Transportation

From Les Cayes northwards across the Southern Peninsula through the mountains to Jeremie is a beautiful but gruelling eight-hour experience, requiring persistence and a sturdy four-wheel-drive. (Make sure to bring a camera and many rolls of film as well as food and drink for the trip!) From Jeremie onwards to Dame Marie is also a beautiful ride, through basically muddy and rocky conditions. Interestingly, this winding journey, which takes four and a half bone-jarring hours, only takes 10 minutes by air if you dare land on Dame Marie's sloping earthen landing strip and if you can arrange to be picked up and brought to town.

When at Dame Marie and further down the coast in Anse d'Hainault, you get the distinct impression that you are at the end of the earth. And you are. Hiking outside these towns you are as remote and cut off from the digital world as you would be in Timbuktu.