. They had chips and cheese, beef and chicken burgers, hot dogs, pizza and ham and cheese sandwiches. (I would give this 3 of 5 compared to the Quetzal due to variety.)
There was room service for the time shares, but not for us. Also, there was no after hours muchies spot....the last food closed at 10:30 and after that there was a general store by the front desk where you could pay for snacks 24 hours.
BARS
The bars were comparable to the Quetzal with the exception of the missing Discoteca! They did have the "Sports Bar" that was open until 2 and had a DJ if you wanted to dance and stay out a bit later.
POOLS
The main pool is in the center of the hotel away from the ocean and about half the size of the main Quetzal pool. We spent a lot of time in this one because it was bigger. Activities were always going, which was fun when we wanted to partake but if you didn't want to play that day, the loud music and excited activities staff were hard to avoid at this pool. There was also a swim up bar. The other thing that shocked me was that they closed this pool on the last full day we were there for cleaning. It was supposed to be closed for half a day, but had not reopened the next day when we left at 2pm. (If that had happened our first our second day...it would have been a bit of a drag.)
There were two Infiniti pools down by the water that were significantly smaller...good for hanging out, but no room to swim or play. These both had swim up bars.
SNORKLING
The Ocean was easily accessible and the snorkling right in front of the hotel was OUTSTANDING.
Freddy was our contact at Lomas and very helpful. We rented a Catamaran for the day that took us to Planacar and one other hot snorkling spot. (If you have 15 or more, you can rent the boat for what it costs you per person. $600 total.) This was definitely one of our favorite activities. The Catamaran was slower and more leisurely than the larger ones, but very fun.
SHOWS
The activities staff were everywhere. Again, fun if you wanted an activity...not so fun when you just wanted to be left alone. :) The dancing shows were very typical of what we saw at the Quetzal, but less entertaining overall. (3 of 5)
OVERALL
Overall, we had a really great time. We had wonderful weather and Jeff (my uncle) was able to get around pretty well...the only place he needed help was into the Ocean and up the Caribbean restaurant.
The resort was very nice, but significantly smaller than the Quetzal, so I was a bit spoiled going in...the beach area was also WAY smaller, so we swam mostly in the pools and less in the ocean.
Let me know if there are any other details that you are interested in hearing. Just e-mail Boomerang. Have a great day! Kristi"
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Where in the world are the Ewings?
Do you remember the popular game called "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego." That is what I am reminded of when I think of the Ewing family. This delightful family of four is the best-traveled family I have ever heard of. The fact that several times a year the owners of Boomerang Tours travel the year and often with their children, is a testimony to me that Boomerang has unparalleled expertise.
Who would want to stay in a place that is recommended by a travel agency or its associates who do not have first hand experience on site. The Ewings have made travel a way of life and their children are walking examples of geography scholars. Each member of the family knows about the places they and traveled, what to see, what to avoid, where to stay and what to eat.
As you plan your next trip, know that Marcie at Boomerang speaks with experience. It has been said of travel agents, that you can pretend to care. Howver, there is no substitute for having been there...and in the case of the Ewings, they have been there.
Return frequently to this blog to answer the real question "where in the world are the Ewings?" Follow their travel and know that they are scouting out places that will be great for your family at an affordable price. However, know that the quality of what will be recommended will be such that you will not ever be disappointed.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Exploring St. Vincent
For Sailors: St. Vincent and the Grenadines
New York Times Article by MICHELLE HIGGINS
Published: January 28, 2007
St. Vincent and the Grenadines is an archipelago of 32 islands and cays at the southern end of the Caribbean. With relatively calm waters, a steady breeze and short distances between anchorages, the islands have long been a draw for the sailing and yachting crowds. But it's become more popular in the last year or so, thanks to increased marketing efforts and expansions by charter companies. Barefoot Yacht Charters, www.barefootyachts.com, one of the longest running operators in the islands, organized about 400 sailing trips last year, up 45 percent from 2005. Prices for staffed yachts vary widely depending on the size and amenities. A 47-foot, air-conditioned catamaran with a two-person crew and accommodating six guests costs about $9,660 for seven nights. A week-long charter of a 126-foot sailboat that can accommodate 12 guests will run about $64,000. Footloose Sailing Charters, www.footloosecharters.com, a 12-year-old company based in Florida, opened a new base on the island of St. Vincent in October and is offering 10 percent off five-day May charters booked by Feb. 5.
Airlines that fly to St. Vincent and the Grenadines include Caribbean Star and LIAT.
A typical seven-day itinerary setting sail from St. Vincent might include Bequia, an island with a strong seafaring history and where model boats are ubiquitous; Mustique, a private island famous for its celebrity beachcombers; and the numerous islets, coves and coral reefs of the Tobago Cays.
WHERE TO STAY If you need a night on land, the Frangipani on Bequia is a favorite hangout for the yachting crowd and overlooks the island's harbor. Doubles start at $60 a night in season (784-458-3255, www.frangipanibequia.com). On Mustique, the high-end Cotton House offers cottages starting at $700 a night in season (784-456-4777, www.cottonhouse.net). Petit St. Vincent is the only resort on the island by the same name. Rates start at $940 a night for a couple in season (800-654-9326, www.psvresort.com).
New York Times Article by MICHELLE HIGGINS
Published: January 28, 2007
St. Vincent and the Grenadines is an archipelago of 32 islands and cays at the southern end of the Caribbean. With relatively calm waters, a steady breeze and short distances between anchorages, the islands have long been a draw for the sailing and yachting crowds. But it's become more popular in the last year or so, thanks to increased marketing efforts and expansions by charter companies. Barefoot Yacht Charters, www.barefootyachts.com, one of the longest running operators in the islands, organized about 400 sailing trips last year, up 45 percent from 2005. Prices for staffed yachts vary widely depending on the size and amenities. A 47-foot, air-conditioned catamaran with a two-person crew and accommodating six guests costs about $9,660 for seven nights. A week-long charter of a 126-foot sailboat that can accommodate 12 guests will run about $64,000. Footloose Sailing Charters, www.footloosecharters.com, a 12-year-old company based in Florida, opened a new base on the island of St. Vincent in October and is offering 10 percent off five-day May charters booked by Feb. 5.
Airlines that fly to St. Vincent and the Grenadines include Caribbean Star and LIAT.
A typical seven-day itinerary setting sail from St. Vincent might include Bequia, an island with a strong seafaring history and where model boats are ubiquitous; Mustique, a private island famous for its celebrity beachcombers; and the numerous islets, coves and coral reefs of the Tobago Cays.
WHERE TO STAY If you need a night on land, the Frangipani on Bequia is a favorite hangout for the yachting crowd and overlooks the island's harbor. Doubles start at $60 a night in season (784-458-3255, www.frangipanibequia.com). On Mustique, the high-end Cotton House offers cottages starting at $700 a night in season (784-456-4777, www.cottonhouse.net). Petit St. Vincent is the only resort on the island by the same name. Rates start at $940 a night for a couple in season (800-654-9326, www.psvresort.com).
Exploring Grenada
JOURNEYS: CARIBBEAN; Barefoot in the Caribbean? Not on These Hikes (Grenada)
New York Times Article by STEFANI JACKENTHAL
Published: February 12, 2006
Nicknamed the Isle of Spice for its nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and assorted spices production, Grenada has lush landscapes with hiking trails through its green mountains and thriving rain forests. Beginner to advanced hikers flock to the Grand Etang Forest Reserve in the rugged mountainous interior, with multiple-level treks. Some of the trails have been blocked since last year's hurricane Ivan, but the two-hour (round-trip) hike to Seven Sisters Falls and a half-day hike up Mount Qua Qua are a nice mix of casual and challenging excursions.
Levera National Park, in one of Grenada's most scenic and spectacular coastal sections, has trails with easy footing around the lagoon and mangrove swamps. The 450-acre preserve with several swimming holes and waterfalls is great for spotting indigenous herons, black-necked stilts and common snipes.
Sunsation Tours, 473-444-1594, www.grenadasunsation.com, offers full-day, half-day (from $70 and $45 a person respectively) and private tours. Granada Tours, 473-440-1428, www.grenadatours.com, picks guests up at their hotels for guided group day hikes ($45 a person) to both Seven Sisters and Mount Qua Qua. Private tours are available.
New York Times Article by STEFANI JACKENTHAL
Published: February 12, 2006
Nicknamed the Isle of Spice for its nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and assorted spices production, Grenada has lush landscapes with hiking trails through its green mountains and thriving rain forests. Beginner to advanced hikers flock to the Grand Etang Forest Reserve in the rugged mountainous interior, with multiple-level treks. Some of the trails have been blocked since last year's hurricane Ivan, but the two-hour (round-trip) hike to Seven Sisters Falls and a half-day hike up Mount Qua Qua are a nice mix of casual and challenging excursions.
