We were dropped at Capuchin pretty much at the end of the navigable road. We were to hike the 4 hour trek and end up in Penville and hopefully catch a bus back to the bay where our boats were. The adventure began!
The trail, for the most part, seemed to be a man-made ledge, varying from 5 feet to 8 inches along the sides of steep mountains. It went up and down hundreds of feet, through gulleys and across ridges, seemingly thousands of feet from valley floors, but seldom wide enough for two abreast.
Along the way, we saw several magnificent trees. This one was a beauty!
I'm not sure what this one is called, but I'd wager a bet that it would be related to the gloxinia.
Here is a wild ginger lily. Of course, they come complete with hummingbirds, which I failed to get a shot of!
We came across a few mud slides that came close to obliterating the little continuous shelf, and had to carefully pick our way across them. Below each slide was of course a steep drop to the base of the mountain!
At this point in the trail, it was nice to see this sign, if only to let us know that we were still on the proper trail! We had already hiked about 2 hours at this point, much of it in the pouring rain, only to find that we were approximately half way through!
I wish this picture could show depth of the foliage and the stunning view we had.
From here you can see Les Saintes, the islands just south of Guadeloupe and belonging to the same.
We managed to keep our feet reasonably clean throughout the 4 hour hike, but one the very last leg of the adventure, the farmer we met said that there had been a landslide that wiped out the regular route and the new trail was just being dug out and had no vegetation to hold it all together. That along with the recent rains, he was right to warn us. There were a few rocks that we were to jump from one to the other, however, they weren't spaced as well as I would have liked! Well, I lost my balance and sunk about 10 inches deep into the sucking muck. Of course, my second foot followed the first. The farmer then told me not to worry, that he had water at the end of the trail at his house, however, we should hurry because the mud was full of disease! That made us move along a little quicker!
The farmer we met on the trail quickly took us to the tap where we could use all the water we needed to clean the mess off!
Luckily for us, a bus was there dropping off a passenger and he told us he'd be right back for us. He said that we just had time to buy a cold beer from a lady in a house that he pointed out to us and he'd be around just as we were finishing. He was right on all accounts, except that she only had 2 cold beers in that big refrigerator of hers, but we managed to overlook it and drink them warm. Of course, we gave one of the cold ones to our new farmer friend who was so kind to us along the way!
