Went to the French West Indies. It was only April, yet it was so hot and humid it felt like you were walking around in a body suit of warm, wet shaving lather.

The French West Indies have more French people than all but one country (France). One of the problems with people of the immediate French persuasion is they tend to speak a language (French) that appears to have a different word for practically everything, except deja vu and Gloria Estefan.

On the plus side for not understanding French: How badly does anyone really want to get to know a French person, anyway?*

Because my Hopi Indian is better than my French, I opt to communicate in that dialect.

I learned the trick from Katherine, the woman at work who told the pretentious story about how she communicated while on a trip "in German, because my German is better than my French." Of course, Katherine has less original equipment above her neck than Michael Jackson, and when you count the layers of cosmetics that dwarf Jack Nicholson as The Joker you wonder why people jest about men with bad toupees but don't scoff at women like this. Still, my disdain doesn't keep me from adopting her theory of communication.

So much for my self-esteem.

Martinique is billed as "The Vegas of the West Indies," with the copyrighted tout "More Breasts than The Dunes," because of the topless beaches. But after about three minutes of that you heartily chortle to yourself, inflicting some minor damage, at all the fuss over "Hooters" restaurants back in "The States", as we call them here.

It also makes you notice there's not a lot of difference between a 63-year-old squat, topless guy and his wife.

But there is no time for philosophy and evolution. A washboard ride awaits aboard a skiff to Rocher du Diamant, a 577-foot hunk of pumice that bulges toward the sky like a cork bulging from a can of pears, not that a can of pears would have a cork, let alone a bulging cork, but similes are as foreign to me as medical incinerators are to Don Quixote.

Hey, that wasn't a bad one, was it?

The history of Rocher du Diamant is a fascinating one. For seven weeks in 1804, the British Empire coveted Martinique after widespread female protests closed that nation's entire chain of Hooter's restaurants. So the Brits ensconced themselves on the rock, which featured stinging coral at the water's edge and an all-girl cabaret band in one of the larger caves.

Then the lead singer quit to sell cosmetics on late-night infomercials, the group disbanded and the British went home to prepare for the World Cup.

Certainly, those easily dissuaded sailors could have used our guide, who cautioned about the coral: "Eeef uuuu touche eet, your leg go pooooof!" as his hands expanded around an imaginary appendage.

"Seex hours lat-ur," he continued, "eet go whooosh," and his hands came together in a simulated return to normalcy. "But eet a veerreee painful seex hours," he emphasized.

The view beneath the surface explodes before the eyes of a snorkeler to reveal vivid menu a la palate, or as we say in Martinique, colors. But no more colorful than the lunch spewed forth by the queasy elderly gentlemen who has joined the 3-mile trek on the potholed water highway to Diamond Rock.

As he dabs his mouth with a handkerchief for a third time and the fin-footed snorkelers return to deck, you ponder wastefulness and don't consider it to be a "faux pas" when you ask the tour guide, "Can I have the old gent's rhum punch? I don't think he wants any." The second is as good as the first, and as you gulp you wonder if any of the larger upchucked particles will attract one of the giant tuna or blue marlin that salty sea anglers covet.

Then, your mind drifts back to the eye-opening lessons of grade school. Just how many years will pass before three-quarters of the earth is covered by the old gent's stomach contents, dilute though they might be by then?

But there is little time to reminisce while on the dangerous, undulating high seas. Surprise lurks with every wave, and the return trip is filled with a big one when our guide suggests we "joust the windsurfers" with the oars he has stored beneath deck. It's not really much sport as the windsurfing vacationers are helpless as baby pandas. Still, a throaty "ugggggh!" followed by that resounding splash is more tempting than another "rhum punch."

Back on the beach, or as they say here, ashore, French folks with stomachs the size of many of your larger sea mammals sun and smoke. As if just one carcinogen isn't enough, they seem to eagerly ask in a mocking, non-rhetorical sense, "How can we incubate tumors more quickly in our bodies?"

Beats me.

At La Bar Planteur, watch out for trade winds that cool the tourists but catch the wooden, upright menus and topple them into expensive aged rhum drinks. The vessels then validate gravity, shattering glass about the pavement.

It's disconcerting in itself, but truly remorseful when one considers he became $40 lighter in the quest for a rhum drink worth consuming, and that obtaining them was another matter entirely. If the French had defended their country against the Nazis with the resolve Martinique waiters defend their right to ignore you, well Ike, Patton and Ridgeway would have needed their art to gain fame. OK, Ridgeway didn't paint, but I hate to waste military trivia that I learned, and it didn't seem like just mentioning Ike and Patton was enough.

And speaking of art, only a pointillist could finely craft a cuisine that bridges that oh-so-hard-to-ford gamut from fish to raw meat. The nice thing about Martinique, though, is in the rare event you hate your succulent meal of octopus or raw duck, local law allows you one crack per meal at killing the chef with a chainsaw, although he gets a 10-meter running start and your odds of hacking him are slim because you're weighed down with a large piece of buzzing cutlery.

But it's great post-meal sport, and you chuckle when you learn it was in Martinique where Tobe Hooper concocted the zany "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." "NOW I get it," you say, chastising yourself for not figuring it out years ago.

Frivolity always ends, as you learned during the Clinton administration, and as our stay on the Isle of Fleurs concludes we recline in the big silver bird in fear that our fond memories may quickly evaporate, as did the 30,000 inhabitants of St. Pierre up the coast in 1902.

Gee, really Mr. Peabody?

Yes, in 1902 Mt. Pelée erupted and made crispy critters of all but two residents of the picturesque Caribbean seaport in less than three minutes, giving birth to the phrase --"

"Oh, no, you don't mean?. . ."

"That's right Sherman: French toast."

 *In reality, the French seem like decent people, based on my experience there. Most of the obnoxious folks in the nation seemed to be American tourists.