Iles Guadeloupe Adventure
A gut-wrenching boat ride...
Jacqueline Windh / 28.11.2007
Today, we moved to the island of Marie Galante – a gut-wrenching 45 minute ferry ride south of Guadeloupe’s main island of Grande-Terre. The “ferry� was more like a giant-sized speedboat – extremely modern and extremely fast. Sea conditions were unusually rough, and all conversations stopped once we left the harbour, as everyone struggled to hang on to their breakfast.
This island is very different from rocky Grande-Terre. It was “discovered� by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493 (although it had actually been discovered several millenia earlier by the ancestors of its original native inhabitants) and it is the garden of Guadeloupe – it was the islands’ main food source during the two world wars.
Today’s events were oriented towards the competitors getting to know the culture of Marie Galante (the island is named after Columbus’s ship). Teams were divided into six groups of five teams, and each group was given three rental cars. Co-operation between teams was therefore required to organize transport between the various events, but this was no problem – teams here are showing a great communal spirit, and in any case they were not being timed between the events.
Events included three different “cultural identity� challenges, in the three principal villages of St-Louis on the western Caribbean coast, Grand Bourg where the ferry arrived, and Capesterre on the wave-washed Atlantic coast. These events included sampling foods and guessing what the ingredients were, and answering historical and cultural questions on tests administered to them by local school children.
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