Blog 2: From Paris to Guadeloupe
Where to begin? What a journey we’ve had already! On October 25th, before 5 o’clock in the morning, we closed the door of our apartment in Paris (well, Pantin) for the last time for we don’t know how long - one year? Two? Who’s to say.
We got on a 6am train to head to the first destination of our journey: Marseille. A bit of a soft-start to the journey, we spent a weekend in Marseille with many of our Midnight Runners Paris friends and two of Jo’s sisters to run the Marseille - Cassis 20km road race. It’s a beautiful course that starts in Marseille, travels up (and up and up and up) the coast before heading back down (and down, and down, and down) into the town of Cassis. We ran it with our friend Patrick, who is our partner in all things long distance running and a very good friend. It was a tough race, particularly the first 10km of straight, often quite steep, climbing, but it made the after-run beach celebration with our friends that much sweeter. At the end of that weekend, we said more tearful goodbyes to our friends and family while they headed back to Paris and we went on to Madrid.
We took a train to Barcelona, where we had a stopover, before heading to Madrid. The stopover was supposed to be just an hour, but a delay turned that into almost three hours. Finally, we boarded a train to Madrid.
In Madrid, we stayed with Julie’s close friend from when she lived in Mexico, Cesar, camping out in his small living room. Once in the city, the three of us went and met up with two of Julie’s closest friends from Santiago de Chile, Laura and Jean, who had also recently moved to Madrid. We spent two two full days in Madrid, with Laura as our tour guide and having dinner and drinks with all of our friends in the evening. Having not seen these people, who were more like family for me (Julie) while living in Mexico City and Santiago, being reunited for a few days was pure happiness.
As always, we like to get out into nature and explore some trails. We took an hour-long bus ride out of Madrid to a town called Manzanares. A longer post is needed to depict this trail run, but for now, I’ll give a brief synopsis. The run started out great, with beautiful weather and these big, rounded rock mountains. Interesting terrain, vegetation, beautiful views, and we even saw a family of wild mountain goats. The winds changed suddenly, however, and it started to rain with a couple loud claps of thunder and some lightening. We were relatively exposed and so decided to cut our planned route short so as not to get caught in a full-blown storm. We started out on the shortcut, which may have been shorter in distance but took as far longer than our original route would have. As it turns out, our short cut was a climbing route (we learned this after the fact) - except we were going down instead of up, and with no climbing equipment. I’ll save the details for another post, however, as you can imagine this was difficult and rather dangerous. After several hours of precarious decents and wondering if we would ever make it off this mountain, we finally made it out of the trail and back into the town. As for the weather, the storm that blew in and made us change course blew out just as quickly. Thanks for nothing, mother nature!
The following evening, we got on a night bus to take us to our next destination: Lisbon! There, we were received by Jo’s friend and former colleague Arnaud, who graciously opened his home to us. We were supposed to only be there for two nights, after which we would board the boat we were doing our sailing training on for the first leg of the transatlantic journey. We ended up staying there twice as long, however, because the boat, which was arriving in Cascais, next to Lisbon, was delayed by a couple of days. In the meantime, we toured around Lisbon on foot (walking and running, of course) and ate as many pasteis de nata as we could. Arnaud, who is essentially a professional paraglider, took us out for a flight along the stunning coast of Portugal, where we landed on a beach and then ate at a fish place along the shore. One evening, he also took us to his favourite spot for listening and dancing to samba music, getting us prepped and ready for when we will be in Brazil next year.
Finally, the day arrived for us to join the team on Maluel 40, a Class 40 racing sailboat that we would take from Portugal to the Canary Islands of Spain, and afterwards continue on to Cabo Verde. The goal was to complete an intensive open ocean sailing training, to skill us up for the actual Atlantic Ocean crossing. For this portion of the journey, we were 8 people on board. On a 12m-long boat built for speed, not comfort, quarters were tight! We took off from port, but then had a battery issue, so had to turn back. The battery got fixed, and a few hours later we were off again, though this time at night. Taking off at nighttime isn’t great for avoiding sea sickness, and both of us were sick the first night. It didn’t take us long to get accustomed, however, and we were mostly fine after that.
After four days at sea, we arrived in the canaries. We spent a couple of days on the volcanic island of Lanzarote, where we did some running, including some trail, and enjoying the beach, Playa Blanca. When it came time to leave two days later, however, our skipper didn’t know where to go to complete the necessary customs for leaving the schengen region and Europe. While he’s done this route many times, the marina in Arrecife where he usually goes was full. With no customs offices at the marina of Playa Blanca, we needed to find out of we could complete the clearance at Puerto Rosario, which was on route, rather than backtracking and adding hours of travel to what would already be a long trip to Cabo Verde. I spent the entire day with calling different offices and talking to different agents, etc, to try and figure out where we needed to go and who we needed to talk to. Translating from French to Spanish and then back to French again was exhausting, but finally we got the papers, passport stamps, and clearance we needed and we were off!
