This décalage business is getting annoying now. I forced myself to stay awake till 11pm last night thinking it would make me sleep till a reasonable hour today. But I woke up at 4am anyway and there was no way I was going back to Snoozeland. There’s no peace for anyone at that hour due to the chorus of cockerels battling with each other for the biggest beak award. If you don’t sleep through the first few shrieks you’ve had it. Honestly it’s like listening to Chinese opera on maximum volume - worse in fact.
By 6am I realised I needed to do something more entertaining than staring at the ceiling listening to a round of ‘COCK-A- DOODLE DOOOS!’ every ten seconds. So I went for a jog. There were loads of people already running up and down the beach and doing funny looking exercises. One woman was lying on her back on a picnic table waving her legs in the air – not sure what she was doing... leg semaphore perhaps? I didn’t like to ask in case she had just escaped from somewhere. So I went on, remembering to say my bonjours to the other joggers.
I jogged (and sometimes walked) for miles all the way to Sainte Marie, at least that’s where I think I was - and paddled in the sea up there. I really wanted to go for a swim but I was wearing these big flappy shorts and I didn’t want to walk back soaked in case people thought I was some kind of raging Sweaty Betty and shunned me from thenceforward. I went to my beach 5 minutes from the apartment later on though for my long awaited swim in the Atlantic. It was gorgeous! However, the day was a slightly marred by my realisation that going into the town on Sunday as a lone woman is NOT a good idea...
Sundays are different from other days in Trinité. It would appear that, far from being a day of rest, Sunday in Trinité is in fact a day of sleazy men lurking on benches and in doorways and lavishing unwanted pathetically sexist attention on women that pass by ...particularly white women ...particularly me. I heard so many wolf whistles and calls of ‘bonjour princess’ – like that’s going to work on anyone with a brain? Fools. And semi drunk and stoned blokes kept beckoning me over or shouting weird questions at me. All the single men in a two mile radius were hanging around the Bourg (that’s the bit where the shops are) hoping some hapless tourist would wander into their midst like I did today. I’m not venturing in that direction next week. That’s for sure!
This evening Lisette took me on a little tour of Tartane in the car. I was really glad of the distraction and the company – I’d begun to feel a bit isolated and a little bit sad after realising I couldn’t really go anywhere on my own without having to deal with annoying wankers. I can’t wait till I’ve got some form of transport. I’m looking for a moped because I think it’ll make me look really cool. 50cc... Come on!! xx
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