Levera National Park, in one of Grenada's most scenic and spectacular coastal sections, has trails with easy footing around the lagoon and mangrove swamps. The 450-acre preserve with several swimming holes and waterfalls is great for spotting indigenous herons, black-necked stilts and common snipes.
Sunsation Tours, 473-444-1594, www.grenadasunsation.com, offers full-day, half-day (from $70 and $45 a person respectively) and private tours. Granada Tours, 473-440-1428, www.grenadatours.com, picks guests up at their hotels for guided group day hikes ($45 a person) to both Seven Sisters and Mount Qua Qua. Private tours are available.
Exploring St. Lucia
Affordable St. Lucia, New York Times Article By SUZANNE MacNEILLE
Published: October 28, 2007
Often overlooked by Caribbean-bound travelers, low-key St. Lucia has all the makings of a tropical paradise: tawny, palm-studded beaches, sheltered coves, a lush interior replete with rain forests and waterfalls, and helpful locals who seem happy (if amused) to wave you in the right direction when the curvy roads fork off in three vertiginous directions. But St. Lucia's under-the-radar status is changing as a bevy of new luxury resorts vie for the best view and the most over-the-top amenities. Still, if the $1,000-a-night, private-plunge-pool experience doesn't appeal to you or your wallet, deals abound, and with them, a chance to sample the real St. Lucia.
Where to Stay
On the island's quiet southern tip, the Villa Caribbean Dream map (Cap Moule à Chique, Vieux Fort; 758-454-68-46; www.caribdreams.net) is a roomy guesthouse with gingerbread trim perched high above untouristy Vieux Fort, near a good windsurfing beach. For $40 (single) or $50 (double), you can stay in one of four rooms in a separate wing with two shared bathrooms. Two apartments, with kitchens and baths, are available for $80. All guests are encouraged to lounge on the deck, which offers a splendid view of sea and coastline.
At the 33-room Bay Gardens Inn map (Rodney Bay; 758-452-82-00; www.baygardensinn.com) on the northwest coast, published rates start at $115, but scratch below the surface and you'll easily find under-$100 deals. A recent Expedia search yielded a $72.75 December rate and, on the hotel's Web site, a $90 rate turned up as a “manager's special.” The rooms are bright, with balconies or patios facing a peaceful courtyard and small pool. All have effective, if slightly noisy air-conditioning, refrigerators, modern bathrooms and thoughtful extras like thick beach towels. A bonus is free access to the larger pools at both the Bay Gardens Hotel across the street and the higher-end Bay Gardens Beach Resort on nearby Reduit beach.
Where to Eat
With all the roadside stands offering grilled chicken and pork (starting at 10 East Caribbean dollars, or about $3.70 at 2.70 E.C. dollars to the U.S. dollar) and cheap Piton beer, it's easy to grab lunch on the fly. At the sprawling market across from the port in the capital city of Castries, find your way around tables laden with breadfruit and coconuts, to an alley where vendors sell local fare like rotis — spicy lamb and chicken curries wrapped in a tortilla-like pancake (7 E.C. dollars) — and chewy disks of cassava bread, flecked with cherries and nutmeg (5 E.C. dollars). For breakfast, grab a papaya juice and a coconut turnover for 4 E.C. dollars.
On Rodney Bay's main strip, locals often recommend the Lime map (758-452-0761), which serves a filling version of rotis (10 E.C. dollars) and conch sautéed in a Creole sauce (58 E.C. dollars).
But the meal you'll linger over is at La Haut Plantation map (Castries-Soufrière Highway; 758-459-7008; www.lahaut.com). The view of the Pitons — two towering, spiky outcrops — is mesmerizing. Lunch, too, isn't bad, especially the fish cakes (a fried concoction of cod, flour and peppers for 12 E.C. dollars) and crispy pumpkin fries (15 E.C. dollars). Top it off with cocoa tea, a rich brew of grated cocoa sticks, cinnamon, nutmeg and steamed milk (7 E.C. dollars).
Free Beaches
Most tourists head straight to the Caribbean beaches — either Reduit Beach map, or the broad coves at Anse Chastanet and Anse des Pitons map where the snorkeling is good. A four-wheel drive is needed on the scary, torn-up road that leads to Anse Chastanet, which fronts the resort with the same name. And the easiest way to visit Anse des Pitons, in front of the Jalousie Plantation resort, is to have lunch at the resort's midpriced Bayside Bar and Grill so you can catch a free hotel shuttle down the precipitous hill.
Meanwhile, the swaths of pale sand and frothy turquoise surf on the less-developed Atlantic coast are popular with locals and European windsurfers. One lovely stretch, Anse de Sables map, is hidden in plain sight near the Vieux Fort airport, offering the possibility of a farewell swim before heading home.
Where to Party
Both tourists and locals congregate at bars and restaurants lining Rodney Bay's main strip, where techno, dance, zouk and reggae tunes pour into the street from places like the Lime and the unnamed, but popular, open-air bar just up the street. For a unique taste of St. Lucian night life, go to a Friday night “jump up” in nearby Gros Islet village map. Residents sell cheap homemade rum punch, jerk chicken and fried flying fish (from 10 E.C. dollars), and then settle back to party themselves. By 11 p.m., the tiny, dim bars are overflowing, and the streets are packed with diners, drinkers and dancers.
What to Do
St. Lucia's green interior is an antidote to beach burnout, with trails that include easy marches through former sugar and cocoa plantations to rain-forest treks where you might spy a blue-headed St. Lucia parrot or a boa constrictor wound around a fig tree branch. For instance, the Forestiere Rainforest Trail map in north-central St. Lucia is a three-mile hike through fig trees, ferns and châtaigniers, trees with elaborate, draping root systems. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (758-468-5645; www.slumaffe.org) will arrange guide service. Go during the week when the fee —$10— is half the weekend charge. For a quick, drive-up sampling of St. Lucia's lush foliage, stroll among the gaudy tropical blossoms at Diamond Botanical Gardens map (Soufrière; 758-459-7155; www.diamondstlucia.com, $5) with its 55-foot-tall waterfall, or visit the quiet trails at Mamiku Gardens map (Vieux Fort-Castries Highway, Praslin; 758-455-3729; 15 E.C. dollars).
What to Buy
Avoid the indoor craft area at the Castries market map where some items — like the bright, silky scarves that look so authentically Caribbean — bear tags from India or China. But outside, you'll find clay coal pots for 30 E.C. dollars and spicy banana ketchup for 7 E.C. dollars. At roadside galleries like the Melting Pot map (Castries-Soufrière Highway, Anse La Raye; 758-458-3048), you can watch a local artist, Winston Feverier, carve and paint colorful masks (prices start at $25).
Published: October 28, 2007
Often overlooked by Caribbean-bound travelers, low-key St. Lucia has all the makings of a tropical paradise: tawny, palm-studded beaches, sheltered coves, a lush interior replete with rain forests and waterfalls, and helpful locals who seem happy (if amused) to wave you in the right direction when the curvy roads fork off in three vertiginous directions. But St. Lucia's under-the-radar status is changing as a bevy of new luxury resorts vie for the best view and the most over-the-top amenities. Still, if the $1,000-a-night, private-plunge-pool experience doesn't appeal to you or your wallet, deals abound, and with them, a chance to sample the real St. Lucia.
Where to Stay
On the island's quiet southern tip, the Villa Caribbean Dream map (Cap Moule à Chique, Vieux Fort; 758-454-68-46; www.caribdreams.net) is a roomy guesthouse with gingerbread trim perched high above untouristy Vieux Fort, near a good windsurfing beach. For $40 (single) or $50 (double), you can stay in one of four rooms in a separate wing with two shared bathrooms. Two apartments, with kitchens and baths, are available for $80. All guests are encouraged to lounge on the deck, which offers a splendid view of sea and coastline.
At the 33-room Bay Gardens Inn map (Rodney Bay; 758-452-82-00; www.baygardensinn.com) on the northwest coast, published rates start at $115, but scratch below the surface and you'll easily find under-$100 deals. A recent Expedia search yielded a $72.75 December rate and, on the hotel's Web site, a $90 rate turned up as a “manager's special.” The rooms are bright, with balconies or patios facing a peaceful courtyard and small pool. All have effective, if slightly noisy air-conditioning, refrigerators, modern bathrooms and thoughtful extras like thick beach towels. A bonus is free access to the larger pools at both the Bay Gardens Hotel across the street and the higher-end Bay Gardens Beach Resort on nearby Reduit beach.
Where to Eat
With all the roadside stands offering grilled chicken and pork (starting at 10 East Caribbean dollars, or about $3.70 at 2.70 E.C. dollars to the U.S. dollar) and cheap Piton beer, it's easy to grab lunch on the fly. At the sprawling market across from the port in the capital city of Castries, find your way around tables laden with breadfruit and coconuts, to an alley where vendors sell local fare like rotis — spicy lamb and chicken curries wrapped in a tortilla-like pancake (7 E.C. dollars) — and chewy disks of cassava bread, flecked with cherries and nutmeg (5 E.C. dollars). For breakfast, grab a papaya juice and a coconut turnover for 4 E.C. dollars.
