The last day in St. Pierre consisted of breakfast and a trip to the airport. I had arranged to pay my bill the day before and had asked Guillaume, an assistant at the hotel, if he knew where I could buy the cloudberry jam served at breakfast each morning. I explained I had searched every store in the island without success. He informed me that harvesting each berry off individual stems didn’t reap much fruit and there were only a few places where the berries thrived. These, he said, are jealously guarded by residents. The cloudberry jam I ate every morning was his grandmother’s.

When I brought my luggage down, he was there to drive me to the airport. But first, he had a gift, small jar of his grandmother’s cloudberry jam- an example of the generosity and hospitality of the people of St. Pierre and Auberge Saint-Pierre.