So much to see; so little time; rum distilleries; beaches

We will be visiting Martinique via cruise ship next March.

There are at least a dozen rum distilleries, way too many to visit unless we come back and spend a week there (not out of the question).

But we'd like to visit a couple or three, if that can be done during shore time.

There are also several wonderful beaches, again reason to focus a whole vacation week on Martinique.

But we'd like to visit at least one really black-sand beach (Le Diamant? Carbet?)

There really aren't any cruiseship excursions that fill our needs, and there are only two of us.

Is the cost (and availability) of renting a taxi to tour some of these places prohibitive?

What about renting a car in Fort de France for the day?

Has anyone done this and would like to comment?

I can't comment on renting a car, we rented one in St. Croix and my husband thought that was enough of a challenge without having to navigate in another language. So we opted to find a taxi driver to take us where we wanted to go. We went to Cruzan rum distillery at the suggestion of our driver, I wanted to go to Clement House. The rate for a taxi is 60 euros per hour, that is the government rate. The private taxis are tough to find, they are all located in a private gated lot off of the cruise ship pier. We were lucky to find one who spoke English. He did also say there should have been many around the town offering to do tours, but after walking through town for three hours we saw none. Martinique is very different from many of the other islands in the S. Caribbean.

It would be possible to get a taxi driver to take you to a distillery and to a black sand beach. We drove by several black sand beaches along our way back to the pier. Possibly you could do 2 distilleries, it would depend on their location.

Is it 60 Euro for the hour up to how many people? Did you see any taxi "vans" that mat be available? Do you remember the name of the company by any chance?

angles the 60 euros price is for the vehicle, so however many people you fit inside could split the fare. We did fit 4 into our car comfortably. I did not see any vans, at the time we finally found the private taxi area and located a driver who spoke English and was willing to take us around, there was only one option- the driver we took. I believe his name is Marc or Marcus, he drives a white Mercedes. I don't remember the name of the company, sorry.

If you don't want to hire a taxi driver, you could walk around the city for a few hours. There are many things to see there and a very easy to read map that they hand out at the pier. There also is a ferry to Trois Ilets that is right off the pier, I think that was $10 per person and took you to the beaches located on that island. There were lots of people from the ship who were doing that.