Wednesday, 27th October 2010
Up early, and no blog typing today, we are going off early, well early is around 09.00hrs, even though we (Skipper and Aileen) are up since 06.00hrs, to do the blog and emails, plus having breakfast, shower, and doll ourselves up would normally take us to 10.30 hrs, but today we are off early.
We squeezed ourselves into the sardine tin and raved up and took off down the motorway heading south this time towards St-Gills-les-bains. There we found a beautiful beach and immediately went for a swim, We spent some time wondering around the beach afterwards and the nearby marina and harbour, there was also a pond where you could rent a small electric boat and scoot around the place in it. It reminded us of the "Bumpers" at the merries long ago. It was full of mothers and children with the odd granny and granddad (just like us!).
11.30 We wandered up the beautiful village and had a cup of coffee, plus the usual cakes, sausage rolls, and lots of other goodies, you know the slimmers diet stuff... designed to put on millions of calories in one easy dose.
12.30hrs We took off again, still going south, this time towards St Pierre and from there we were going to head up the mountains again towards Cilaos, this place must be about 2,500m above sea level. We stopped many times on the way to admire the scene, the sheer scale of the mountains, sooooo steep and jagged, and the valleys in all directions plus all the shades of green, 41 in all we could count.
At the summit, we had a beer, visited the church, and wandered around for an hour or two, before returning down the mountains again and again this was a beautiful village and we really enjoyed the visit. Mind you,Terry and Skipper observed a few layabouts under a foot bridge, drinking beer and breaking bottles. We discussed this before agreeing that as this problem exists in most countries, and they are protected by the "doo gooders" and people who make money out od protecting their rights. All countries should get together and build an army like "The French Foreign Legion" and round up all these layabouts and send them off. This might help protect the rights of the ordinary "Joe Soap" who the dooo Gooders and the like seem have forgotten about.
We paid a visit to St-Leu on our return journey, but no beach, so we continued to the boat and Collette did a chicken and mustard sauce dinner with creamed potatoes. We had a couple of beers, and an early night.
Neil spent the day with Oisin, Joe and Jared from Brown eyed Girl. They drove to the Volcano and paid a visit to the beach as well. The day before, Neil spent the day with Jochem, Jutta, and Eline from Chessie and they did a tour of the Island.
That's all from the South Indian Ocean for today,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)