Feeling very mellow after yet another slug of rum we headed into the dock for dinner, tripped our way across the main square into the other restaurant in St Pierre, run by a middle aged Indian gentleman and his black wife.  I opted for the prix fixe menu which happened to include a ti punch or planter’s punch as an aperitif, the menfolk obviously thought this a good idea and ordered a ti punch too.  Matt was amazed that it came as the accoutrements, sugar and lime, plus a whole bottle of rum plonked on the table.  It was strong, certainly showed the men from the boys and even had hairs sprouting on Bob’s chest, mine too in all probability.  The food was simple but tasty.  I started with fish cooked in lemon juice and the chaps went for omelettes which they declared to be good, I think because they were murmuring through generous mouthfuls.  They followed with entrecote steaks with frites and I had octopus in a very rich sauce.  Bob and I were very excited to have our first banana flambes of the trip, with a hefty slug of rum, but Matt had some sorbet to clear his palate.  He needed it in order to cope with the complementary shots of rum that then appeared.  We had a rum old night and slept very well.

Morning dawned rather later than usual as Bob, the alarm clock, needed a bit more time to get over all the rum.  We tried all the hire firms in St Pierre, using a phone really stretches the French, no hand gestures and charades available, but for some reason there was not a car to be rented.  “Let’s go for a taxi then” we declared “but definitely not the bossy, belligerent bloke from yesterday”.  We puttered over to the dock and headed for the taxi rank where we carefully ignored all eye contact with the BBB from yesterday.  Map in hand, I approached, with as much charm as I could muster, the only other driver there.  “Ce n’est possible” he declared.  “What is it with these people?” I swore.  We looked around desperately hoping for another taxi driver to appear but to no avail.  The BBB from yesterday descended.  I said, in my best French, that we did not want to use him because he had been so rude and difficult yesterday.  We then proceeded to have a full on slanging match, (much the same as I had with Farmer Baines for those present at that time) which covered all manner of topics such as the lack of hire cars, we only wanted to visit the Plantation Ceron, no one would take us, why were all taxi drivers so lazy and stupid not wanting to take tourists on a tour etcetera, even managing to fit is “Is it because we is English?” Bob and Matt watched in awe and wonder or was it squirming with embarrassment.  But somehow it all went a bit awry and the next thing I knew, the BBB from yesterday was loading us into his taxi and insisting on taking us to the Plantation that we wanted to see.  Off  we went, taking a detour to the car hire company to admire the long line of eager little cars awaiting an outing, “you see the problem?!” I declared huffily.  The tour was going well, monuments to the the end of slavery, Carib graveyard, until we reached the plantation.  It was closed.  Not just for the day, but permanently.  That was why “ce n’est pas possible”!  Couldn’t they just have said “c’est fermee”?  We retraced our route and headed up to the volcano.  It was covered in cloud so the views were not very good, in fact we couldn’t see anything at all.  Somewhat scuppered on all counts we returned to St Pierre and paid off the BBB from yesterday, he wasn’t happy with what we paid him, and headed back to the boat for a beer.

A swim, with Matt practicing his deep water diving to check out the anchor, followed by a bit of chilling (Bob has dug out one of his books for me in absence of my Kindle, here’s hoping it is better than the last one of his which was so bad I threw it overboard) and very soon rum and coke time has come around again.  Cheers.