Large Castles and Magic Sex on the Beach

Yep, capital letters r us. It makes me feel important, which is always a good thing.

Anyway, after all this whining and moaning, I thought I'd better try to sell Haiti. Yes, it has it's riots, poverty, dirt, kidnappings, lack of infrastructure.

But....

Yep, that's Labardie beach near Cap Haitian in the north of the country. And if Emma had played her cards right, where you're looking at is where she could have had a "Magical Sexual Experience" with the hunchbacked 83 year old married proprietor of the guesthouse we were staying in...

Just across the bay is a private beach surrounded on all sides by barbed wire. This is where luxury cruise ships dock to "experience Haiti" and come back raving about how much they lurrrve the place. Sarcasm and geriatric sex aside, this is a paradise place. Just a pity it's so far away.

This is Cap Haitian itself - a really nice laid back town. Very different from the overwhelming business of PaP.

Also, for the full tourist experience, there is The Citadelle. Built on a huge fucking mountain (well, more of a hill if you have to be perfectly accurate) in the middle of Bum Fuck Nowhere, it's Haiti's number one tourist attraction. It was built a couple of hundred years ago soon after Haiti's independence by Henri Christophe, Haiti's one and only King.

King Christophe was a bit of a character - you'd have to be to crown youself King. He orginally started building this fortress on the orders of Dessaline in the belief that the French would invade to recapture their colony, and continued after Dessaline's death and the subsequent division of Haiti into Northern Kingdom and Southern Republic. In the end the castle was never used, and Christophe ended up committing suicide (with a silver bullet) to avoid the ignominy of being defeated by Petion during the North/South civil that erupted soon after Independence.

Living in Petionville and not having much use for Kings, I suppose I don't really appreciate Christophe's finer points. However, he did create a bloody spectacular castle. Have a lookie:

Despite all of that, here is my favourite sight of the north. Oink oink.