ABOVE: Club Orient and Orient Beach
BELOW: Fort Louis above Marigot
Click the SHOW link at left for slides with descriptions.
And be sure to read the text below for some extra comments from the trip, and afterthoughts!
After landing Sunday afternoon, we rented our car and came straight to the resort. While we planned to make today a total rest day, we decided too much sun the first day might not be so good. So we took a quick trip to Phillipsburg, on the Dutch side, and saw the town. Not much to do but shop, so other than grabbing some of the local Rum drink made with a berry that is supposed to only grow here. We have not tried any yet, so we can't yet say if it is any good. Anyway, the first few shots are from Phillipsburg. We hope you enjoy them.
Boarded the Tico Tico, a catamaran in the 40 foot range (never did get the exact length), with 3 other couples, one single man, and a crew of two. The Captain. Phillipe, a 40 something Frenchman (but he was nice, did not swill wine and eat cheese all day, so he did not live up to the American stereotype of a Frenchman!) was very helpful and efficient, and turned out to be a pretty good chef. OK, so he lived up to PART of the stereotype. His assistant was Melanie (not sure of the spelling, but after only thirty or forty tries we finally got the pronunciation down. Mel un NEE, likes the knights who say "NEE" of Python fame!
That day was a blast, even if the cruise ships did send over a couple of boatloads of gawkers. Cruise ship people never stay long, and are docile and easily herded onto and off of the beach. The other couples were all very nice, and one of them, from Victoria, BC, Canada, were not only nearly neighbors back home, but turned out to be our actual neighbors here in the resort.
One of the couples was from a "textile" resort further down the beach, just experimenting. Very nice but the man was a bit more of a drinker than our taste, but we think that was just the way he was dealing with being a bit insecure.
MelaNEE was a sweetheart. mid twenties with a two year old daughter, Luna, at home with her nannie, and a very jealous boyfriend awaiting her safe return. Jealous?? Can't imagine why?!?
Having let myself get a bit too carefree with re applying my sun screen as the day went on Tuesday. I found myself a bit tender around the neck and shoulders on Wednesday.
Time to do some sightseeing WITH clothes on! So we headed into Marigot, the largest town on the French side (which is how the signs say it as you cross from the Dutch side, "Welcome to the French Side!") The big two on our list for this area were Fort Louis and Pic Paradis.
Fort Louis is on a high hill right in Marigot, and is the principle reason the majority of the Island stayed french. It is not a major fort at all, but you could hit anything around with cannon from it, and the hill was steep enough to be a fortress without adding much in the way of walls. I've not seen many locations that were more suited for their purpose.
The idea of going to Pic Paradis (Paradise Peak) was for the panoramic view. It was a nice view, but the point to which we could find our way was not at the highest point, as that was a bit further up, with no apparent trail, and occupied by fenced in Radio Towers. I don't doubt the accounts of those that had written of reaching the top, but even one person leaving said he had been there before and was able to see more than now. I don't know if we just did not find the right road (though this one was labeled there could have been others we did not find) or if it gets so little traffic it has had the trail grow under, or what. But the road up was a trip in itself (see the slides) and the view, while not panoramic, was pretty awesome.
We finished up with a late afternoon walk out to the rocky point to the Northeast of the beach. It is where the waves really break, and provides almost all of the sound effects for the resort. It is a continuous roar in the background, and it is strangely soothing in it's evenness.
Lizzard (pronounced le ZARD), my buddy now following you on this page was shot coming back down the hill from Fort Louis. While he is not any different from the other hundreds of such lizards we've seen here in looks, he is so far unique in personality. That is in that he stayed put right up to the point where he was about to crawl onto my hand, before Rita's sudden arrival spooked him. The rest have run before I could get within 10 feet of them. Thus, Lizzard is the new St Martin page mascot, and will follow you as he followed my finger!
The day started quite cloudy. It had rained on Wednesday night. Actually it rained in the middle of the nights, most nights. But Wednesday was more, starting early in the evening, and Thursday looked much more like it could start again. It was quite windy as well.
We opted for an early start to beat traffic, which had been horrible the day before, and headed over to check out some other beaches I had read about. First we stopped at Maho Beach, at the end of the run way of Princess Juliana International Airport (Our point of arrival on Sunday, and soon to be our point of departure). The beach is separated from the runway by a narrow two lane road and a chain link fence. We weren't there during any landings, but witnessed a couple of takeoffs. They were flying from where we were out the other way. None of them were jets, but one large turbo prop nearly put Rita off her feet with it's blast.
Unfortunately, that was when my batteries died. Hopefully Saturday, before we fly out, we will get lucky and see one of the big ones land. I've seen pictures and think it would have to be an impressive event to stand just tens of feet below a landing 747.
From there we went on to the North end of Cupecoy Beach, said to be n-dist also. Just a beach, no resort. The section of this beach for those who want to enjoy the sun sans everything, was small, already becoming crowded, and there was very little sand, mostly rocky shore. There were vendors renting beach chairs, and selling nick nacks, and it had no appeal to us at all, as we had a much nicer one back at Club Orient. There were probably less gawkers at Cupecoy, as is both less famous and harder to get to, but we are used to them by now, and find them mostly humorous. I mean if you are bothered, stay away. If you are curious, join in or at least strike up a conversation. But the, "I can't believe my eyes, there are nak_d people everywhere!" look on many of the faces is hilarious.
So we returned, tired from the drive, to our refuge. It is supposed to be an incredibly small island, but it seems a long way across as there are only a handful of passing points and it is just one road to go almost everywhere. We had thought to go to the Butterfly farm next door to the resort later in the afternoon. But we got lazy and just read (and I worked on this a bit) in the yard of our bungalow. With a couple of walks on the beach to break it up.
Hopefully the Butterfly Farm will make it onto tomorrow's agenda.
We did, indeed, make it to the farm. We spent our last day doing some more sight seeing and the big event of the day was the Butterflies. We also had dinner with the nice Canadians we met on the cruise. And, lucky us, we ran into them on the beach and got them to shoot pictures of us in front of the famous Orient Beach sign. Of course, most of you won't be seeing THAT one!
Seriously, it was a great day, and we were not really ready to head back to work. But, that is the way life is right now. We spent the evening packing up.
We went early to the airport so we could spend some time on Maho Beach with the planes. You can see a couple of the shots from there at the end of the slideshow. The rest of the Saturday was the flight to Atlanta, where our friends Adam and Brenda picked us up and hosted us until our flight out on Sunday.
All in all this was a great trip. We didn't like the resort as much as we did the Sorobon on Bonaire. But that was mostly due to Orient Beach not being private. However, the day trip to Tintamarre Island on the Tico Tico was much more quiet. And we did meet some very nice people on this trip.
All in all it was another great time in the Caribbean!!