| The largest French West Indian island, Guadeloupe
encompasses a massive 1704 square kilometres, the majority of which
is taken up by its two adjoining mainland islands, Basse-Terre and
Grande-Terre, whose outline resembles a greenbacked butterfly in
flight. Its two "wings" have entirely different personas
and equally misrepresentative names: the western Basse-Terre, or
"low-land", is anything but, given its central core is
dominated by mountain ranges, including the Lesser Antilles' highest
peak, La Soufrière. These surround the island's bountiful
rainforest and descend to meet twinkling black-sand beaches like
Plage Malendure that extend to protected underwater dive sites
abounding with aqualife.
The eastern "wing", the furled Grande-Terre, or
"large-land", is slightly smaller than Basse-Terre,
utterly flat by contrast, and predominantly rural. Most of the
action happens along its southern coast, where one white-sand beach
after another seems to merge endlessly along the coast, with the
stunning Plage Caravelle forming the centrepiece. Its outer reaches
are pounded by the savage Atlantic Ocean to produce jagged limestone
outcroppings like the windswept Pointe-des-Châteaux, and the
exquisite Lagon de la Porte d'Enfer natural swimming pool.
Guadeloupe's offshore islands are equally diverse. Marie-Galante,
with its rural landscape of sugarcane, hearkens back to a Guadeloupe
of thirty years ago, while La Désirade, the most desolate of the
lot, is quite possibly the Caribbean's least developed island. The
most visited-offshore isle, tiny Terre-de-Haut, is the prettiest of
all, with quaint architecture and fabulous bays and beaches.
|