On Rodney Bay's main strip, locals often recommend the Lime map (758-452-0761), which serves a filling version of rotis (10 E.C. dollars) and conch sautéed in a Creole sauce (58 E.C. dollars).
But the meal you'll linger over is at La Haut Plantation map (Castries-Soufrière Highway; 758-459-7008; www.lahaut.com). The view of the Pitons — two towering, spiky outcrops — is mesmerizing. Lunch, too, isn't bad, especially the fish cakes (a fried concoction of cod, flour and peppers for 12 E.C. dollars) and crispy pumpkin fries (15 E.C. dollars). Top it off with cocoa tea, a rich brew of grated cocoa sticks, cinnamon, nutmeg and steamed milk (7 E.C. dollars).
Free Beaches
Most tourists head straight to the Caribbean beaches — either Reduit Beach map, or the broad coves at Anse Chastanet and Anse des Pitons map where the snorkeling is good. A four-wheel drive is needed on the scary, torn-up road that leads to Anse Chastanet, which fronts the resort with the same name. And the easiest way to visit Anse des Pitons, in front of the Jalousie Plantation resort, is to have lunch at the resort's midpriced Bayside Bar and Grill so you can catch a free hotel shuttle down the precipitous hill.
Meanwhile, the swaths of pale sand and frothy turquoise surf on the less-developed Atlantic coast are popular with locals and European windsurfers. One lovely stretch, Anse de Sables map, is hidden in plain sight near the Vieux Fort airport, offering the possibility of a farewell swim before heading home.
Where to Party
Both tourists and locals congregate at bars and restaurants lining Rodney Bay's main strip, where techno, dance, zouk and reggae tunes pour into the street from places like the Lime and the unnamed, but popular, open-air bar just up the street. For a unique taste of St. Lucian night life, go to a Friday night “jump up” in nearby Gros Islet village map. Residents sell cheap homemade rum punch, jerk chicken and fried flying fish (from 10 E.C. dollars), and then settle back to party themselves. By 11 p.m., the tiny, dim bars are overflowing, and the streets are packed with diners, drinkers and dancers.
What to Do
St. Lucia's green interior is an antidote to beach burnout, with trails that include easy marches through former sugar and cocoa plantations to rain-forest treks where you might spy a blue-headed St. Lucia parrot or a boa constrictor wound around a fig tree branch. For instance, the Forestiere Rainforest Trail map in north-central St. Lucia is a three-mile hike through fig trees, ferns and châtaigniers, trees with elaborate, draping root systems. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (758-468-5645; www.slumaffe.org) will arrange guide service. Go during the week when the fee —$10— is half the weekend charge. For a quick, drive-up sampling of St. Lucia's lush foliage, stroll among the gaudy tropical blossoms at Diamond Botanical Gardens map (Soufrière; 758-459-7155; www.diamondstlucia.com, $5) with its 55-foot-tall waterfall, or visit the quiet trails at Mamiku Gardens map (Vieux Fort-Castries Highway, Praslin; 758-455-3729; 15 E.C. dollars).
What to Buy
Avoid the indoor craft area at the Castries market map where some items — like the bright, silky scarves that look so authentically Caribbean — bear tags from India or China. But outside, you'll find clay coal pots for 30 E.C. dollars and spicy banana ketchup for 7 E.C. dollars. At roadside galleries like the Melting Pot map (Castries-Soufrière Highway, Anse La Raye; 758-458-3048), you can watch a local artist, Winston Feverier, carve and paint colorful masks (prices start at $25).
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Exploring Guadeloupe
In Guadeloupe, French, Beach Spoken Here
By PAUL SCHNEIDER
Published: February 5, 2006
France once traded hulking Canada for the butterfly-shaped Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, and — without wishing to ruffle any flannels among the lumberjacks — in the bleak midwinter, at least, it's easy to see why it might have struck that bargain.
Actually a cluster of small islands, Guadeloupe has all the classic elements of a tropical paradise: white, pink and black sand beaches; tropical jungles protected in national parks that don't subsidize logging; towering waterfalls with delightful swimming holes at their bases; scuba and snorkeling galore; even a smoldering volcano and a couple of reasonably hot discos.
Add to that authentic Creole culture, French patisseries, local sugar that is distilled into local rum, local coffee, local chocolate and — well, let's just say that by 1763 beaver hats weren't selling as briskly in Paris as they had, and the deal with the British for Canada was quietly done. The southern coast of Grand-Terre, the island that makes up the butterfly's right wing, is where most of Guadeloupe's beachfront tourism has traditionally been centered. But unless your idea of getting away from it all is roasting cheek by smoking jowl on matching beach recliners with your French counterparts while disco plays in the background, you need to choose your lodging wisely as many of the best beaches along this stretch of coast are dominated by giant French resorts of a certain age.
All the beaches are open to the public, however, and the path to the beach in Ste.-Anne is lined with brightly painted stalls and open-air cafes where pretty women sell sarongs and handmade jewelry, crepes and Creole salads. At the end you can rent a kayak or a windsurfer or wander over to the Club Med and get a day pass to use its toys. It's not a deserted strand, particularly on weekends, but there's plenty of shade under the palm trees, the swimming is easy, and locals periodically come by your towel with plastic buckets full of panini for sale. (For a bit more seclusion, try the little undeveloped crescent a few minutes past the Eden Palm Hotel, about halfway between the towns of Ste.-Anne and St.-François.)
Guadeloupe is a full-fledged department of France, so dinner never really gets going before 8. The nicer hotels all have good culinary reputations, augmented at La Toubana by an astounding clifftop view and at the Eden Palm by live entertainment. But if you want to get off-campus, St.-François has the best selection of restaurants. Most of them are rustic little places around the harbor and waterfront selling grilled fish, or pizza. But not all. At the Iguana Café, a romantic place with dark wood floors and lattice walls through which the peepers peep mightily while you sip local rum with sugar and lime, the food makes you wish you were one of those super-tasters who can explain how it is that an appetizer of sea urchin and quail eggs en cocotte can have the clean, salty flavor of swimming off a dock in Maine when you were 11.
St.-François is also where you can board the ferry for La Désirade. La Désiderade is a steep-sided, flat-topped island that was traditionally the first bit of New World land sighted by incoming Spanish square-riggers in the age of exploration, a sign that they had safely crossed the Ocean Sea.
But today Désirade is the kind of place where you can easily see yourself dropping off the face of the earth for a few days. There are no fancy hotels or beach clubs on the island, only what the French call gîtes, which are sort of like bed-and-breakfasts without strange owners shuffling around in worn-out slippers prattling on about how they escaped Manhattan 20 years ago.
In fact, there is no fancy anything here. As on the rest of Guadeloupe, the beaches often have a small, open-air restaurant at one end or the other. Usually these are not much more than a camper converted into a kitchen, a sheet-metal barbecue oven and a trellis of palm fronds and tarps to shade the plastic tables. The food is simple and good: grilled seafood with rice, say, or octopus fricassée. Bob Marley, the universal soundtrack to laid-back living, plays softly on a cassette deck, and if you're not careful, which is to say carefree, whole afternoons can slip happily by before you know it.
But nice as it is, La Désirade isn't where you will most likely find yourselves saying "next time we come to Guadeloupe we're coming directly here." That place is the mountainous left wing of the butterfly, Basse-Terre, in general, and the town of Deshaies in particular. Consider staying at the Taïnos Cottages, an eccentric handful of beautiful post-and-beam open-air cottages built in a traditional Caribbean style entirely out of rough-cut teak. It's a lost-in-time feeling place, with hand-carved teak furniture, white linens, four-poster beds with mosquito netting, grassy paths and keyhole views of both the steep island behind and the blue sea in front. (Not to mention no air-conditioning, which isn't a problem thanks to the ocean breeze.) Each cottage is a unique folly, built over the last few years by Guadeloupe-born Charles-Henry Bichara — "I know eet sounds like an English name," he says with a delicious French accent as he presents you with your morning croissants and egg, "but eet's really not."
Best of all, the hotel is tucked in at the quiet end of Grande Anse, the longest and best beach in all of Guadeloupe. If it's busy, or just for a change, follow the path heading along the coast to the right that winds up around Point le Breton, through a neighborhood that has seen better times, to the more secluded Anse de la Perle. At the end of it there is a sand-floored restaurant called Le Madras 2 where you can order what has by now become your regular midday meal, grilled fish with Creole "dog" sauce (jalapeños, onions and olive oil), and a cold beer.
