After a night in Fort de France, I walked to the taxis collectifs (minivan buses) stop by the sea-front.
It works in the same way as in Dominica- you wait until the minivan is full before it leaves and then you can head off to all the small towns around the island. I chose to try out St Luce, a town in the south of Martinique, which had a campsite behind the beach. The most reasonable of hotels in Martinique cost €50 per night, so camping would save me a few bucks. The south is also famous for its beaches and yachts, so it seemed like an attractive proposition (the north sounded great too, with mountains, Mt Pelée volcano and black sand beaches).
It seems the Martinique promotional website is slightly out of date when it comes to promoting places at the lower end of the price bracket: Gros Raisins campsite has been closed for around twelve years, locals told me when I got there. There was still a grassy field behind the beach, but it seemed to belong to a grazing horse these days, and people say its not safe to camp by the beach (the reason being that drug runners motor in to the island from St Lucia at night and throw bags of drugs into the waves for picking up by men on the beach- not something you'd want to get caught up in).
In any case, St Luce ended up being a good choice. I found a small and basic (ie slightly run-down) hotel on the front by the fishing boats and I managed to wangle a good deal. Being the only person staying there (I'm not quite sure how the owners get by) and with a charming couple who ran the bar downstairs, it felt more like staying in a local family's house.
The next couple of photos show the little town of St Luce, with its fishing boats and seafood huts on the beach (which specialised in lobsters and fish grilled over charcoal embers in oil drum barbeques).
Wandering along the sea-front, there was always the catch of the day to be seen. Fishermen would bring the fish ashore and sell them directly from wooden stalls.
In the courtyard at the back of the hotel, there were cages full of crabs. The Martininquais seem to have a passion for crabs and there are plenty around. Whenever walking past mangrove stands behind beaches in the south, you can see wooden crab traps set up. The crabs in this photo were caught by the owner of the hotel. She would go into the sugar cane fields in her wellies and come back with bucket-loads. It was the season she said, and they sold well in the restaurant.
More shots of fishing boats in St Luce (the other sights to be seen, which I didn't photograph were fishermen playing dominoes, young guys hanging out, men having beers in the bars in the daytime, tourists coming to eat seafood in the evening):
A fisherman coming ashore on a surfboard.
A short walk up from St Luce were beaches with excellent swimming. Ignore the sign at your own risk.
And along the pathway were poems written by Aimé Cesaire, a Martinique hero: poet, writer, founder of the négritude movement in francophone literature and Martinique politician (from 1945 to 2001). As poor as my French is, I liked this poem for its simplicity, something along the lines of The earth makes of the sea a bulge of silence within silence.
From the pathway linking the various bays up from St Luce, a view of Le Diamant (Diamond Rock) on the left, which has within its caves a remnant of a British encampment from 1800. I guess it was an unsuccessful attempt to take over the island from the French. On the mainland is the profile in the hills of a sleeping woman (you have to be creative to see it- for me the jutting chin and long neck are the most obvious features).
Sun sets behind a residential area of St Luce.
