Ann's Blog

Grande Anse d’Arlet, Martinique:
March 24, 2011
Danger du Mort:
Exploring Martinique
in a rental car

Which is why I found myself tucked into a newish, well-maintained Fiat Panda this week – definitely not an SdJ (Shitbox du Jour) like most of the other rental cars we’ve been assigned – although, according to Steve, it had an engine about as powerful as a lawnmower’s. The map in one of our guidebooks had a route through the mountains labeled “pretty road,” as irresistible to Steve as …well…a baguette to a bull. Steve had highlighted this road – called Route Forestière de Rivière Blanche – in yellow on our full-size, standard tourist-issue map of Martinique, and worked out the route to get us there, and then on to the northeast coast and attractions such as the Musée de la Banane and, quelle surprise, a rhumerie or two.

Call me trusting, but despite our experiences driving in the Dominican Republic (recounted in The Spice Necklace) and to Dominica’s Miracle Lake last year, I still expect that a road marked with a solid line on a map will take you from A to B without requiring the fortitude of a stunt driver.

Not so the road that took us from St. Joseph to the start of the Route Forestière. We descended a hill to encounter the Rivière Blanche in front of us – but the road was no longer a road. Rather, it was a spillway taking the river from one side of it to the other. No pavement was visible, and there was no way to tell how deep the water was – but it had rained earlier that morning and, believe me, it was a gushing, rushing cascade as it spilled over the lip of concrete on the downriver side. Even Steve agreed instantly they we would have to turn back.

Until, that is, a car approached from the opposite direction and as we watched, open-mouthed, the driver blithely (if slowly) kept going, setting up a wall of water on both sides. He made it. When he reached us, Steve leaned out his window. “Il est possible!?!,” he said to the driver, half a question, half an exclamation. “Simple!” the driver replied. Shit. I knew what was going to happen next. I buried my face in my hands and refused to look as Steve piloted the little Panda Fiat with its toy tires across the invisible roadway. The rocker panels were barely submerged, he reported.

Yeah, we made it too, but I calculated the danger level about an 8 when Steve whooped and pounded the steering wheel when we reached dry road on the other side.

There were two more such river crossings between there and the Route Forestière, but the river was beaucoup tamer at both of them. The third one was at a forest reserve, the lush and lovely Coeur Bouliki, and immediately beyond it, we could see that the road veed. While Steve was taking photos, I took our map and asked (in my pidgin French) a forestry employee who was working nearby which branch was the one we wanted. My conversational French is almost non-existent, but several of the words in his response were unmistakeable: “Fermé.” Closed. “ Interdit.” Prohibited. I called in my translator for elaboration. “Trust me, it’s closed,” another forestry official said to Steve, without elaborating. So much for the “pretty road.” We would have to backtrack (luckily, not as far as that first river crossing) and take another route through the mountains. The forestry guys gave Steve precise directions.

It was a lush, curvaceous road, fun for the driver, nothing to traumatize the passenger…at least until the “Danger of Death” sign appeared as we rounded a bend. The pictograph that accompanied the words showed rocks tumbling down. There was nothing to indicate how high the danger of death was that day, but since the forestry officials had directed us to take this road, we kept going.

So we were tooling through the Danger of Death zone when Steve suddenly yelled “tarantula” and screeched to a halt. Take it as a pretty good indication of the spider’s imposing stature that Steve spotted it while the Panda was doing 40 klicks. A little after-the-fact research helped us identify it as a Martinique pinktoe tarantula, close to the species’ maximum size of 6 inches. The pinktoe is large enough to eat a lizard, for goodness’ sake, though it’s apparently docile as tarantulas go. It can jump up to 30 cm in the air, however – a fact I’m glad I didn’t know as we bent over top of it for a good look. And pinktoes have also been known to throw their fecal matter as part of their defense strategy. Merde!

Post tarantula, post Danger of Death zone, apparently not yet having had our fill of danger, we picked up a couple of hitchhikers. They didn’t look at all dangerous, however. In fact, they were from France, taking a hiking vacation in Martinique. They had walked the Route du Forestière. They knew why it was closed to vehicles: It was blocked by rocks from a landslide.

We did eventually reach the Musée de la Banane and the St. James rhumerie. Interesting spots both, but positively tame, not a speck of danger. In this case, getting there was definitely more than half the fun.

Back to top

Sign up to be notified by email when I post a new blog

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Name *

Email *

 

Comment

HTML tags are not allowed.

 

Recent Posts

Archives