The beginning posts on this site are about our trip to Guadeloupe in the Spring of 2019. While the entire trip was memorable, the driving was pretty difficult to get used to.
Guadeloupe is an amazingly beautiful place, and we highly recommend that anyone who visits takes the time to rent a car and drive around. Sure, there are resorts, but the character and life of a country does not lie there. To really experience a place, you need to get out and immerse yourself!
The Tricky Part
The roads in Guadeloupe are narrow and full of curves. Not that we are complaining, it added to the beauty of the place in our opinion! But it does make it hard when the locals are speeding by you (they are more used to driving there, obviously). There is no one speeding by us in the video below, but we feel that it provides an example of how the roads were.
Ok. I think the real tricky part was trying to not get distracted by how beautiful it was! The road we were driving on in the video is pretty much the short cut road on Basse Terre, the western Island. In the map below, you can see that the island has one road that runs along the coast, and one road that runs right through the middle of the island. It is the road through the middle of the island that we were on.
If you could imagine, the traffic was pretty bad in Guadeloupe. With everyone trying to get to and from work, there was often bumper to bumper traffic and standstills, which meant we had to plan our travel around rush hour times (early in the trip we were stuck in traffic that took us roughly a kilometer in 45 minutes or so). That day we missed our scheduled scuba diving trip. Luckily we were able to reschedule it. Because of the traffic, many people would take the road through the middle of the island, and fast. Naturally, we were worried that someone would ding up our rental car, and to be honest, we had no idea what that would mean for us financially (should have learned French).
Something a Little Different
What do you do when an ambulance or emergency vehicle pulls up behind you in the states? Keep in mind that you are on a 4 lane road, so there are two lanes of traffic going in your direction. You pull over into the right lane, and the emergency vehicle goes into the left! Right? That may just be me, but I am pretty sure that is the procedure.
Anyway, in Guadeloupe, the traffic splits left and right, and they free up a space in the middle of the road for the emergency vehicle! It was pretty confusing when we first saw it, and I am not sure that we can officially say that one way is better, but we say this because it is important to remember that even things like traffic change with culture. You cannot assume that everything is done the way that you do it, and you need to be observant of people when you are in their culture.
Overall
Driving is by far the best way to visit Guadeloupe, and is worth the anxiety you feel initially! After a week, we were professionals, able to drive with the best of them. The worst part was by far the traffic, but with a little planning it is no big deal and worth the stress.