Monday 6th November
We are checking out Bompierre beach today and it is terribly sad, a month and a half after Maria, we found a cleaning up crew still hard at work trying to clear the damage left by the hurricane. Some of the coconut trees are gone, but not all, all of the little huts are gone, some of the sand has disappeared and is not as white as it used to be. I get the full story from one of the guys clearing up. They have been working on it since 2 days after Maria hit and it looks much better than it did then, most of the fallen trees have been cleared up and the beach is now clean of all the washed up debris. He was adamant that within 6 months the beach would have healed and apart from the little huts, which may take longer to put back up (only for financial reasons), it will be back to the beautiful beach it once was. He obviously wanted to talk… he could name and remember every single dates of all the hurricanes he had witnessed in his life, he had lived in Les Saintes since he was born and remembered when the coconut trees were planted and when the beach was made into a park over 50 years ago. He went to high school in Guadeloupe where he saw la Soufriere go up. The stories were hair rising but the sheer optimism that nature would heal these scars in time was uplifting. He went as far as saying that these trees probably were ready and needed to come down. He was just pleased that there were no casualties on the island and that apart from a roof of two blown down, there was very little damage even with the strongest hurricane they ever had to contend with. He put this down to the fact that all the building regulations were now followed to the letter and people were much more aware about the life saving steps to take before, during and after a hurricane. It only took 2 days for the army to clear all the roads and sort out the major infrastructures, but most of the clean up work was down to the council, with only little assistance from the residents.