Mike and I recently returned from Guadeloupe. In Part 1, I’ll cover general information about the island, and our accommodations. In Part 2, I’ll cover fun things to do on the island. In Part 3, I’ll go through a breakdown of the cost of our trip. And in Part 4, I’ll talk about the scuba diving, and the dive operator that we used.

General Information

The island of Guadeloupe is actually a butterfly shaped archipelago made up of the two islands of Grande Terre and Basse Terre. We spent the majority of our trip on the western island of Basse Terre, but the more populated island is the eastern island of Grande Terre. Basse Terre contains a volcano called La Grande Soufriere. Consequently Basse Terre is much more mountainous than Grande Terre (which is hilly but not flat). The population of Guadeloupe is approximately 400,000 people.

The currency in use is the Euro. The main language spoken on the island is French, although people spoke at least a tiny bit of English most places that we traveled to. I am about 25% fluent in French, according to Duolingo, so the combination of my bit of French, and the small amount of English worked well enough to get by. One thing to note with regard to restaurants though, is that many places served Creole, so the combination of languages and food types sometimes made menus difficult to read.

Getting There

Norwegian Airline started running direct flights between the United States and Guadeloupe and Martinique this year. I found a fantastic deal on tickets due to the new routes(more on that in Part 3) on dates that we were available, so we decided to book a trip to Guadeloupe. So we ended up flying United Airlines from Omaha to Chicago O’Hare to Boston, staying overnight in Boston, then flying to Guadeloupe. When you live in central Nebraska, it’s always a process to travel to more out-of-the-way type destinations, but so worth it. Our flight experience with United was fine, except for the single flight where they switched our seats to the last row middle seats (I think due to an aircraft change). And flying with Norwegian was quite comfortable. The flight was far from full, so Mike and I had an entire row to ourselves.

A couple of things to note with Norwegian. First, you have to pay for all drinks and snacks onboard the aircraft, so make sure that you’re prepared to pay steep prices, or to bring your own snacks and drinks with you. And since the flight is about 4 hours, a drink is probably a necessity. Second, pay attention to fees and weight restrictions on baggage. The weight restrictions are different from most US legacy carriers, and the fees are really high if you have to pay for additional weight or bags at the airport. Also, download a copy of any confirmation e-mails showing whatever baggage fees you prepaid. I had to get a refund from Norwegian after we returned, because on our return flight they apparently couldn’t find the additional baggage fee that we’d prepaid. The refund was pretty easy to obtain, but to avoid it make sure that you have access to your confirmation emails.

Transportation

For our visit, we had a rental car; and I’d recommend getting one as relying on public transportation would severely limit your ability to see the sights of the island. I had a truly terrible experience with Budget Rent-A-Car on the island (they lost my reservation; the service counter was incredibly slow–like over an hour to rent the car; they charged a cleaning fee afterwards which was not authorized in the contract, and which was not warranted as we’d returned the car clean). So although I’ve had a fine experience with Budget elsewhere, I would  not recommend renting from them on Guadeloupe. Sixt was by far the fastest company in terms of getting customers set up with their rental cars and on their way; so if we return to Guadeloupe, we’d probably use them instead.

But we did have the cutest little car, a Renault Twingo. It was so tiny that we had to put the backseat down for our luggage to fit. Oh, and make sure that you’re comfortable driving a manual transmission, as most cars on the island are stick shifts, and there are lots of hills, curves, and narrow roads. I’ve driven stick shift since high school (thanks mom and dad!), so I did all of the driving and it wasn’t a big deal.

Accommodations

We stayed at a bungalow called Les Merveilleux flots de la Mer (which translates to The Marvelous Waves of the Sea). We were the only guests for the week of our visit, so it was really nice and quiet. And the proprietors are incredibly kind and helpful. We really appreciated visiting with them from time to time throughout the week. It appeared that they were also making some improvements to the property to make it even nicer in the future. The proprietors told us that a paved parking area and a pool were the projects in the works. The pool would be very nice, as the temperatures are regularly in the 80s Fahrenheit, and it’s quite humid.

It had a very nice patio that we had lunch at several days of our trip and spent some time on during the evenings. The bungalow also had a kitchenette and a living room area, in addition to the bedroom and bathroom. It was nice to have extra space in addition to the bedroom. And it was quite handy to be able to make and eat breakfast and lunches in the bungalow. The bedroom was the only room with air conditioning, and only from 8pm-6am, which was disappointing and unexpected based on the information posted on Hotels.com. And the bathroom was really tiny and dated. But overall, the whole space was comfortable and clean. And it was quite comparable to other accommodations on the island, and set up nicely for several week-long vacations, such as many Europeans are accustomed to.

And I was a terrible blogger, and took zero pictures of the bungalow, so you can find pictures and more information about the property here.

 

Check out Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of my series on Guadeloupe!