view of the cruise dock from the bottom of the zip line
After finishing an early morning zipline excursion in Saint Martin on our visit there on Royal Caribbean Wonder of the Seas, we had time to do something else since the ship stayed in port most of the day. The taxi stand had several tours of varying lengths, of which the per person price dropped with the addition of more people. We tagged along with 6 people from P&O Britannia, which was the other ship in port that day. They were on a 14-day cruise out of Barbados.
tour van and driver
The van was pretty spacious with a separate seat for each of the 4 couples. At capacity it could have held 15, but their tour prices only went up to 8 so they are apparently not intent on crowding people in, which makes for a nicer tour.
entering France (we were actually leaving, but the signs were for traffic going the other way)
Saint Martin has a Dutch side where the cruise docks and airport are, and a French side which is larger. Back in history both sides had salt ponds where they harvested salt and they also grew crops. Now the economy mainly depends on tourism. Although each side belongs to a different country people pass freely from one side to the other with just signs at the side of the road to indicate where one country ends and the other begins. There’s no formal border crossing.
map of Saint Martin
The van driver talked a bit about island history, putting a different spin on the story of the Dutchman and Frenchman starting at the same point and walking around the island in opposite directions until they met up again, drawing the boundary between the points where they started and finished. On an island with a total of 37 square miles the French side has 21 and the Dutch side 16. This driver said that the reason the French side is bigger is because the Frenchman swapped out the Dutchman’s water for rum so the more rum he drank the more breaks he took while the Frenchman walked along nonstop, giving that country the largest portion of the island. We’ve heard the story of dividing the boundaries that way before, but not the bit about the rum. With both the cruise port and airport in modern days the Dutch got the more lucrative side even if it is smaller. The Dutch spell the island Sint Maarten, and the French Saint Martin.
lots of iguanas
The van headed over to the French side, some of which was still recovering from hurricane damage. Most places looked fine, but some had damage or were surrounded in debris. We took a brief stop for a view of a bay where people sometimes go with their yachts. Next he stopped at a small roadside stand. They had t-shirts and other touristy stuff for sale, but their big draw was the iguana wrangler. One of the people working there provided food and water for local wild iguanas and there were a lot of them taking advantage of the easy meal. Also a bunch of small lizards like skinks or geckos. Besides the herd of iguanas next to his booth, there were more hanging out in the nearby bushes along the shore of a lake. They probably made more money each day in the iguana wrangler’s tip jar than they did selling tourist trinkets.
parasailers at Orient Beach
Next we went to Orient Beach, which the driver said was partly clothing required and partly one of the French side’s famous nude beaches. Everyone had their clothes on in the area where we parked. If someone was staying at that beach long enough to have time for it they could rent personal watercraft, go parasailing, or ride around on big blow-up things towed by a boat. We were not there long enough to take advantage of any of those things other than to take photos of other people enjoying them – and to realize it’s been a long time since we’ve been parasailing. I’d love to go again sometime, but it’s been awhile since we’ve seen it offered anywhere where we’ve been staying long enough to do it.
little bar at Orient Beach
We could see kiteboarders and windsurfers farther down the beach in the distance, but there weren’t any where we were. There were lots of beach umbrellas and a little beach bar where 2 drinks cost just a few more dollars than the price of one drink on the ship.
small jet at Maho Beach
We saw lots of island scenery on the drive. A shopping stop in the French capital of Marigot was on the agenda, but when we got there all the parking was full so we just drove through and didn’t stop. The last stop was Maho Beach where people go for plane spotting.
Where’s the beach?
Maho Beach was quite different than it had been the last time we were there. Last time it was a big beach with a tiny beach bar and a surfboard standing out on the beach with the times large airplanes were expected to fly overhead. This time it was a tiny beach with a huge bar and lots of other shops.
plane schedule for the day
There was still a surfboard listing airplane times, but it’s inside the bar now. A hurricane had gone through the Caribbean and into Florida just a few days before our cruise started. On the way to Maho Beach our driver said the storm had taken all the sand away and he wasn’t kidding. Where much of the beach had been there were just large rocks piled up next to the road and then water. The large rocks are probably there to keep the road from washing away in a storm. There was also double fencing along the airport to keep people from getting all the way up to what used to be the only fence where crazy people would stand to get blown to the beach by departing jets despite signs warning they might get killed or injured doing that.
there’s even a pool in the shopping complex now
Last time we were there people were all in beach chairs waiting for the arriving jets to get the close-up of the underside of an airplane photos and videos, but this time there was no beach under the airplane’s path, just rocks and water. We had just a short time there on the tour, but did see one jet fly in. Not the giant KLM plane that is the highlight of that beach, but not the smallest of planes that lands there either. Our driver did say that the sand will come back and there will be a beach there again.
kayak by the water behind the iguana wrangler’s stand
Following our visit to Maho Beach, the taxi brought us back to the cruise port. We saw more of the island this time than on any previous trips. We did not stop in Phillipsburg or drive through the main part of town where tourists go, but from the outskirts where we went it looked like there was construction going on to repair things from a previous hurricane. On our last port stop there the town looked pretty bedraggled from hurricane damage followed by no tourist dollars to provide income to fix anything through covid, but after having ships there again for awhile by now it has had some time to recover. The tour guide did not mention anything about any new damage in Phillipsburg from the storm that passed through just before our visit.
Cruise Stories 