Ft. de France, Martinique
14.35.977N
61.04.151W

Today, we moved further south to Ft. de France along with Wayfinder. As compared to St. Pierre, Ft. de France is a bustling city.

Mike & Sara and Dale & I were making our way through the crowded streets to an ATM when a man, having a bad day, not quite totally sane, or both, started yelling at us that we Americans cannot take up the entire sidewalk. He told us to walk in a straight line. Everyone at the ATM started laughing (I guess because he was a crazy person) and we started laughing because he was one of only a handful that we found in the entire city who could speak English. So for the rest of the day, we’d walk in a straight line everywhere we went. It looked crazy but we did it just in case they all felt that way about Americans (and because we‘re silly).

A Tex-Mex restaurant was listed in our cruising guide and with two couples from southern California having guacamole withdrawals, we searched it out as soon as we had Euros in our pockets. Perhaps we should re-qualify the description--it was Tex-Mex with a definite French flair. Items such as burritos and fajitas were listed but everything in them was listed in French. No matter how Mexican the décor, the waitresses were French, only spoke French and our smattering of Spanish didn’t do us a lick of good. We resorted to pointing to pictures and then tried to convey the difference between beef, chicken and shrimp. (Two fingers by the temples = beef; brock-brock = chicken, and shrimp . . . we just gave up on, since it really isn’t a fish) In the end, the nachos were pretty good but the burritos were little square bundles whose flavor somewhat represented the real thing. Everything tasted good, just not quite the Tex-Mex we were looking for.

Right across the street was Sea Services, a marine chandlery. Of course, we were obligated by virtue of being boat owners to do a walk through. That’s when we learned that not only did we have to be buzzed into the two banks we went to, but we had to be buzzed into this establishment as well. I don’t know if it’s a French thing a Ft. de France oddity, or they saw us coming and locked the doors. In any event, they allowed us in. I don’t think we bought anything but since the proprietress spoke English, we asked her dozens of questions about the city, tours, etc.

She supplied us with maps, gave us the telephone number of a taxi driver that spoke English and when we tried to place a call to the English speaking taxi driver and couldn’t make the French operator understand us, we went running back to her and she actually placed the call for us setting up the tour of the island for us. Sea Services does a lot more than sell boat parts.

So, if you’re still wondering what we do all day. . . Think about it this way, it took 4 people to sort through the coins among us so see which one the telephone took, another hour to find a public telephone that worked, and then we ended up retracing our steps to find someone who understood what we wanted to say in the first place. That was just to make a telephone call. Imagine what it’s like when we’re trying to actually get something done.