Then, after a swim, walk back. Deshaies itself is a tidy little town with a handful of good restaurants — especially L'Amer, which is right on the water — and a magnificent botanical garden that's worth a visit for the orchid-covered trees alone. Mostly, though, Deshaies can be a comfortable base for excursions along the coast to small, tasty attractions like the Musée du Rhum, the Maison du Cacao and the Musée du Café.
The west coast of Basse-Terre is also where you can embark on more adventurous explorations on numerous trails into the mountains of the Parc National de la Guadeloupe, or with scuba or snorkels underwater to the colorful reefs off Pigeon Island, one of Jacques Cousteau's favorite diving locations.
Of course, there won't be time to do it all, which is always a good sign about a place. But do go to the top of the volcano La Soufrière, where you can peer into the abyss and remember the smell of your eighth-grade chemistry room. Halfway back down you'll pass a sign pointing out a path heading farther into the jungle, giving distances for no less than three remote wilderness waterfalls. You can't possibly take that path: it's your last day.
"Next time," you say under your breath with the sadness that always accompanies such wishful promises. "Next time."
Visitor Information
GETTING THERE
It's not particularly easy to fly from New York to Guadeloupe. American has a flight leaving at 6:45 a.m. that involves a change of planes in San Juan and that arrives at Pointe-à-Pitre about seven hours after leaving New York. Fares start at $691 in mid-February.
Once there, you probably want to rent a car, which is easy to do from any of the major or minor agencies at the airport in Point a Pitre. Most roads are well maintained; expect to negotiate rotaries.
WHERE TO STAY
Room rates are for winter.
Guadeloupe is really a collection of islands: two large ones that make up "the butterfly" and several smaller ones that are well worth exploring if you have the time.
Of the sprawling French beach clubs sprinkled along the southern coast of Grande-Terre, by Ste.-Anne, the Club Med La Caravelle, www.clubmed.us, 888-932-2582, is probably the best in terms of location. Rates start at $805 a person for a seven-night stay, all meals included.
Assuming you're not traveling as part of a package tour of Parisian pensioners, however, you may want to stay instead at Eden Palm Hotel, www.edenpalm.com, (590-590) 88.48.48, which is on the site of an old sugar plantation between Ste.-Anne and St.-François; doubles from 212 euros ($265, at $1.25 to the euro).
If the view's the thing, try Hôtel La Toubana, www.deshotelsetdesiles.com, (590-590) 88.25.57, doubles from 172 euros, in Ste.-Anne. Near the public entrance to the Club Med beach in Ste.-Anne, the no-frills Hôtel Rotabas, www.lerotabas.com, (590-590) 88.25.60, is friendly, affordable and decidedly local; doubles from 104 euros.
Most visitors to La Désiderate just go back to St.-Francois on the afternoon boat. But on La Désirade, Club Caravelles, desiradoo.com, (590-590) 20.04.00, club has three bungalows: the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria; 65 euros a night for two. Slightly less rustic is the Oualiri Beach Hôtel, (590-590) 20.20.08, www.im-caraibes.com/oualiri, where rooms are 80 euros a night.
There are a handful of hotels in Deshaies in addition to the Taïnos Cottages, www.tainoscottages.com, (590-590) 28.44.42, where all seven cottages are 245 euros a night for two. At Le Rayon Vert, www.hotel.lerayonvert.free.fr, (590-590) 28.43.23, on a hill with wide views, double rooms start at 150 euros.
WHERE TO EAT
Most hotel rates include breakfast, though you won't be disappointed with the patisseries if you oversleep. Lunches are best taken on the beach: almost every strand has an open-air cafe at one end or the other where the food is always simple but never boring. A classic among these is La Roulotte, (590-590) 20.02.33, on the Plage du Souffleur on Désirade.
All that remains, therefore, is dinner, and this being a part of France, the choices are naturally quite good. In St.-Francois, at the exquisitely rustic Les Pieds dans l'Eau, (590-590) 88.60.02, on the waterfront on the Rue de la République, you can get a grilled lobster for 16 euros. At the far more romantic, and pricy, Café Iguana, (590-590) 88.61.37, near the airport, entrees are more in the 20 euro range, but well worth it. In Deshais, several good restaurants are clustered along the waterfront in the center of the village, but don't overlook L'Amer, (590-590) 28.50.43, where entrees are also around 20 euros.
If you find yourself in Gosier, you might visit the marina area of Bas du Fort, where the yachters all come in and mingle with the French tourists. As a result it's wall-to-wall bars and restaurants.
By PAUL SCHNEIDER
Published: February 5, 2006
France once traded hulking Canada for the butterfly-shaped Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, and — without wishing to ruffle any flannels among the lumberjacks — in the bleak midwinter, at least, it's easy to see why it might have struck that bargain.
Actually a cluster of small islands, Guadeloupe has all the classic elements of a tropical paradise: white, pink and black sand beaches; tropical jungles protected in national parks that don't subsidize logging; towering waterfalls with delightful swimming holes at their bases; scuba and snorkeling galore; even a smoldering volcano and a couple of reasonably hot discos.
Add to that authentic Creole culture, French patisseries, local sugar that is distilled into local rum, local coffee, local chocolate and — well, let's just say that by 1763 beaver hats weren't selling as briskly in Paris as they had, and the deal with the British for Canada was quietly done. The southern coast of Grand-Terre, the island that makes up the butterfly's right wing, is where most of Guadeloupe's beachfront tourism has traditionally been centered. But unless your idea of getting away from it all is roasting cheek by smoking jowl on matching beach recliners with your French counterparts while disco plays in the background, you need to choose your lodging wisely as many of the best beaches along this stretch of coast are dominated by giant French resorts of a certain age.
All the beaches are open to the public, however, and the path to the beach in Ste.-Anne is lined with brightly painted stalls and open-air cafes where pretty women sell sarongs and handmade jewelry, crepes and Creole salads. At the end you can rent a kayak or a windsurfer or wander over to the Club Med and get a day pass to use its toys. It's not a deserted strand, particularly on weekends, but there's plenty of shade under the palm trees, the swimming is easy, and locals periodically come by your towel with plastic buckets full of panini for sale. (For a bit more seclusion, try the little undeveloped crescent a few minutes past the Eden Palm Hotel, about halfway between the towns of Ste.-Anne and St.-François.)
Guadeloupe is a full-fledged department of France, so dinner never really gets going before 8. The nicer hotels all have good culinary reputations, augmented at La Toubana by an astounding clifftop view and at the Eden Palm by live entertainment. But if you want to get off-campus, St.-François has the best selection of restaurants. Most of them are rustic little places around the harbor and waterfront selling grilled fish, or pizza. But not all. At the Iguana Café, a romantic place with dark wood floors and lattice walls through which the peepers peep mightily while you sip local rum with sugar and lime, the food makes you wish you were one of those super-tasters who can explain how it is that an appetizer of sea urchin and quail eggs en cocotte can have the clean, salty flavor of swimming off a dock in Maine when you were 11.
St.-François is also where you can board the ferry for La Désirade. La Désiderade is a steep-sided, flat-topped island that was traditionally the first bit of New World land sighted by incoming Spanish square-riggers in the age of exploration, a sign that they had safely crossed the Ocean Sea.
But today Désirade is the kind of place where you can easily see yourself dropping off the face of the earth for a few days. There are no fancy hotels or beach clubs on the island, only what the French call gîtes, which are sort of like bed-and-breakfasts without strange owners shuffling around in worn-out slippers prattling on about how they escaped Manhattan 20 years ago.
In fact, there is no fancy anything here. As on the rest of Guadeloupe, the beaches often have a small, open-air restaurant at one end or the other. Usually these are not much more than a camper converted into a kitchen, a sheet-metal barbecue oven and a trellis of palm fronds and tarps to shade the plastic tables. The food is simple and good: grilled seafood with rice, say, or octopus fricassée. Bob Marley, the universal soundtrack to laid-back living, plays softly on a cassette deck, and if you're not careful, which is to say carefree, whole afternoons can slip happily by before you know it.
But nice as it is, La Désirade isn't where you will most likely find yourselves saying "next time we come to Guadeloupe we're coming directly here." That place is the mountainous left wing of the butterfly, Basse-Terre, in general, and the town of Deshaies in particular. Consider staying at the Taïnos Cottages, an eccentric handful of beautiful post-and-beam open-air cottages built in a traditional Caribbean style entirely out of rough-cut teak. It's a lost-in-time feeling place, with hand-carved teak furniture, white linens, four-poster beds with mosquito netting, grassy paths and keyhole views of both the steep island behind and the blue sea in front. (Not to mention no air-conditioning, which isn't a problem thanks to the ocean breeze.) Each cottage is a unique folly, built over the last few years by Guadeloupe-born Charles-Henry Bichara — "I know eet sounds like an English name," he says with a delicious French accent as he presents you with your morning croissants and egg, "but eet's really not."