The next leg of the journey should have only taken five days, and at the beginning it looked like it would be quick. During mine and Jo’s first night shift, we got up to 16 knots of speed! The next day, however, the wind completely died. After that the going was slow, and so the trip ended up taking a full week. While we learned a lot and the trip was interesting, we were happy to be on land and to say goodbye to the close quarters of the Class 40. Two weeks sharing such a small space with people you just met is quite exhausting, socially, so we were happy to spend some extra time on land and to hopefully find a boat with more space.
We spent the next week in Cabo Verde. First, we took the ferry from the island of Sao Vicente to Santo Antao. Jo’s mentor, Guillaume, from when he volunteered for the Order of Malta (similar to the Red Cross) lives and owns a hotel in a place called Ponta do Sol. This is a beautiful area known for it’s trekking routes and scenery. We stayed in Guillame’s beautiful hotel and spent a couple of days trail running there. It was so incredibly beautiful - we found the part of Cabo Verde that is actually green! This was a welcomed change from the mostly volcanic rock terrain of Sao Vicente. We did a 30km trail run that went along the coast and then cuts up over the mountain and into the interior. A little over halfway, when we started to realize that we were getting really, really hungry, the most unique little restaurant appeared, almost like a mirage, on the side of the mountain. There, we ate a kind of chicken stew (the only menu item that day) and fresh fruit salad. Besides trail running, we also spent some time getting to know the town. We went one evening for dinner at a place called Casa da Musica, where they had live musicians. We ate with people that we had met on our collectivo ride from the ferry station to the town, and danced along with everyone else in the restaurant after the meal was over. It was a wonderfully memorable night, and definitely a must-do if you ever find yourself in Ponta do Sol!
While we would have loved to stay longer there, we knew it was time to head back to Mindelo to find our boat for the transatlantic. We were doing what is called bateau-stop in french, aka hitch hiking, but for boats. We spent two days walking along the docks in the marina talking to basically every boat there, as well as socializing at the marina restaurant and bar. Everyone was really nice, and while most of them were unable to take us, they all seemed really invested in helping us to find a boat. Finally, a man gave us a tip off that there was a man who’d arrived solo and had mentioned that he was considering taking on some crew for the big crossing. We spoke to the man, who said he wasn’t sure yet but that he would let us know. The next day, he sent Jo a message: He decided that yes, he wanted some crew, and yes, he would take us!
The next couple of days were spent preparing for the crossing. Jo and I were in charge of menu planning and the shopping. This is no easy feat in Cabo Verde. To get everything we needed for 3 people for up to 20 days, we had to go to eight different shops and markets. It’s safe to say, we are now experts of the supermarkets and street markets of Mindelo.
I’ll write a longer post about the transatlantic, but for now, I’ll say that this part of the journey really tested our resolve. The waves were knocking the boat, a 14m long katch, back and forth far more than they had the class 40. We were both quite sea sick, myself for the first four days or so, and Jo for longer than a week. Our skipper did his best to help us as he could, doing most of the cooking and sailing tasks while we were just trying to, unsuccessfully, not throw up. While this was positive, we found that our skipper had poor emotional regulation and was prone to temper tantrums when things got stressful or things didn’t go his way. We, unfortunately, often took the brunt of this, which was not very much fun. On top of this, the crossing was long - 17 days at sea. For two people who are as active as Jo and I are, this became quite torturous, once the sea sickness faded away. On top of that, the skipper decided that because I was more of a beginner sailor than Jo, I was not allowed to actually participate in the sailing process at all. He said that this wasn’t a school and he didn’t want to teach me (I didn’t ask him to teach me, to be clear), and that was that. So while he and Jo did various tasks to get us across the ocean I read three full books and listened to nearly 30 hours of podcasts. When we finally arrived in Guadeloupe, Jo and I packed our bags and got out of there as quickly as possible, very happy to leave that boat in our past.
We took a nice hotel not far from Point a Pitre for a few nights to decompress and get our land legs back under us. I am currently writing this blog post from a lounge chair on the beach, where I just finished eating sorbet made from fresh coconuts. So if you were feeling badly for us after reading the brief synopsis of our transatlantic adventure, try not to worry too much - we’re doing just fine!
We will stay here in Guadeloupe for Christmas, and from there try and figure out how to get from here to the other islands, with the eventual destination of the Dominican Republic for our friend’s wedding at the end of January. I’ll write up some more detailed posts about some of the adventure we’ve had enroute to here, but for now, we’re going to go and enjoy the tropical sunshine!