Lesser Antilles, Day 13: Guadeloupe, and then the interminable trip to Dominica

 Early, we were off to the highlands on the other lobe of the island, Basse Terre. 

Yes, it makes no sense. After stopping for some food, to be eaten later, we crossed the isthmus to the Maison de la Fort National Park. 

There were Bridled Quail Doves, and brown tremblers, and pearly-eyed thrashers

I got a movie

and a forest thrush

 and of course, the endemic guadeloupe woodpecker.

Also Bridled Quail-Dove, Lesser Antillean Swift, Purple-throated Carib, American Kestrel, Gray Kingbird, Black-whiskered Vireo, Caribbean Martin, Scaly-breasted Thrasher, Plumbeous Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Bananaquit (Lesser Antillean), Lesser Antillean Bullfinch. 

And there were leafcutter ants;

and a nice waterfall.

If only it had all ended there. but it didn't. One the way to the ferry, I stopped at the airport pharmacy to try to replace Metformin I had left in Martinique. But the line was 1.5 hours long, because this is the only drugstore open on a Sunday in Guadeloupe. So I chucked it in, and headed for the ferry, for which there was also and interminable line. We arrived at 1 pm. to get into line for ferry trip from Pointe-a-Pitre Guadeloupe to Roseau Domenica.  Evidently France wants to assure we’re all leaving. At 2:15 pm the fIt was a nice crossing, and I had fun identifying all the little Guadeloupian Islands off the coast. Then the clown show started.

At 4:00 pm we circled an empty lifeboat in the channel several times. For reasons known only to him, the captain wanted to hoist it onboard. it was suggested someone might be hunched down in the bottom of the boat, but since the captain tipped it over on the first attempt to haul it aboard, probably not. It took several passes and about an hour to capture this useless piece of inflatable rubber.

But the red-footed booby was amused.

5:00 pm we finally arrived at Rodea, to wait to disembark. And waited. They unloaded our luggage. They loaded the baggage for the passengers on the return trip. Then they let us off, only to be loaded onto buses. Then we waited some more. They allowed the return passengers to embark and the ferry departed. And we waited some more. 5:45 pm our bus departed for Roseau. The bus parked behind metal gates at the immigration facility. And we wait some more.

6:00 pm: I asked an immigration agent if we should consider ourselves prisoners or hostages. He doesn’t understand. Probably just as well. 6:10 pm we finally got off the bus, and into another line. 

6:30 pm After yelling at a couple of Froggy line-jumpers, I got my passport stamped. I went up on the quay to look for my bag, which had a r.f. tag, and was showing up nearby, but not at the quay.

7:15 pm. After it spent 2 hours sitting around in Roseau, they decided to give me my baggage. I stood in customs line. Evidently there's no 'nothing to declare' line. And the customs guy was going through the bags of every single passenger. FFS!

7:45 pm. He gives up, and waved the rest of us through. Good thing; I was loaded up with Grenada spices.

 7 hours for a short ferry trip between two adjacent islands. I've tried to explain, to anyone who'll listen, that in the unnecessary 4 hours of waiting, a typical tourist would spend maybe a couple of hundred bucks. No one was listening. Domenica is a lovely place, but the huddled masses are not beating a path to its door. It's 81st worldwide in GDP per capita. Do they actually need immigration controls?

And we weren't quite done; there was still an hour's drive north to Salisbury, to the Tamarind Tree hotel, where our Swiss/German hosts stayed up late to feed us a scrumptious fish dinner and some beer.