Alexis told how tourism had plummeted over the last few years leaving the island and him few other prospects of earning money. He surprised us by telling us he was 45 with a girlfriend the same age as Mikaela. He told us rather sadly that he'd fathered a son with an American tourist 15 years ago who he'd never met nor was ever likely to as they lived in Virginia.

The village where we moored was called Portsmouth and this was Portsmouth High Street on a hectic Friday morning:

The day had started at Big Papa's beach restaurant which had working wi-fi but a rather desultory looking group of fellas sitting around smoking dope. Had Ford and I sat around there much longer we'd have been stoned ourselves. Indeed through the day every dodgy dealer in town had their eyes on Ford who was offered most types of drugs and local lady-folk. There was certainly little prospect of the place opening and we sat a witnessed a massive row between a guy sweeping the floor and a vast woman in a tight fitting yellow jumper who yelled at each other on and off for a good half hour before someone finally came and offered eggs and garlic bread for breakfast.

By Friday night — party night — all the beach restaurants were completely deserted. We managed to find one to do us rather good goat or fish curry 

Afterwards we were directed to the place where tonight's party would be taking place. It turned out to be a dark and dingy place which, if the pictures on the wall were anything to go by, was about to turn into a strip joint. They served rum punches which tasted like cough syrup and outside an ever changing cast of men were having an increasingly violent but good humoured game of dominos which involved slamming the pieces on the table which as much force as possible. We left before midnight but we could hear the music thumping round the bay till 7am. We clearly haven't got the measure of parties in Portsmouth!

Jonathan