Best of all, the hotel is tucked in at the quiet end of Grande Anse, the longest and best beach in all of Guadeloupe. If it's busy, or just for a change, follow the path heading along the coast to the right that winds up around Point le Breton, through a neighborhood that has seen better times, to the more secluded Anse de la Perle. At the end of it there is a sand-floored restaurant called Le Madras 2 where you can order what has by now become your regular midday meal, grilled fish with Creole "dog" sauce (jalapeños, onions and olive oil), and a cold beer.
Then, after a swim, walk back. Deshaies itself is a tidy little town with a handful of good restaurants — especially L'Amer, which is right on the water — and a magnificent botanical garden that's worth a visit for the orchid-covered trees alone. Mostly, though, Deshaies can be a comfortable base for excursions along the coast to small, tasty attractions like the Musée du Rhum, the Maison du Cacao and the Musée du Café.
The west coast of Basse-Terre is also where you can embark on more adventurous explorations on numerous trails into the mountains of the Parc National de la Guadeloupe, or with scuba or snorkels underwater to the colorful reefs off Pigeon Island, one of Jacques Cousteau's favorite diving locations.
Of course, there won't be time to do it all, which is always a good sign about a place. But do go to the top of the volcano La Soufrière, where you can peer into the abyss and remember the smell of your eighth-grade chemistry room. Halfway back down you'll pass a sign pointing out a path heading farther into the jungle, giving distances for no less than three remote wilderness waterfalls. You can't possibly take that path: it's your last day.
"Next time," you say under your breath with the sadness that always accompanies such wishful promises. "Next time."
Visitor Information
GETTING THERE
It's not particularly easy to fly from New York to Guadeloupe. American has a flight leaving at 6:45 a.m. that involves a change of planes in San Juan and that arrives at Pointe-à-Pitre about seven hours after leaving New York. Fares start at $691 in mid-February.
Once there, you probably want to rent a car, which is easy to do from any of the major or minor agencies at the airport in Point a Pitre. Most roads are well maintained; expect to negotiate rotaries.
WHERE TO STAY
Room rates are for winter.
Guadeloupe is really a collection of islands: two large ones that make up "the butterfly" and several smaller ones that are well worth exploring if you have the time.
Of the sprawling French beach clubs sprinkled along the southern coast of Grande-Terre, by Ste.-Anne, the Club Med La Caravelle, www.clubmed.us, 888-932-2582, is probably the best in terms of location. Rates start at $805 a person for a seven-night stay, all meals included.
Assuming you're not traveling as part of a package tour of Parisian pensioners, however, you may want to stay instead at Eden Palm Hotel, www.edenpalm.com, (590-590) 88.48.48, which is on the site of an old sugar plantation between Ste.-Anne and St.-François; doubles from 212 euros ($265, at $1.25 to the euro).
If the view's the thing, try Hôtel La Toubana, www.deshotelsetdesiles.com, (590-590) 88.25.57, doubles from 172 euros, in Ste.-Anne. Near the public entrance to the Club Med beach in Ste.-Anne, the no-frills Hôtel Rotabas, www.lerotabas.com, (590-590) 88.25.60, is friendly, affordable and decidedly local; doubles from 104 euros.
Most visitors to La Désiderate just go back to St.-Francois on the afternoon boat. But on La Désirade, Club Caravelles, desiradoo.com, (590-590) 20.04.00, club has three bungalows: the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria; 65 euros a night for two. Slightly less rustic is the Oualiri Beach Hôtel, (590-590) 20.20.08, www.im-caraibes.com/oualiri, where rooms are 80 euros a night.
There are a handful of hotels in Deshaies in addition to the Taïnos Cottages, www.tainoscottages.com, (590-590) 28.44.42, where all seven cottages are 245 euros a night for two. At Le Rayon Vert, www.hotel.lerayonvert.free.fr, (590-590) 28.43.23, on a hill with wide views, double rooms start at 150 euros.
WHERE TO EAT
Most hotel rates include breakfast, though you won't be disappointed with the patisseries if you oversleep. Lunches are best taken on the beach: almost every strand has an open-air cafe at one end or the other where the food is always simple but never boring. A classic among these is La Roulotte, (590-590) 20.02.33, on the Plage du Souffleur on Désirade.
All that remains, therefore, is dinner, and this being a part of France, the choices are naturally quite good. In St.-Francois, at the exquisitely rustic Les Pieds dans l'Eau, (590-590) 88.60.02, on the waterfront on the Rue de la République, you can get a grilled lobster for 16 euros. At the far more romantic, and pricy, Café Iguana, (590-590) 88.61.37, near the airport, entrees are more in the 20 euro range, but well worth it. In Deshais, several good restaurants are clustered along the waterfront in the center of the village, but don't overlook L'Amer, (590-590) 28.50.43, where entrees are also around 20 euros.
If you find yourself in Gosier, you might visit the marina area of Bas du Fort, where the yachters all come in and mingle with the French tourists. As a result it's wall-to-wall bars and restaurants.
Exploring Trinidad
Here is a fun commentary by the Collins, a LDS missionary couple who served in Trinidad and Tobago for 6 months. They loved their preparation day outings:
We will share with you some of the fun things we found to do in Trinidad and Tobago. If you visit our blog, listed below, you can get a look at some of our adventures. Our number one was the trip to Paria Bay and Falls. We went over on the north shore, past Maracas and Las Cuevas Bays to the town of Blanchissuse. There is a blue building, the police station, on the south side of the road, across the road is a fisherman's station - where the fishermen bring in and sell their catch. We stopped there and contacted a man to take us to Paria Bay - I think it cost us about $30.00US (with tips it quickly got to about $60). Seven locals joined us on the ride and three of them hiked to the falls with us - we had a great time. On our return home we took the Arima Blanchissuse road (about a half mile past the police station) over the mountains to Arima. We've gone that way twice - a must see trip! It takes about an hour, to an hour and a half, but it is beautiful. As you near Arima you will pass the Asa Wright Nature Center. We didn't go there, but I understand it is a good place to visit. There are several water falls near this road also, that we haven't visited - President Robison wanted us in the office too much. If you want to spend a little time on a more secluded beach while you are over on the north side, there is a real quaint beach between Las Cuevas & Blanchissuse. Watch for a little wooden archway with a long flight of steps that take you down to the beach - There is an area to park off the road.
Another trip we enjoyed was to the northeast corner of the island. This is also where you would go to see the turtles. You take the Churchill Roosevelt Highway east to near the end, then north to the Eastern Main road, and east/northeast to Toco. There are some beautiful sights along the way. In the Toco area watch for the sign and road to the right that takes you to the Light House, a historic structure and beautiful sights. When you return to Toco, take the road along the north shore to Matelot - another scenic drive.
We have visited the Caroni Swamp twice and enjoyed it both times - a leisurely experience, well worth the time. We very much enjoyed visiting the Chaguanas open market on Saturday mornings- this is one of the most unique experiences. Relax, enjoy the traffic, and when you find the place, and a place to park - both are challenges - go in and buy some fresh vegetables, or upstairs about anything else. On the west end of the market you will find piles of pig snouts and tails, along with fresh fish and swrimp.
The entire island is beautiful. We enjoyed drives to the southwest corner through Point Fortin and down to "The Serpents Mouth", as well as the drive through Princes Town and along the Manzanilla shore line. The northwest corner, for a short trip, was nice, with some nice places to eat.
Our visit to Tobago was great. The glass bottom boat ride and snorkeling in the Boccoo Reef was a beautiful experience. We also drove around the island, snorkeling in Englishman's Bay, the best place we found - you are right on a reef with lots of life! We also went down and down and down into Pirates Bay, a nice swim, but not as nice as Englishman's, and parking is very limited. We drove up to the Rain Forest, but didn't have time to take any of the tours. We contacted Dominique 'Peter" Amann to go deep see fishing. He and his deck hand were great to be with. His contact is Hard Play Fishing Charters, 639-7108, or Peter at 739-6762. We were not there during the better season. (End of the Collin's report)
Trinidad was recently featured online in a New York Times Travel article by Chris Ramirez (http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/travel/28trinidad.html) as not being the Caribbean of white sand beaches and umbrella drinks. We have lived here for two years as as the New York Times article says, "there is oil money there, and tall buildings in which to count it, and grinding poverty and the sound of calypso drifting by on the breeze. There is serious cricket when there isn't serious soccer, and there is always a plan afoot for Carnival, the island's month long, pre-Lenten feast.
People visit Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, for Carnival, or pass through on their way to more traditional vacations on Tobago, the nation's other main island, a short flight away and thick with resorts.
But stay a while, exploring the busy streets in which V. S. Naipaul, the country's prodigal son, found his literature and eventually a Nobel Prize, and a truth emerges: This is one of the great eating towns in the Caribbean, the greatest of the Lesser Antilles, and the fount of some of the finest rum in the world.
