Our Great Adventure : Haiti The Final Instalment: A City of Artists

From Ile-a-Vache we headed to the town of Jacmel. As we turned into the channel for the anchorage the boat started rolling side to side and everything went flying - there was NO protection from swells at all. It was so bad that we almost left and headed for the Dominican Republic. However, we were all excited about seeing the city so we stuck it out and despite not sleeping at all we were glad we did. It's a city full of poets, painters, filmmakers, French colonial architecture, and artists working in papier-mache, stone, metal, canvas and wood. It truly is a city of artists and is most well known for the giant papier-mache costumes it makes for Carnival! The city is decorated with masks, and full size costumes of animals and characters that can be worn in the Carnival parade. It was the first city in the Caribbean to become a member of the UNESCO Creative City Network!

Papier-Mache Costumes

Sadly the damage from the 2010 earthquake is very visible - the cathedral had to be closed and it's clock stopped when the tremors hit. The post office, city hall, the market and about 70% of the homes there were severely damaged. After the earthquake Canadians and Americans did a lot of work in Jacmel - a American

Mosaic along the boardwalk

group designed a seaside boardwalk full of mosaics done by locals and Canadians were heavily involved in the rebuilding of homes. Since Jacmel is known as one of the biggest tourism areas in Haiti the goal was to get the city back up and running to help the economy. As soon as we arrived and got off our dingy we met Flacco, a local dog. He ran right up to us and spent the better part of the day with us. The locals joke that he knows when someone is Canadian because he was unofficially adopted as a pup by some Canadian Armed Forces who were stationed there after the earthquake and who named him, trained him and fed him. He was another dog I desperately wanted to make our "boat dog" but mean old James wouldn't let me!

Flacco, my dog soul mate

We spent the day wandering around the city and trying to convince our friend Michael to get a haircut in one of the local barbers - we thought he should get "I love Haiti" shaved into the back of his head - we came pretty close to convincing him. All around the city there are artisits carving wood or stone and others painting and varnishing their papier-mache creations. We had cold drinks in Hotel Florita - a converted mansion built in 1888 at the height of the city's wealth when it was a well known coffee port. Despite wanting to try some of the local coffee we were too hot. We also saw Le Marche en Fer - it was built in 1895 and modelled after the market in Port-au-Prince.

Hotel Florita

Drinks at Hotel Florita

We visited just about every art boutique and then took a break for lunch to discuss what we wanted to purchase - everything was so beautiful and so inexpensive it was hard to choose!

Beachside Lunch

Sadly James and I totally ran out of cash and there was no bank machine so we could only purchase one item! We had a delicious lunch at a casual beach cafe and then went back to the stores to make our purchases. James and I bought a painting from the beachside market of some traditional fishing boats because we felt it would remind us of our sailing around there. Had we had more cash though we could have bought enough to decorate an entire house with beautiful art!

Our fondest memories from Haiti are: Seeing all the photoluminescent plankton in the waves breaking beside our boat during all of our night sails - it seemed particularly vivid there since there is almost no light pollution at all. The smell of wood smoke, rain and wet earth coming rolling off the mountains as the katabatic winds start. The smiling, waving, skipping, laughing children who always wanted to say hello. The delicious mouthwatering local foods. The genuine and kind people we met all through Haiti. In Jacmel we met Mme Charlotte - a local artist who our friends Micheal and Rebecca bought some art from. We spent some time talking with her and about our time in Haiti and what a beautiful experience it had been- her final words really resonated with us "When people talk shit about Haiti you tell them what it's really like".