Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Today the ship docked in Martinique. Martinique was settled by the French in 1635, and is NOT a colony but an actual department of France. They use euros here and speak French. Napolean's wife Josephine was born here.
There was no ship excursion that went to the 2 places we really wanted to see, so we asked onshore at Information about renting a car for the day. While we were waiting, we noticed another couple, Rich and Laurie, waiting as well. They had the EXACT same itinerary that we did for the day, so we decided to rent a car together. Although we crashed their day, they were glad in the end for Frankie's knowledge of French which got us all through the day!
Our first stop was Balata Church, which is an exact model of Sacre Coeur in Paris. It was built to commemorate those who died in WWI.
We spent a fair amount of time at Balata Gardens, a botanical garden with over 3000 varieties of plants and flowers, including 300 types of palm trees.
Balata Gardens has a treetop trail, a series of suspension bridges built in mahogany trees that are 100 year old. Anton thought the boards of the bridges were a bit old. Frankie didn't know they were so slippery, and landed flat on her bottom. Rich had a panic attack and had to take a pill. Apparently when he was 16 he was driving a car full of people that went over the side of a cliff. Yikes.
We drove to the small town of St Pierre, population less than 5000 people. There used to be a lot more people until the volcano Mt Pelee decimated the town in 1902. It killed all 30,000 people in less than 10 seconds. Like Pompeii, it was not destroyed by lava, but by pyroclastic flow: extremely hot gases flowing down from the volcano.
The town has never been completely rebuilt, and we saw several ruins that were still there, including the jail building. The ONLY person to survive the eruption was a prisoner who was in solitary at the time. This was his cell:
He was found after 3 days and later toured the world with Barnum and Bailey Circus showing off his burns.
We found the museum (which wasn't easy!). Even though it was small, it was extremely interesting to see the history and remains from the eruption. There was a massive bronze bell that was flattened.
Back on the ship, there was a really good magic show for entertainment.
Captain Kate's Confucius saying of the day:
"Man who run behind car, get exhausted."
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