Start with breakfast, in particular the ones available at the Port Authority Canteen, a stevedore's cafeteria perched on the edge of the harbor. It is made up of a dozen or so tiny kitchens with electric hot plates and propane hobs. There are long picnic tables in front of these, some set with oilskin cloths, others painted a soft lime green.
They are packed for breakfast, and again for lunch and dinner — men eating in shifts, wolfishly, then heading back into the sun. Fans move the humidity around, under signs at each end of the room that proclaim, “No Obscene Language.”
People talk about the laid-back, easygoing nature of the Caribbean, but Trinidad is a working hub, one of the most prosperous islands in the region. There is plenty of off-work downtime, the slow and pleasant dance into sociable half-drunkenness that Trinidadians call “liming,” but the women who cook in the Port Authority Canteen have little time for it.
Charmaine Cupido is one of them. Her stall is in a far corner of the room, almost invisible from the door. Fish sandwiches are her thing, the delicacy known here as bake and shark, best consumed with one of the frothy sweet drinks sold nearby: a watery concoction of mauby bark, cinnamon and sugar, say, or sea moss and milk.
Ms. Cupido slices a round of bread into two discs, and places on one of them a number of pieces of fried fish — carite that October morning, a local mackerel, though she'll cook the traditional shark if she can find it at market. The fish has a flavorful crust, bright with the tingle of ginger and pepper, with an undertow of salt: her special mix. Next comes some lettuce, sliced tomato, sliced cucumber, along with a squirt of thinned ketchup and a more substantial one of her own pepper sauce, which has an orange, slightly sweet hot-pepper kick that is in tune with the morning hour.
She wraps this into a waxed-paper bag and sends you on your way, down to the far end of the cafeteria, where other women are doling out fresh juices in paper cups.
It is really about the best fish sandwich in the world. But, of course, there are others. Bake and shark is a point of national pride in Trinidad, and fierce debates rage over who serves the finest.
One of the handsomest places to take a stand on the matter is Maracas Bay, a 45-minute drive north from Port of Spain, and one of the island's most famous beaches, both for its proximity to the capital and for its shocking beauty: a limp half-circle of soft, reddish sand beneath towering mountains and wisps of fog. Imagine the Oregon coast with palms the size of redwoods and water as warm as a baby's bath and you have about a quarter of the experience; you need to add a funk of humidity, and much besides.
The city empties onto the beach at Maracas Bay on weekends, and the lines for bake and shark at the stands there can stretch for yards. Davan Maharaj, a Trinidadian of great passion and distinction who is the business editor of The Los Angeles Times, would not speculate on the best of these in a telephone interview, but he offered expert advice: “Look for the longest line.”
Which will leave you, inevitably, under the red awning of a stand called Richard's, where you are given a plain plate of bake and shark, then told to go to the condiments table to dress your own sandwich.
“Lots of people make bake and shark how they like,” said Irwin Britto, who was selling gourd purses and pretty shell necklaces in the parking lot, “but Richard's, you make it how you like.”
Which means extra pepper sauce, of course, lettuce, a bit more tamarind than usual, three pieces of tomato and two of pineapple. To drink? There are giant plastic fish boxes set up beside the stand packed deep with ice and beer. Carib is the label of choice, there and across the island. Lunch — rich, fatty shark deeply spiced against the bread — is served, slightly different from breakfast, and almost as good.
The North Coast Road will take you back to town, back down the range of mountains that rise above Port of Spain to capture the clouds. It is a narrow road plunging through the forest, giving way occasionally to splendid views of the ocean. Strange magical birds with yellow chests — boat-billed flycatchers! — perch on the telephone lines. It is hard driving for Americans used to being on the right side of the road. Every passing vehicle is an excitement: possible death in a far-off land.
At one turnoff, a farmer's shed stands: Raja Jahan's produce. Edmund Hendrix works there most days, selling sugar cane, mangoes and spider apples to passing motorists. Gesturing down toward the sea one day, he said, “They call it the Champagne glass view.”
And for good reason: the mountains give way in front of his farm like the curve of a glass in a Cole Porter song to hold the fizz of the ocean beneath. Teenagers from the city drive north after school to photograph it; it's as if they are documenting perspective itself.
TRINIDAD'S history is a long run of indentured diversity. Slavery left its African mark on the native Amerindian population, of course, as it did all over the Caribbean. But the servitude that followed in the 19th century brought people from even farther afield: East Indians first, followed by Chinese, Syrians, Lebanese. Each group had its effect on the nation's food; the result is a kind of culinary heterogeneity that finds common ground in pepper sauce and friendly rivalry.
You can head to the Hott Shoppe on the Maraval Road in the city's center to try it in a roti wrap of beef curry, accompanied by a cup of red fruit soda, or up to the Tiki Village restaurant on top of the Kapok Hotel in the north, where the fried dumplings come fat with pork and local chives. You can taste it in the Lebanese kibbe at a Syrian bagel shop called Adam's, up in the foothills of the Maraval suburbs. And in the chicken tikka at Apsara, a fine Indian restaurant not far from the president's residence on the east side of town; it's right out of a Graham Greene novel, down to the pouch-eyed old Englishman eating curry in a dark corner.
But a meal at Veni Mangé is the wisest bet. It is one of the nation's best restaurants: an old home in the city's west, restructured as an open loft space, with ceiling fans and the jalousies known here as Demerara windows, with brightly colored chairs and fantastical tabletop paintings. The work of local artists crowds the walls, and the low hum of conversation leaks out onto the sidewalk at lunch, and late into the evening on Wednesdays and Fridays, when the restaurant is open for dinner.
Veni Mangé is the work of sisters — Allyson Hennessy, a local television star, and Rosemary Hezekiah, an artist — who opened the restaurant in 1980. The point of the place, Ms. Hezekiah said, was to present “an authentic aesthetic” of Trinidad's Creole food to residents and visitors alike. So while Ms. Hennessy is a French-taught chef, she provides only advice to the kitchen staff, not recipes.
“I've got a local Tobagan woman in there instead,” Ms. Hezekiah said. “She cooks with love, not training.”
And thus: there is callaloo to start, the classic, bright-green Trinidadian soup of puréed dasheen leaf and coconut milk, enlivened with blue crab, thickened with okra; and a plate of sweet accra, or fritters of crab and shrimp. Follow these with a dark and fiery pork stew and moist hunks of grilled mahi mahi served with a tamarind glaze and plenty of fried plantains. Rice, beans. More pepper sauce. Glasses of Angostura 1919 rum, smooth as molasses, apparently bottomless. Sleep will come easily.
For those interested in taking Ms. Hezekiah's notion of an authentic island aesthetic a few steps further, though, it is worth another drive, out of town through the gritty eastern slums in awful, exhaust-choked traffic, out the Eastern Main Road toward the central towns of Arima and Valencia, and from there down to the empty coast of Manzanilla Bay.
In Sangre Grande, a rough little town of auto-parts stores and metal shops southeast of Arima, you'll find the Cock's Bar, and on Fridays and Saturdays, a barbecue cook named Bharat Cooblall. Mr. Cooblall cooks pork, chicken and lamb over hard charcoal, bathing it in a tart sauce that nods slightly to the American South; it's more tamarind than tomato, though, and the perfect accompaniment to crisp, smoke-flavored pig tails.
Don't be squeamish now! The way Mr. Cooblall cooks them, they're meat popsicles, and one of the island's great treats.
But then so is a fine hamburger lunch dressed in pineapple and pepper sauce at the First and Last Bar, a few miles southeast in Upper Manzanilla. And so is a cold coconut hacked open by Rob Joseph at his rickety stand there, on the road above the empty beach.
And so, to finish where we began, is a breakfast of what's known as doubles, purchased in dawn's light from one of the stands along the Western Main Road in the St. James neighborhood in Port of Spain. These are two rounds of turmeric-hued fried bread, filled with curried chickpeas and topped with fiery chutney. Look for a stand with lines, then order two, and take with a cold Carib. That's liming.
VISITOR INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Several airlines fly from New York to Port of Spain, with direct flights between the two cities offered by Caribbean Airlines (www.caribbean-airlines.com) and Continental (on Saturdays). Delta joins them on Dec. 20 (twice a week). A recent Internet search for a nonstop flight in mid-November turned up round-trip fares starting at $475 on Caribbean.
WHERE TO EAT
Port Authority Canteen, Dock Road, off Wrightson Road, Port of Spain, no phone. A breakfast of fish, juice and cake will run less than 40 Trinidad and Tobago dollars, $6 at 6.5 T & T dollars to the U.S. dollar.
Hott Shoppe, Maraval Road, Port of Spain, no phone. Two roti, with drinks, will cost about 60 local dollars.
Richard's, Maracas Bay, no phone. A plate of bake and shark, along with a Carib, will cost about 35 local dollars.
