Boardwalk on piles in Guadeloupe

In the hills of Goyave, 9 kilometers from RN1, a reception area was inaugurated on Friday at Moreau Falls. It took 3 years and the joint efforts of the ONF (the French acronym for the National Forestry Office), the National Park, the Coastal Conservation Center (in French, Conservatoire du littoral), the city and the most important communities to achieve this development so anxiously awaited by local inhabitants, persons with limited physical motor skills and tourists.

Gilles Pitrou, in charge of the ONF wood workshop, was aiming for new nonpolluting technology that wouldn’t ruin the natural beauty of the site. Laurent Darviot, head of Techno Pieux Guadeloupe, proposed building a boardwalk 360 meters long some 2 or 3 meters above ground level. The boardwalk is supported on galvanized steel piles, something like huge screws buried in the earth. The special feature of this is that it is reversible and can be dismantled at any time.