Guadeloupe

For us, the highlight of our time on Guadeloupe was walking through the Jardin Botanique (Botanical Garden) just a quick 5 minute drive from town. For this, and the rest of our self-guided tour around Guadeloupe, we rented a vehicle via a shop owner in town! He met us at his shop first thing in the morning, walked us to the vehicle, gave us a quick overview of the car, made note of all existing scratches/dents, and sent us on our way.

We drove south from Deshaies to the Plage de Malendure - the beach facing out toward the famous Reserve Cousteau. Our cruise ship had offered some snorkeling/sailing tours to the Reserve Cousteau, but we had passed due to the price. The beachfront area was packed with people and cars were struggling to find parking. That said, it could have provided a nice beach-day destination and I’m sure local tour guides were offering tours out to the Reserve from there as well.

Continuing on our drive, we headed East toward Pointe-a-Pitre, stopping for a quick (barely 10 min) walk down a manicured path to a local waterfall with swimming hole & nearby river - it was called Cascade aux Ecrevisses. We didn’t have our swimsuits but it would have made for a refreshing dip!

After reading about a “white sand beach with turquoise water”, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant called “So Fresh: Beach Food Box” on the Plage de la Datcha, just east of Pointe-a-Pitre. The burgers were fine and the beach looked very nice.

After lunch, we continued our drive east to Sainte-Anne, which looked nothing like the photos online, so we turned around and headed back to the ship through stop-and-go traffic.