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.
