A tip: if you can, avoid taking intercontinental flights on the last day of the year, because after 18 tiring hours of waiting, layovers and car rental, you could find yourself having a sleepless night for the celebrations of the restaurant next to your accommodation, which for the occasion turns into a deafening disco until 5 AM (whose vocalist shouts "On y va" every 5 minutes)

With perhaps 1 or at most 2 hours of sleep accumulated, we thus began our first day on this butterfly-shaped island located in the Caribbean.

The first stop on the tour was the strange cemetery of Morne-à-l'Eau (for a naive New Year's Day), where the deceased rest in peace in tombs or mausoleums whose facades are covered with tiles laid in a checkerboard pattern with the dominance of black and white.

Seeing is believing.

We set off again towards the pretty chapel of Saint-Michelle, which can be reached by crossing expanses of sugar cane plantations, the leitmotiv of all of Grande-Terre, the "right wing" of Guadeloupe. Being almost entirely flat, this part of the island has lent itself very well to the cultivation of sugar cane, since the centuries of colonialism.

In these plantations the slaves, malnourished and crammed into huts with terrible hygienic conditions, were forced to work all their lives; their hard work fattened the colonialists, who exported the final product of the entire production chain: Rum.

In 1848 slavery was abolished on the island, thanks to a campaign led by the French politician Victor Schoelcher.

Signs of this past are visible almost everywhere, from the colonial house of Zevallos, on the road from Le Moule to Saint-François, to the ruins of the former prison of Petit-Canal, which we visited the following day.

Right in Petit Canal there was also the port from which the slaves were deported elsewhere.

After these decidedly historical-cultural stages, we lightened the day by going to the Pointe des Châteaux, the extreme point of Grande-Terre to the south-east, absolutely to be immortalized in our memories.

Here there are some short and easy trails, which run along coastlines and offer many glimpses of the ocean.
After the break we went to the beaches of Bois Jolan and Plage de la Caravelle, in our opinion the most iconic of the whole island, to indulge in a well-deserved afternoon relaxation and get a little tan.

They are located in Sainte-Anne, and finding them was very easy.
To conclude the discussion of beaches in Grande-Terre, we can say that if you choose one of those located along the south coast you will always find postcard landscapes.

We let the photos speak for us.