JadeSync

It’s a delightfully scenic region but the Caribbean sun is unrelenting; my water bottle is soon empty and with an island-wide bus strike in force, I regret not having hired a car of my own. Sunstroke is averted when Audrey pulls up at a prearranged spot and we set off back to her house.

A department of France, Martinique has an air of prosperity about it. Big-box stores, malls and fast-food outlets give its capital, Fort-de-France, the feel of an American city. I’d read all about the island’s frosty white beaches and the lush, hilly interior; what I wasn’t expecting from a Caribbean paradise were congested high­ways, bus lanes and clogged car parks. We pass dozens of dealerships, vehicle-repair workshops and spare-parts stores. The car is most definitely king on Martinique.

Downtown Fort-de-France is a melange of mildewing apartments, gaily painted two-storey shophouses and distinctive colonial architecture.

The suburbs might be reminiscent of those in the United States but the town hall, cathedral and library wouldn’t look out of place in provincial France. No one seems to have any updates about the bus strike, judging by all the Gallic shrugs I receive, but maybe they don’t understand me.

You don’t hear much English in the French Antilles, and attitudes to non-French-speaking visitors range from indifference to bemusement that anyone unable to speak the lingo would even bother to come.

Staff at the tourist office are prepared to meet me halfway linguistically, but while the buses are off the roads, the best they can suggest is a 20-minute ferry ride across the bay to Les Trois-Îlets.

The quintessential Caribbean holiday resort (and birthplace of Napoleon’s first wife, Josephine) is popular with French tourists escaping the European winter and just about the only place I visit on Martinique that doesn’t smell faintly of petrol or sargassum.

Back in the capital, I decide against hiring a car on the grounds that I’d be adding to the congestion. Instead I head to the taxis collectifs terminus. The private minibus drivers haven’t joined the indus­trial action so it’s possible to reach some parts of the island – assuming you’re happy to enter a world where time ceases to exist.

In theory, the 30km (18.6-mile) trip to Saint-Pierre should take less than an hour but it turns into a gruelling stop-start affair with passengers constantly hopping on and off. Some hand over a few coins, others appear to have a credit arrangement and a man at the back bursts into song. Maybe it’s his way of paying.

There’s a tolerance of my fumbling French, although, with this Creole-speaking crowd, a native Parisian would have trouble keeping up with the conversation. Mind you, given how long the journey takes, I’ve a good chance of becoming fluent in both languages before we reach our destination.

Raised voices and excitement signal our arrival and after a flurry of goodbyes, au revoirs and ovwès, everyone goes their separate ways.

Saint-Pierre was once known as the Paris of the West Indies but that ended in 1902, when the Mount Pelée volcano erupted, burying the town and its 30,000 inhabitants in mud, hot water and ash. If only the townsfolk had listened to the captain of an Italian freighter anchored in the harbour.

With an eye on the sky, Marino Leboffe made the fateful decision to stop loading his cargo and set sail. But not before he’d issued an ominous warning to the local authorities: “I know nothing about Mount Pelée, but if Vesuvius was looking the way your volcano looks this morning, I’d get out of Naples.”

There were only a handful of survivors, the most celebrated of whom was Ludger Sylbaris. Sentenced to be hanged for murder, he was imprisoned in a poorly ventilated, windowless cell, which saved him from the sulphurous gases. He was found by a rescue party and spent the remainder of his days as a circus curiosity. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Study a map of the Caribbean and you would expect the islands to be connected by a network of ferries. Rough seas are one good reason they aren’t. Forty minutes into the four-hour journey between Martinique and Guadeloupe we find ourselves bobbing along like a cork. Giant waves wash over us and staff distri­bute sick bags in a manner that suggests they’ve done so many times before.

The ferry finally docks in the capital, Pointe-à-Pitre, and we stumble off, some greener around the gills than others.

