adventures in cruising - day five - st. maarten/martin

OK. I'm FINALLY going to post about my most favorite day of our vacation - day five. St. Maarten/Martin was just amazing. The island is the smallest land mass in the world to be shared by two different nations. Sint Maarten is Dutch and owned by the Netherlands. St. Martin is French, owned by France, and is part of Europe. It was so cool to be driving along and see the road signs change languages!!

The four of us rented a car so that we could experience the feel of the island on our own. Our boat docked at 8:00 am and we were off the boat as soon as we could get through the line. We headed for the car rental place and were in our car by about 8:30 or so. And we were off.

Here's B by the rental car.













And here's the view from the rental car parking lot! Seriously!

Jason was our driver and Alicia was the navigator, and Brian and I just got to take in the sights. We started out heading northeast and decided to circle around the island and end up back at the cruise ship dock. The Dutch side was fine and all, but we were really excited to get to the French side!

The first place we stopped was Baie Lucas. It was breathtaking, to say the least! I loved that little boat that was tied up here.



From there we drove north and eventually took a side road that gave us some nice views of Orient Bay. We also saw some fabulous colors of what we think was bougainvillea.
Don't you just wanna live in this quaint little house? I do! :-)
Next we headed to Grand Case, which is known as the gastronomic capital of the Caribbean! (That means it has great restaurants!) Sadly, the restaurants were only open at night and it wasn't even lunchtime yet, so we just strolled around and admired the scenery. By this time, we ALL had to go to the bathroom, and this lady who was cleaning one of the restaurants let us use theirs. It had a European toilet, which I had never seen before - two different flushers! Crazy!

Anyway, this little village sits right along a gorgeous beach (imagine that!) and it's pronounced "Grand Koss." Interesting. We were enamored with the pier and this little fisherman who was fishing off the pier using French Bread! LOL! Here are some pictures of Grand Case, all taken by Jason, since the batteries in my camera were dead at the time.



From Grand Case, we started driving toward Marigot, the French capital, where we planned to eat lunch. Along the way, we saw a sign that pointed to Colombier, where there was a watermelon plantation I had read about. We headed down that road. We never did see the watermelon plantation, but we saw some more amazing scenery! We also saw an emu!!

It was SO COOL! It only had 3 toes! It was behind a fence, but we pulled over to the side of the road and we all took way too many pictures of it! When it raised its neck all the way up, it was taller than we were! I think it started getting angry at us, cause it started grunting! Of course, we are all four animal lovers, so we were talking to it and carrying on. It was fun.

We also saw this cool castle or something on top of the hill that was on the other side of the road from the emu. Back in the car, we took off for Marigot. We were STARVED! When we got there, we found a place to park right by the bay. It was gorgeous! So many boats tied up - I didn't get a very good picture of it, but you get the idea. We wandered along the streets of the city, looking for an authentic place to eat. We finally found a cute little corner cafe that we thought looked good! The lady who owned the cafe came over and talked to us and told us about her fresh fruit juices - we each got a fruit juice drink. I got a pineapple, coconut, and mango juice - it was delicious!

For lunch, Brian had what we think was goat! I tried it and it wasn't bad! He LOVED it! I can't remember what J&A ordered, but I got a ham and cheese croissant, of course! What did you expect? I'm still as picky as ever!!
After lunch, we drifted around the narrow streets of Marigot, enjoying the people and the shops. Brian and I got some caramel gelato that was excellent. Have I said yet how hot it was? Good grief, it was nearly unbearable! The city is densely packed with buildings and there was no breeze! But we were okay with it - we knew our next stop was the beach!





By now, we were driving south down the west side of the island. We really wanted to go to Baie Rouge, a little-known, somewhat secluded beach that was said to be wonderful. It was off on a little peninsula. We drove right past the turn off and didn't even know it, but we soon realized we had passed it, so we turned around. This time we saw the sign for the beach and we realized that you could only see the sign if you were coming back that way! Good thing we turned around!

We found a place to park and entered the beach. There were some people there, but they were spread out and it wasn't really crowded at all. We found a nice place in the sand and set our stuff down. I love laying on the beach, especially when I can enjoy the crystal blue water. It didn't take long for us to get in the water, it was so hot. The water was the perfect temperature, not cold at all, but so refreshing! Jason and Brian snorkeled around the beach. We didn't take any pictures at the beach because we didn't want to get sand in the camera.

We stayed at the beach for probably an hour and a half or so, and then we headed back to the cruise dock to complete our circle of the island. We got stuck in traffic near the airport, and when we finally got moving again we realized that they had lifted a drawbridge and let several boats through! We drove past the airport and by that time, we were back on the Dutch side. Brian took this picture through the car window (I love how you can see the shadows of the clouds on the mountains!):We got stuck in traffic again in Philipsburg, the Dutch capital, and for awhile we thought we were going to miss our boat! (Not that I would have minded...) But we made it back and all was well, and we enjoyed some views as we sailed away from the island.


That night, Brian and I skipped dinner. We were exhausted, so we took a nap and then later we all met for a show. I can't remember what else we did that night, but I'm sure it involved a lot of laughing!

*Disclaimer: Many of these pictures were taken by Jason or Alicia.