Friends from Canada were in Martinique when we arrived. They had actually given us their old courtesy flags from back when they were cruising around the Mediterranean in the ’80s, and we had hoisted their old French one on arrival.
Todd brought them back to see the boat and meet Kim and Colin, after he’d cleared us in. We spent a few hours enjoying a pick up lunch in the cockpit and swapping travel and cruising stories.
The clearing in process was pretty simple. You pulled in with your crew list and used a computer terminal at the back of a local store/ café/ fuel dock office to enter the information. Then the staff at the store/café/fuel dock printed, stamped, and signed a copy of your arrival doc. You hand over 4 euro, take your doc, and that’s it!
Once we got over the first few days of wobbling around on land, we went off for a good hike with some other cruisers from the boat GoBabyGo, whom we’d met through mutual friends.
There are some good and varied hiking trails on Martinique, but you do need a car to get to the trail heads.
We opted for a shoreside trail that didn’t have any big elevations, but lots of views. The section of trail above was littered with hermet crabs.
The Sargassum was evident along a section of coast that was exposed to the swell. Apparently once it starts to break down on shore, it becomes quite toxic.
It turned out that 5 miles was the perfect distance to work out the kinks from disuse, see the southern section of the island, and work up a bit of an appetite. We really appreciate GoBabyGo taking us along for the day, and we hope to spend some more time with them before we sail off in different directions.
