… but what an amazing one, I could not resist making one picture after the other, while gazing in awe! So you kind of see the end first 😉
Find the Fou-Fou!
Fou-Fou is what they call the hummingbirds here in the West Indies.
I really love watching these unbelievably beautiful small birds and looking out for them at the hibiscus bush in front of our rented house has become one of my favorites 🙂
Today in the botanical garden I even had the chance to take some pictures of them. Unfortunately very poor quality as I have only my mobile phone camera, but if you take a closer look, you may find the hummingbirds (Colibris) between the leaves. To make it a little bit more interesting: the fou-fou is green 😛
Little hint: the wings of the fou-fou make the picture a little bit blurred.
Jardin Botanique de Deshaies
Wonderful afternoon in a lovely botanical garden 🙂
Sunset selfie
Sunset times
Overwhelmed …
Booking our new home until the end of the year was a little bit like playing lottery. We decided to book this house very spontaneously and as it was listed completely new on airbnb, it had no ratings and only poor descriptions. So today was the great day! How would the surroundings be? There was no fridge on any of the pictures … hopefully the bed is ok … as we planned to stay here for 37 days all this stuff is what really makes a difference 😉 Many thoughts running through our minds until we finally arrived. And then …
Wow! What a great surprise! Lovely surroundings, nice exteriors and interiors, AC in the bed room, clean new linens and finally: Good Wifi!!! And then seeing that the owners took so much care to give us a warm welcome: a huge basket full of fruits, coffee, tamarind jam and 2 bottles of water in the fridge. Everything very clean and some things even completely new. You maybe can’t imagine what a surprise it is, having traveled nearly for a year now to feel so positively overwhelmed of a location (we had the opposite quite a few times, pictures that did not match reality at all). And especially as this is one of the cheapest locations we have booked till now: approx. 25 €/night for a complete house, due to all the discounts they have offered as airbnb starters. And again we feel so thankful for what life offers us <3
Wanna play God-Mode?
Having played this GAME for a long time, you may suddenly realize, there is only one real quest left: God-Mode.
As you have already finished so many levels in the Human-Mode, your Avatar got better and better, earned credits, skills, level-ups, raided, cheated … all to become more, to get better, to get on a higher level. Sometimes you also lost, had a bad time. Got frustrated and angry. Or you got bored, fighting the same enemies all the time. But then you won again. So the GAME has been kept interesting. New surroundings, new enemies, new co-players to play with. But always the same gameplay: getting to the next level, more mana, more gold, better skills, nicer outfits. The gameplay of the Human-Mode, the Ego-Mode.
Suddenly you get a glimpse at a totally different mode in the GAME: God-Mode!
Maybe your frustration opened the door to this vision of a new gameplay or simple boredom of the Human-Mode.
Now you have a new goal and your Avatar will try to figure out how to reach this new and promising mode. Surely there will be new features waiting for you, new items to earn, new skills and a better armor. Cool! Sounds like a great adventure! Let‘s try to get there!
But the problem with God-Mode is: your Avatar may take no riches or honours with it. Nothing you earned in the Human-Mode may be taken to God-Mode. Here it is even a hindrance to have a lot of great skills and cleverness, a lot of gold or gadgets, to have a strong Avatar.
As you are not willing to sacrifice all of your great Avatar skills just for a new kind of gameplay, you forget this mode again, ignore it and play the Human-Mode further on. No problem, as there are always new features, new levels. The GAME is always challenging you with new kinds of enemies and goals to be reached.
But you cannot forget that you had this glimpse, this vision, this small teaser of God-Mode once and that this would be totally different from your present gameplay. You cannot forget, but you cannot quit either. So you feel somehow torn apart, no longer playing the Human-Mode with all your heart, no longer being satisfied by the gifts and level-ups you achieve. But you are also not willing to give this all up just to enter another somehow completely unknown mode. You even don’t know what is waiting there for you after all! You just cannot help being drawn to this and you know: it will be the final. But ‘Final‘ sounds for your Avatar like ‘Game over‘ and that’s nothing it wants. That is even something your Avatar hates and fights against. The deadly end of the GAME!
But, no worries! The GAME is not over when you enter God-Mode. Only for your actual Avatar it looks like this, as it has to give up all its great achievements. All the things you have been fighting for for such a long time in Human-Mode! In God-Mode nothing of this matters. There are no more tasks, no more quests, no more fights, no more earnings. You are no longer playing with a time limit. This mode only operates in this very moment. The only time you play in is: NOW.