Look again at that Caribbean map and you’ll see that Guadeloupe’s two main islands form the shape of a butterfly. Confusingly, Grande-Terre is smaller than Basse-Terre. It’s also flatter and more developed as a tourist destination, thanks to a necklace of sublime sandy beaches.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of Airbnb listings on Guadeloupe. I pick a place in Sainte-Anne – a Grande-Terre resort town with a daily market, waterfront promenade and clutch of bakeries that tempt passers-by with fresh-out-of-the-oven croissants.

After the hardship of getting from A to B on Martinique, I relent and hire a car. This shrinks Guadeloupe into a series of half-day sorties. Basse-Terre, the mountainous west wing of the butterfly, is an untamed region of rainforests, waterfalls and national parks laid out under the dramatic La Soufrière volcano.

Changes in weather are sudden and spectacular; soon after setting off, a flamboyant rainbow illuminates the jet-black sky but by the time I’ve fumbled around for my camera, it has dissolved into bright sunshine.

Guadeloupe’s sandy beaches come in a variety of colours, too, from white and coral pink to brown and volcanic black. To reach the best of them, tourists rev their hire cars up and over the serpentine Route de la Traversée, which crosses the lofty spine of Basse-Terre. The road winds upwards to Cascade aux Ecrevisses, a jungle waterfall that plunges into an inviting creamy green pool few sightseers can resist leaping into.

It’s carnival day in the small town of Capesterre-Belle-Eau. The parade is scheduled to start at 3pm but this is the Caribbean so I time my arrival for 4pm, to find make-up still being applied and costumes adjusted.

It rains a little, the sun comes out, and then it rains again. “Liquid sunshine” as they say in these parts. Girls in risqué outfits lead the procession, followed by drummers and dancers, singers and miscellaneous show-offs. Rum is the tipple of choice and soon the line between participants and spectators begins to blur as the locals let their dreads down.

Clear-headed but with pockets full of glitter, I drive to northern Basse-Terre the follow­ing morning and find the air heavy with humi­dity and the unfamiliar sound of spoken English.

 British-French television crime drama Death in Paradise is filmed in the sleepy town of Deshaies (“deh hay”), which doubles as the fictional island of Saint Marie in the series. The show is watched in a number of countries, and I bump into German aficionados, French-Canadian fans and smitten Brits who lap up the shooting locations and snap souvenir selfies.

Nearby are two gorgeous sweeps of palm-tree-lined sand. Grande-Anse Beach is busy with French holidaymakers while its doppelgänger, Plage de la Perle, draws more Death in Paradise “set jetters” in search of the beach house Detective Richard Poole/Humphrey Goodman/Jack Mooney (depending on the series) calls home. The photogenic shack is dismantled and stowed away at the end of filming, so most leave disappointed.

I’m back on a ferry for my final day in Guadeloupe. We’re buffeted by choppy waters for the entire 10km crossing from Trois-Rivières to the island of Terre-de-Haut. The sick bags are out again and the vessel makes the kind of slow progress that passengers in a Martinique minivan would be familiar with.

On arrival, I regain my equilibrium by huffing and puffing up to Fort Napoléon, where the views are to die for. Over the centuries, plenty of naval personnel did exactly that.

Terre-de-Haut is a microcosm of Guadeloupe. Steep green peaks give way to talcum powder beaches reached via narrow streets ablaze with bougainvillea. In the picturesque settlement of Bourg des Saintes, crowds of day trippers fill the cafes and browse around pastel-painted stores selling maritime paraphernalia, home-made jewellery and beach gear. It could almost be Sunday on one of Hong Kong’s outlying islands. But with goats.

I ask the woman on duty at the tourist office about the ill-fated day in September 2017 when Hurricane Maria roared through this corner of the Caribbean. Homes were flooded, roofs were ripped clean off houses and boats that broke free of their moorings were recovered days later on distant islands. “We’re tough people,” she says with a defiant grin. “But I’ve never seen the church so busy.”

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