There are no direct flights from Martinique to Dominica, and fortunately there happened to be a ferry (Express des Iles) that ran on the day we wanted. Booking tickets online for Express des Iles was very difficult – we finally ended up using a travel agent in Dominica (Whitchurch Travel). I called them up, and after many attempts to email them our info (their email server was blocking all hotmail and yahoo mail) we finally got ‘tickets’, which were just a scan of the receipt. However, we had no problems using this to get the real ticket at the port in Martinique.

The ferry was only 15 minutes late – excellent service compared to Liat (The Carribean Airline). Unfortunately the catamaran (modern, covered, with a restaurant on board) ran after dark, so we didn’t get a view of the islands. The seas were extremely rough, and most of the passengers got sea sick. Even with 2 gravol/Dramamine, (motion sickness tablets), Ian barely hung on.

Arriving into Dominica wasn’t exactly a smooth process – the arrival forms that the ferry company had given us were wrong, so everyone had to scramble to fill in new forms. Our guesthouse in Roseau wasn’t that far, but the dark wet streets, lack of road signs, and an inaccurate map made it a little difficult to find.

The only other thing we had time to do in Martinique was to take a driving tour. Unfortunately it was raining, so we didn’t really see much.

We first headed to Saint Pierre, but it was pouring rain so we just stopped for a couple of photos and kept on driving.

We drove on the Route de la Trace, and although there are many beautiful views, there isn’t very many places to pull over to take pictures. However, the roads were all excellent, and we would highly recommend renting a car to tour the beautiful mountainous interior of Martinique. By the way, there are fruit stands and farms all over the island – we were surprised by how much land was agricultural.

We returned our car at the airport, and got a taxi in to town, where we were heading to Dominica by ferry.

The highlight of our trip to Martinique was the public beach/park called Les Salines. It is only a 5 minute drive from Ste Anne, with free parking and free entry. It’s the kind of beach that you picture when you close your eyes and think of a perfect tropical beach. Palm trees line the beach, and there isn’t a single building in sight. All the concession stands are set back considerably from the beach and can’t be seen. There are public bathrooms and showers. The sand was extremely clean, soft, and white. The only downside was the crowds – during this peak holiday season there was a lot of people, especially on the stretch of beach nearest the car park.

To get away from the crowds, we wandered away from the main part of the beach, and the crowd thinned out, but the beach was just as beautiful. What we didn’t realize however was that the farther we got, the rougher the surf was. We both lost our sunglasses to a large wave, and were knocked to the ground. Fortunately we both had spare sunglasses back at the hotel. So our advice would be to be careful about the waves, and if looking for a quieter stretch of beach, try heading left instead of right when facing the ocean coming from the car park, as it seemed calmer in that direction.

We didn’t try any of the concession stands, but they looked like a reasonable price. There is also chairs and umbrellas for rent.

We stayed at La Dunette, right in the heart of Ste Anne. The location was very convenient for restaurants, but parking was a little tricky. We were always able to find a parking spot without having to resort to parallel parking on parking up on a curb, however.

The hotel was a reasonable price considering the peak season, and had very nice ocean views (although the view on the lower floor was somewhat blocked by the roof of the restaurant underneath – it would be a good idea to request an upper floor). The room itself was cramped and worn, with an aircondtioner that was either full-on or full-off. The beach in town didn’t look that clean, and we never saw anyone swimming from it, so we passed. The hotel does not provide beach towels, but the bath towels worked nicely for the purpose.

We had originally planned to only rent a car for one day, from Ste Anne where we were staying, but when we got there and realized the cab fare to Ste Anne was going to be $50 we changed our minds and rented a car from Hertz for about the same price, $45 per day. We rented a standard (manual), as automatic transmissions are hard to find, and much more expensive.

The roads in Martinique are excellent. They are well paved, extremely well signed, and drivers are not overly aggressive. The only problem we ran into was that some of the towns have very narrow streets, which makes for some interesting parking, and last-minute breaking for pedestrians, who regularly step out right in front of cars without even thinking about it. For people unaccustomed to standard transmissions, constant hill starts when driving through the bumper to bumper traffic on the highway going through Fort de France can get quite tiring.

We were surprised to find that flying to Martinique from St Lucia was actually cheaper than taking the boat. We’re not sure why – but we heard that the boat is an all-inclusive drink all you want party boat, which would explain it. The flight was a short island hop that left from the local airport in Castries, George F L Charles.

We flew LIAT air. They were 3 hours late leaving for a 20 minute leave (which is pretty average for them), but at least the airport has free wi-fi.