And now it is LIFE acting through you, through your Avatar. That‘s why you had to leave all your stuff at the Human-, the Ego-Mode. Only one player can play in God-Mode and that‘s LIFE. You still attend and take part in this GAME, but you are no longer the player. No more: live, die, repeat. Your Avatar still acts, but with totally new skills and a new level of understanding
Now you can play all modes and all levels and at the same time YOU are not playing at all …
Lying under palm leaves
Conquering the Vulcano …
Ok, let’s be honest, we started our Vulcano tour yesterday at 900m and probably quit at 1000m 😀
The remaining 500m would have been too difficult for us lazy guys anyway. Too slippery for us to walk in flip-flops … but nevertheless a beautiful and very peaceful walk for about 1 hour. Totally different to walk through a jungle where you don’t have to take care what’s hanging from a tree behind your neck … no snakes here 😉
We have also seen a beautiful hummingbird, but as already before, no chance of getting a picture …
And when jumping into the ocean for a refreshment after our walk we were granted an amazing double rainbow that lasted for about 20 min. Great day again!
Selfies in the jungle
Should we stay or should we go?
That was the question we asked ourselves while thinking what to do or book next. The answer was easy for both of us: definitely stay!!!
As we are still in the EU in Guadeloupe, we did not book any ongoing flights yet (usually a must when you want to visit any country outside the EU).
And lucky fellows we are, we found a house not far away from ‘THE beach’ (see our last post) via airbnb which was listed yesterday brandnew and thus offered a longstay discount of 49% and a starter discount of another 20%. And here we are, booked it right away until the end of the year and now we can enjoy even more our time on the left wing of beautiful Guadeloupe 🙂
An afternoon at THE Beach
Really one of the best beaches we have been until now: Grande Anse near Deshaies. Cristall clear water, no rubbish or sea grass, a lot of shady spots under trees, some decent snack bars in the background, no music being played, no buildings at the beach, perfect water temperature, wonderful caramel sand … and a great mixture of olds & youngs, blacks & whites, thins & fats, Europeans & Guadeloups. Oh yeah, what a day!!!
One of the many freaky & weird thoughts we had today was:
If this was not our live, we would definitely envy the one having it 😉
The other side of Guadeloupe
After 2 weeks on the right wing of Guadeloupe we decided to go to the left part of the island and it is like in another world. Because of the 1500 meter high vulcano the vegetation is completely different. It‘s a real rain forest with huge tree leaves. It‘s much more wet here so even greener than on the right side. Some beaches are black, either with big rocks laying at the shore or with fine sand. On the other hand, it’s the Caribbean side (not the Atlantic one), so much smoother flow and not so intensive waves. That makes swimming more relaxing 🙂
Guadeloupe Impressions
As Guadeloupe looks like a butterfly, we could say we visited only the right wing till now (low land and many beaches), on Saturday we will change to the left side for the next two weeks (at least), which is the mountain and rainforest side.
teenagers doing work-out 
buying chi-chi 🙂 
heavy rains within seconds 
food truck plate, yummy 
sugar cane fields 
kids love doing saltos 😉 
cemetery 
Typical Caribbean cocktail
Oh yeah, we love it here :)
Guadeloupe is not such a typical touristic island and has so much to offer:
- perfect water temperature, a little bit refreshing, not too cold, not too hot, so you could stay in the water for hours
- a lot of great beaches, some with really unbelievable white and soft sand and very clean, the touristic ones, where they sell things; the local ones are more dirty, but only leaves, gras and algaes, we didn’t see any plastics on the beaches until now
- always a refreshing breeze to cool you down a little bit
- no snakes or other poisonous animals, sooo relaxing 😉
- it’s very clean everywhere, no rubbish on the streets or at the beaches (European standards)
- tab water has drinking quality
- no big buildings here or hotel chains (but we didn’t see all of Guadeloupe yet)
The only thing that’s not so great is the price for food (and we love food ^^). As we have rented a studio, we are able to cook for ourselves fortunately. But even if you buy your food in the supermarket it’s quite expensive. Fruit and vegetables are nearly all about 4€/kg (also local), meat at the butcher about 20€/kg. If you buy it frozen and in big quantities it is much cheaper, so we bought a package of 10 frozen pork steaks for dinner 😉 But these are simply island prizes, as nearly everything is imported.
What is not expensive is: Caribbean Rhum. So we stay with the old Bavarian lifestyle of drinking what you need for living and cocktails defenitely have a lot of important vitamins! ;D
So it’ s really easy to enjoy your time here, especially as it’s not high season yet. Only 20% of the studios in the condomium are occupied, so we sometimes feel like being completely on our own here. Nearly no human noises (or in French, which we luckily don’t understand), just the waves crashing at the beach and the birds chirping … yes, we love it!