Tiki Village is atop the Kapok Hotel (16-18 Cotton Hill Road, St. Clair; 868-622-5765). Figure about 100 local dollars a person for dinner.
Apaara (13 Queen's Park East, Port of Spain; 868-623-7659) serves excellent Indian food. Dinner runs about 300 local dollars for two, without drinks.
Veni Mangé (67A Ariapita Avenue, Port of Spain; 868-624-4597; www.venimange.com) is closed on weekends. The menu changes daily, but a meal for two will cost roughly 400 local dollars, plus drinks.
Cock's Bar (Eastern Main Road, Sangre Grande; no phone). A plate of barbecue with rice and salad costs around 25 local dollars.
First and Last Bar (Eastern Main Road, Upper Manzanilla; no phone). Have a burger, buy a beer for new friends and get on your way for less than 40 local dollars.
WHERE TO STAY
The Hilton Trinidad (Lady Young Road, Port of Spain; 868-624-3211; www.hiltoncaribbean.com/trinidad) may be Trinidad's most comfortable hotel, and its location above the Queen's Park Savannah offers views of the harbor below. Facilities include a pool and a fitness center. Doubles start around $220, but can be less on the Web site.
Kapok Hotel (16-18 Cotton Hill, Port of Spain; 868-622-5765; www.kapokhotel.com), a nine-story building in the suburb of St. Clair, also offers harbor views from some of its 94 rooms; doubles start at $181, with Continental breakfast. Service was excellent, but it would be a stretch to describe them as anything approaching luxurious.
Reader suggestions on the Travel section Web site, www.nytimes.com/travel, include a recommendation for the “absolutely fabulous” L'Orchidée Boutique Hotel (3 Coblentz Gardens, Port of Spain; 868-621-0618; www.trinidadhosthomes.com). Doubles are $150 with breakfast."
We will share with you some of the fun things we found to do in Trinidad and Tobago. If you visit our blog, listed below, you can get a look at some of our adventures. Our number one was the trip to Paria Bay and Falls. We went over on the north shore, past Maracas and Las Cuevas Bays to the town of Blanchissuse. There is a blue building, the police station, on the south side of the road, across the road is a fisherman's station - where the fishermen bring in and sell their catch. We stopped there and contacted a man to take us to Paria Bay - I think it cost us about $30.00US (with tips it quickly got to about $60). Seven locals joined us on the ride and three of them hiked to the falls with us - we had a great time. On our return home we took the Arima Blanchissuse road (about a half mile past the police station) over the mountains to Arima. We've gone that way twice - a must see trip! It takes about an hour, to an hour and a half, but it is beautiful. As you near Arima you will pass the Asa Wright Nature Center. We didn't go there, but I understand it is a good place to visit. There are several water falls near this road also, that we haven't visited - President Robison wanted us in the office too much. If you want to spend a little time on a more secluded beach while you are over on the north side, there is a real quaint beach between Las Cuevas & Blanchissuse. Watch for a little wooden archway with a long flight of steps that take you down to the beach - There is an area to park off the road.
Another trip we enjoyed was to the northeast corner of the island. This is also where you would go to see the turtles. You take the Churchill Roosevelt Highway east to near the end, then north to the Eastern Main road, and east/northeast to Toco. There are some beautiful sights along the way. In the Toco area watch for the sign and road to the right that takes you to the Light House, a historic structure and beautiful sights. When you return to Toco, take the road along the north shore to Matelot - another scenic drive.
We have visited the Caroni Swamp twice and enjoyed it both times - a leisurely experience, well worth the time. We very much enjoyed visiting the Chaguanas open market on Saturday mornings- this is one of the most unique experiences. Relax, enjoy the traffic, and when you find the place, and a place to park - both are challenges - go in and buy some fresh vegetables, or upstairs about anything else. On the west end of the market you will find piles of pig snouts and tails, along with fresh fish and swrimp.
The entire island is beautiful. We enjoyed drives to the southwest corner through Point Fortin and down to "The Serpents Mouth", as well as the drive through Princes Town and along the Manzanilla shore line. The northwest corner, for a short trip, was nice, with some nice places to eat.
Our visit to Tobago was great. The glass bottom boat ride and snorkeling in the Boccoo Reef was a beautiful experience. We also drove around the island, snorkeling in Englishman's Bay, the best place we found - you are right on a reef with lots of life! We also went down and down and down into Pirates Bay, a nice swim, but not as nice as Englishman's, and parking is very limited. We drove up to the Rain Forest, but didn't have time to take any of the tours. We contacted Dominique 'Peter" Amann to go deep see fishing. He and his deck hand were great to be with. His contact is Hard Play Fishing Charters, 639-7108, or Peter at 739-6762. We were not there during the better season. (End of the Collin's report)
Trinidad was recently featured online in a New York Times Travel article by Chris Ramirez (http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/travel/28trinidad.html) as not being the Caribbean of white sand beaches and umbrella drinks. We have lived here for two years as as the New York Times article says, "there is oil money there, and tall buildings in which to count it, and grinding poverty and the sound of calypso drifting by on the breeze. There is serious cricket when there isn't serious soccer, and there is always a plan afoot for Carnival, the island's month long, pre-Lenten feast.
People visit Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, for Carnival, or pass through on their way to more traditional vacations on Tobago, the nation's other main island, a short flight away and thick with resorts.
But stay a while, exploring the busy streets in which V. S. Naipaul, the country's prodigal son, found his literature and eventually a Nobel Prize, and a truth emerges: This is one of the great eating towns in the Caribbean, the greatest of the Lesser Antilles, and the fount of some of the finest rum in the world.
Start with breakfast, in particular the ones available at the Port Authority Canteen, a stevedore's cafeteria perched on the edge of the harbor. It is made up of a dozen or so tiny kitchens with electric hot plates and propane hobs. There are long picnic tables in front of these, some set with oilskin cloths, others painted a soft lime green.
They are packed for breakfast, and again for lunch and dinner — men eating in shifts, wolfishly, then heading back into the sun. Fans move the humidity around, under signs at each end of the room that proclaim, “No Obscene Language.”
People talk about the laid-back, easygoing nature of the Caribbean, but Trinidad is a working hub, one of the most prosperous islands in the region. There is plenty of off-work downtime, the slow and pleasant dance into sociable half-drunkenness that Trinidadians call “liming,” but the women who cook in the Port Authority Canteen have little time for it.
Charmaine Cupido is one of them. Her stall is in a far corner of the room, almost invisible from the door. Fish sandwiches are her thing, the delicacy known here as bake and shark, best consumed with one of the frothy sweet drinks sold nearby: a watery concoction of mauby bark, cinnamon and sugar, say, or sea moss and milk.
Ms. Cupido slices a round of bread into two discs, and places on one of them a number of pieces of fried fish — carite that October morning, a local mackerel, though she'll cook the traditional shark if she can find it at market. The fish has a flavorful crust, bright with the tingle of ginger and pepper, with an undertow of salt: her special mix. Next comes some lettuce, sliced tomato, sliced cucumber, along with a squirt of thinned ketchup and a more substantial one of her own pepper sauce, which has an orange, slightly sweet hot-pepper kick that is in tune with the morning hour.
She wraps this into a waxed-paper bag and sends you on your way, down to the far end of the cafeteria, where other women are doling out fresh juices in paper cups.
It is really about the best fish sandwich in the world. But, of course, there are others. Bake and shark is a point of national pride in Trinidad, and fierce debates rage over who serves the finest.
One of the handsomest places to take a stand on the matter is Maracas Bay, a 45-minute drive north from Port of Spain, and one of the island's most famous beaches, both for its proximity to the capital and for its shocking beauty: a limp half-circle of soft, reddish sand beneath towering mountains and wisps of fog. Imagine the Oregon coast with palms the size of redwoods and water as warm as a baby's bath and you have about a quarter of the experience; you need to add a funk of humidity, and much besides.
The city empties onto the beach at Maracas Bay on weekends, and the lines for bake and shark at the stands there can stretch for yards. Davan Maharaj, a Trinidadian of great passion and distinction who is the business editor of The Los Angeles Times, would not speculate on the best of these in a telephone interview, but he offered expert advice: “Look for the longest line.”
Which will leave you, inevitably, under the red awning of a stand called Richard's, where you are given a plain plate of bake and shark, then told to go to the condiments table to dress your own sandwich.
“Lots of people make bake and shark how they like,” said Irwin Britto, who was selling gourd purses and pretty shell necklaces in the parking lot, “but Richard's, you make it how you like.”
Which means extra pepper sauce, of course, lettuce, a bit more tamarind than usual, three pieces of tomato and two of pineapple. To drink? There are giant plastic fish boxes set up beside the stand packed deep with ice and beer. Carib is the label of choice, there and across the island. Lunch — rich, fatty shark deeply spiced against the bread — is served, slightly different from breakfast, and almost as good.
