Spring Break Trip Picto-blog, Part I!

Hello all!

I know I've been away for a while, which in itself is nothing new. It seems to happen during Melissa's breaks. You know, when I have more time to spend with her. I wonder if there's a correlation there...

Anyway, if you weren't aware, we spent most of our break on a mission trip to Haiti. A medical mission trip, to be more precise. Melissa found out about it through a friend, and she was psyched to be working alongside practicing physicians. In short, it was great. But there's a lot to tell, and I'm going to break it into parts, for ease of reading. And this first part has nothing to do with Haiti! Read on to find out!
(Note: I'm going to be using the captions on the pictures to write out most of the story, so if it's a little small, just increase your screen size by pressing "ctrl" and "+")

So the reason we went to Guadeloupe was due to the nature of our flight to Haiti. Since there are no direct flights from Dominica, we hitched the ferry over to Guadeloupe, and flew from there. Since there were a couple days in between the ferry and the plane, we decided to explore the island, courtesy of the hand you see above (needless to say, that isn't my hand.)

This is a stealth picture I took of our guide, Roland. With his accent, however, it sounds more like "Whoalin". Guadeloupe is a French island, and as such most of the citizens don't speak very much English. Luckily, we managed to find the one taxi driver in Pointe a Pitre who is quite fluent, and it made our stay that much more enjoyable.

On our day exploring, he took us to one of Guadeloupe's many "cascades". As you can see it was quite popular on the day we went, but everyone still managed to get a nice picture in front of the waterfall (including us).

Here's a shot of the river leading away from the fall. We quite enjoyed the coolness of Guadeloupe, and all of the clouds were quite welcome. Roland seemed disappointed that we didn't get to tour the island on a bright, sunny day, but Melissa and I see plenty of those in Dominica.

Some farmland on Basse-Terre, one of the two main islands that make up Guadeloupe. If you're unfamiliar with the geography of the island, it looks something like a butterfly. Check it out! 

We also got to see a harbor, FILLED with boats. Guadeloupe loves sailing, and there's a race that happens every 3 years (I think) that travels past Guadeloupe. People will camp out on the edge of roads, watching as the boats go by. I think it happens in the spring time usually. I don't remember the name, because Roland only knew it in French, and I couldn't understand him very well. 

I think Guadeloupe is basically the French summer-home capital of the world, AKA where affluent French people come for holiday. And where they leave their sailboats. Holy moley look at all the boats. 

Luckily the clouds cleared up by the time we made it to the beach. And it was a nice beach. Although maybe a little too "French" for us (I'll let you figure out the rest)...

Here's that cascade picture I was talking about. This mini vacation before the mission trip was great for us to unwind after Melissa's final before getting back to work helping the Haitians. Expect part II tomorrow! Take care all!


Eric