Best island for: a French Creole experience
Créole is more than a language. It is way of life, you will be told, a sensibilité. Style, cuisine, music and manner, they all make up the mix, even a certain (sometimes infuriating) nonchalance…
Guadeloupe rewards exploration, with the low-lying, limestone landscapes of Grande-Terre and their coral sand beaches, watersports and resorts, standing hard by the immense fertility and volcanic mountains of Basse-Terre, which has botanical gardens, national parks and small hotels with fantastic views. There are also offshore cays: la Désirade inspired Apollinaire to poetry, Marie Galante is famed for its rhum agricole, an essential ingredient in the traditional island apéritif, ti ponch (freshly squeezed lime, cane sugar and rum).
Créole cuisine is a mélange, of metropolitan French cooking techniques and Caribbean produce and spices – court bouillon fish is steeped in Scotch bonnet and vinegar before simmering in a heady sauce of lemon, thyme and bay, and Colombo is a delicate Guadeloupean curry ideal for shrimp and island goat. Expect meals to extend, over rum digestifs, into discussion of love, life and… Créole…
Where to stay: La Toubana, set in a series of cabins ranged on the hillside above a beach near St Anne, has been offering trusty tropical elegance for decades. Now updated, it is cool and classic. You can reach Guadeloupe via Paris or on LIAT from Antigua, even from St Lucia by ferry.
Great Job Brian Major, James Henderson & the Team @ Condé Nast Traveler UK Source link for sharing this story.