The North Coast Road will take you back to town, back down the range of mountains that rise above Port of Spain to capture the clouds. It is a narrow road plunging through the forest, giving way occasionally to splendid views of the ocean. Strange magical birds with yellow chests — boat-billed flycatchers! — perch on the telephone lines. It is hard driving for Americans used to being on the right side of the road. Every passing vehicle is an excitement: possible death in a far-off land.
At one turnoff, a farmer's shed stands: Raja Jahan's produce. Edmund Hendrix works there most days, selling sugar cane, mangoes and spider apples to passing motorists. Gesturing down toward the sea one day, he said, “They call it the Champagne glass view.”
And for good reason: the mountains give way in front of his farm like the curve of a glass in a Cole Porter song to hold the fizz of the ocean beneath. Teenagers from the city drive north after school to photograph it; it's as if they are documenting perspective itself.
TRINIDAD'S history is a long run of indentured diversity. Slavery left its African mark on the native Amerindian population, of course, as it did all over the Caribbean. But the servitude that followed in the 19th century brought people from even farther afield: East Indians first, followed by Chinese, Syrians, Lebanese. Each group had its effect on the nation's food; the result is a kind of culinary heterogeneity that finds common ground in pepper sauce and friendly rivalry.
You can head to the Hott Shoppe on the Maraval Road in the city's center to try it in a roti wrap of beef curry, accompanied by a cup of red fruit soda, or up to the Tiki Village restaurant on top of the Kapok Hotel in the north, where the fried dumplings come fat with pork and local chives. You can taste it in the Lebanese kibbe at a Syrian bagel shop called Adam's, up in the foothills of the Maraval suburbs. And in the chicken tikka at Apsara, a fine Indian restaurant not far from the president's residence on the east side of town; it's right out of a Graham Greene novel, down to the pouch-eyed old Englishman eating curry in a dark corner.
But a meal at Veni Mangé is the wisest bet. It is one of the nation's best restaurants: an old home in the city's west, restructured as an open loft space, with ceiling fans and the jalousies known here as Demerara windows, with brightly colored chairs and fantastical tabletop paintings. The work of local artists crowds the walls, and the low hum of conversation leaks out onto the sidewalk at lunch, and late into the evening on Wednesdays and Fridays, when the restaurant is open for dinner.
Veni Mangé is the work of sisters — Allyson Hennessy, a local television star, and Rosemary Hezekiah, an artist — who opened the restaurant in 1980. The point of the place, Ms. Hezekiah said, was to present “an authentic aesthetic” of Trinidad's Creole food to residents and visitors alike. So while Ms. Hennessy is a French-taught chef, she provides only advice to the kitchen staff, not recipes.
“I've got a local Tobagan woman in there instead,” Ms. Hezekiah said. “She cooks with love, not training.”
And thus: there is callaloo to start, the classic, bright-green Trinidadian soup of puréed dasheen leaf and coconut milk, enlivened with blue crab, thickened with okra; and a plate of sweet accra, or fritters of crab and shrimp. Follow these with a dark and fiery pork stew and moist hunks of grilled mahi mahi served with a tamarind glaze and plenty of fried plantains. Rice, beans. More pepper sauce. Glasses of Angostura 1919 rum, smooth as molasses, apparently bottomless. Sleep will come easily.
For those interested in taking Ms. Hezekiah's notion of an authentic island aesthetic a few steps further, though, it is worth another drive, out of town through the gritty eastern slums in awful, exhaust-choked traffic, out the Eastern Main Road toward the central towns of Arima and Valencia, and from there down to the empty coast of Manzanilla Bay.
In Sangre Grande, a rough little town of auto-parts stores and metal shops southeast of Arima, you'll find the Cock's Bar, and on Fridays and Saturdays, a barbecue cook named Bharat Cooblall. Mr. Cooblall cooks pork, chicken and lamb over hard charcoal, bathing it in a tart sauce that nods slightly to the American South; it's more tamarind than tomato, though, and the perfect accompaniment to crisp, smoke-flavored pig tails.
Don't be squeamish now! The way Mr. Cooblall cooks them, they're meat popsicles, and one of the island's great treats.
But then so is a fine hamburger lunch dressed in pineapple and pepper sauce at the First and Last Bar, a few miles southeast in Upper Manzanilla. And so is a cold coconut hacked open by Rob Joseph at his rickety stand there, on the road above the empty beach.
And so, to finish where we began, is a breakfast of what's known as doubles, purchased in dawn's light from one of the stands along the Western Main Road in the St. James neighborhood in Port of Spain. These are two rounds of turmeric-hued fried bread, filled with curried chickpeas and topped with fiery chutney. Look for a stand with lines, then order two, and take with a cold Carib. That's liming.
VISITOR INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Several airlines fly from New York to Port of Spain, with direct flights between the two cities offered by Caribbean Airlines (www.caribbean-airlines.com) and Continental (on Saturdays). Delta joins them on Dec. 20 (twice a week). A recent Internet search for a nonstop flight in mid-November turned up round-trip fares starting at $475 on Caribbean.
WHERE TO EAT
Port Authority Canteen, Dock Road, off Wrightson Road, Port of Spain, no phone. A breakfast of fish, juice and cake will run less than 40 Trinidad and Tobago dollars, $6 at 6.5 T & T dollars to the U.S. dollar.
Hott Shoppe, Maraval Road, Port of Spain, no phone. Two roti, with drinks, will cost about 60 local dollars.
Richard's, Maracas Bay, no phone. A plate of bake and shark, along with a Carib, will cost about 35 local dollars.
Tiki Village is atop the Kapok Hotel (16-18 Cotton Hill Road, St. Clair; 868-622-5765). Figure about 100 local dollars a person for dinner.
Apaara (13 Queen's Park East, Port of Spain; 868-623-7659) serves excellent Indian food. Dinner runs about 300 local dollars for two, without drinks.
Veni Mangé (67A Ariapita Avenue, Port of Spain; 868-624-4597; www.venimange.com) is closed on weekends. The menu changes daily, but a meal for two will cost roughly 400 local dollars, plus drinks.
Cock's Bar (Eastern Main Road, Sangre Grande; no phone). A plate of barbecue with rice and salad costs around 25 local dollars.
First and Last Bar (Eastern Main Road, Upper Manzanilla; no phone). Have a burger, buy a beer for new friends and get on your way for less than 40 local dollars.
WHERE TO STAY
The Hilton Trinidad (Lady Young Road, Port of Spain; 868-624-3211; www.hiltoncaribbean.com/trinidad) may be Trinidad's most comfortable hotel, and its location above the Queen's Park Savannah offers views of the harbor below. Facilities include a pool and a fitness center. Doubles start around $220, but can be less on the Web site.
Kapok Hotel (16-18 Cotton Hill, Port of Spain; 868-622-5765; www.kapokhotel.com), a nine-story building in the suburb of St. Clair, also offers harbor views from some of its 94 rooms; doubles start at $181, with Continental breakfast. Service was excellent, but it would be a stretch to describe them as anything approaching luxurious.
Reader suggestions on the Travel section Web site, www.nytimes.com/travel, include a recommendation for the “absolutely fabulous” L'Orchidée Boutique Hotel (3 Coblentz Gardens, Port of Spain; 868-621-0618; www.trinidadhosthomes.com). Doubles are $150 with breakfast."
Creole Beach Hotel, Gosier, Guadeloupe
We just spent three nights in the newly renovated Creole Beach Hotel and Spa and loved it. Before the renovation this past Fall, things were nice but slightly shabby. Now the resort has been transformed into a sleek, modern but still warm spot. The traditionally hard French beds are soft and topped with light duvets. The air conditioning is new (a previous problem) and even the toiletries are upgraded from the slim sliver of white soap to an line called "Pure Herbs" - a combination of rosemary, melissa and thyme in keeping with the upgraded name of the hotel - Creole Beach Resort and Span.
The water surrounding the hotel features the turquoise of the Caribbean and the brown pelicans (gosier) after which the town is named are plentiful. Breakfast and dinner are served buffet style in an amazing restaurant. When one is not eating or lounging, there are wonderful little places to stroll.
If you tire of buffets, along the street leading up to the hotel are a number of charming little sidewalk restaurants, each with their own French charm and about two minutes from the hotel. Across the street is the best souvenir shop we found for table clothes, swimming suit cover-ups, post-cards, books, etc. (next to the Karawak Hotel.
Once you exit the highway into Gosier, you pass 2 round abouts, then a exit to the "stade" (stadium) and then turn right to the hotel on the next turn just prior to arriving at the Sofitel Hotel. At the first round about, you will find one of the Caribbean's few McDonalds, if you are tired of French culture and want an American memory.
The Creole Beach Hotel and Spa is a 15-20 minute drive from the airport. It is best to purchase gas in Gosier if renting a car because gas stations along the route to the airport are difficult to find.
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