In between when I graduated from the Chicago GSB and starting work for John Deere, Erynn and I decided to take some time off and visit friends and family. But six weeks of just friends and family didn't allow enough alone time so we decided to have a little week-long R&R trip to St. Martin in the Caribbean.
We chose St. Martin because it has great weather and beaches, was cheap when we wanted to go, and we'd never been there. The fact that it is the smallest land mass shared by two countries (France and The Netherlands) was also interesting because Erynn could practice her French. The Dutch side is Sint Maarten, and the French side is Saint Martin.
Both sides of the island has an airport, but the Dutch side's runway at Princess Juliana International Airport is the only one long enough for the large, international aircraft. The French side's airport is used for little island hopping planes. They're building a nice, new terminal at Juliana Airport and using Deere equipment to do it. My first job with Deere will is on the Backhoe Loader production line so I snapped the right photo for fun.
The agreement between France and The Netherlands to share the island was reached in 1648. There's a cool monument commemorating the fact on the main road from Marigot, the French-side capital, and Simpson Bay.
We stayed at the Grand Case Beach Club for the entire week. The resort itself was nice with two beaches separated by a point. I was standing on the point when I took this photo to the south. The other beach is to the left of the photo and was a little nicer. The resort is on the northerly edge of Grand Case on the French side of the island. Grand Case is known for the fine gourmet restaurants that line the main road along the beach.
We enjoyed our stay, but had a few odd experiences that would make us not recommend this place to anyone. If you would like to stay in Grand Case, we'd recommend Hotel L'Esplanade, which was right across the street. Some of the things I found odd were: (1) the cleaning staff stole some spare change and receipts one day, (2) their "free" continental breakfast was only bread and anything more cost money, (3) they charged a 50% markup on post card stamps at the front desk, (4) they had a really nice grass tennis court and provided all the equipment for its use except balls that were priced extremely high, (5) the cable went out ALL the time, and (6) the worst thing was the cleaning staff walked in repeatedly even with the "don't disturb" sign outside. One time the cleaning lady walked in to the room holding the "don't disturb" sign in her hand with me in my underwear. There really wasn't an excuse because the sign was in English and French.
Aside from the strange stuff above, the place was beautiful and perfectly located. We had a great time.
The picture on the left shows the northern beach with the Sunset Cafe in the background. After our first "Continental Breakfast" experience we never ate there again. Erynn and I have traveled extensively and a basket with three pieces of bread is not a Continental Breakfast. If they were going to be that cheap, we weren't going to give them any money at all. After returning one day, we caught this pretty sunset.
The room we had was nice with a King-size bed and full kitchenette. There was a little patio with a comfy chair that Erynn used often to read. I think she made it through like eight books on the trip. Just kidding, but we did do a lot of reading.
There's not much to the town of Grand Case except the restaurants and the beach, which is pretty much the same for the rest of the island minus the restaurants. The island is dotted with lagoons that used to be used for evaporating salt water. The photo above is an old salt press in the middle of town. Once the lagoon was dry, workers would dig out the salt, grind it, and ship it to the US.
Grand Case has proper gourmet restaurants. We know because we plunked down a C note a couple times to check it out. L'auberge Gourmande for French and Il Nettuno for Italian were both amazing. However, we ended up preferring some of the local places much better. The picture on the left shows Talk of the Town where they have some great BBQ. In the center of town are these little stands called Lolos, which are own by the people of the town to support local cuisine and jobs. The women at Talk of the Town always had a few ribs on the grill at any time of day, and as a result, the place was always busy. On the right is Le Ti Coin Creole, which was about 200 yards from our hotel. It's owned by Carl and his mother does all the cooking. Need I say more? Plus it's relatively cheap.
Honorable mention goes out to La California, which has pizza reminiscent of Pizza Express (our favorite pizza from Bristol). The Fish Pot also gets props for its lobster display tank. You have to go and see it for yourself, or you can ask me nicely and I'll send it to you.
The island only has one main road that circles it, and there appeared to be frequent buses clogging things up. However, it seemed the only efficient way to get around was by your own car. In fact, I was astonished by the number of cars on the island. For those of you who like the Malibu Rum commercial, it was "total gridlock". To get around ourselves we rented a little Kia Picanto from Value Car Rental. We got the last car they had, and it wasn't cleaned so they gave it to us for $30/day. Score. We usually call our small rental cars "Pepe", but St. Martin has some really big hills. Our little Kia really wasn't up to the task so we decided to give a French women's name: Gigi. So we spent a week in our car with no balls listening to 1300AM, which was a great local station that played reggae, the BBC World News, and had much more local info than the couple other FM stations.
Orient Beach is a gorgeous beach on the French (north) side of the island facing the Atlantic. The sand is white and the Atlantic side has more wave action so I could get my fix of body surfing. Since the island's culture is very European, it is normal to go topless. Orient Beach gets attention from the tourists because the very southern end is reserved for naturists. Therefore, you get the expected numbers of gawkers and the random naked man strolling past as you enjoy a beer with your clothed brethren on the topless only stretch of beach. It's Europe so no one cares, which is really cool in a way. Before, you ask... yes, I did go topless.
Oyster Bay is a pretty little enclave on the western French side of the island.
I have no idea how much these places on Anse Marcel cost, but if I ever hit the lottery I'd want to live here. You know it's THE place to be by the size of the yachts. Plus, the single road over the mountain to get there makes it worth it.
As I just mentioned, there is a harrowing mountain road that takes you to Anse Marcel. At the top of the road you get a great view of Anse Marcel facing west and this one of French Cul De Sac facing east. In the middle of the picture is the tiny Pinel Island, which is a cruise ship tourist magnet. The only thing on the islet is a beach and corresponding bar. I don't know why taking a 5 minute ferry makes the beer taste any better. Plus Orient Beach is just off to the right of the picture and it's free to get there.
The capital of the French side is Marigot. The two things we took advantage of were the fort on top of the hill and the ferry terminal. Other than that, it was a duty free haven. This photo was taken from Fort Louis, which overlooks the town. In the far distance you can see the thin line of land with water behind it. St. Martin is actually pretty cool in that it has a huge sheltered inland lagoon that's a few square miles. The lagoon is surrounded by a thin strip of land that's pretty heavily developed.
Here's Erynn posing by one of the canons at Fort Louis that overlooks Marigot. You can see the big lagoon much clearer in this photo. The picture on the right is a view of the fort from below in Marigot. We arrived in St. Martin on Bastille Day.
Marigot is famous for it's market days. The photo on the left is a monument commemorating the heritage of the female market workers. The right photo shows Erynn in front of the Marigot ferry terminal, which we used to get to the neighboring island of Anguilla.
We initially thought a quick day-trip to Anguilla would be an excuse to get another passport stamp. But we ended up wishing we had chosen Anguilla instead of St. Martin. Anguilla is a British colony 7 miles from St. Martin and is roughly the same size. Both islands act as tax havens, but Anguilla severely restricts work permits and immigration. As a result, St. Martin has about 80,000 people (not including thousands of tourists) while Anguilla only has 12,000 people. The tourist board targets the higher-end of the Caribbean market. The photos show the ferry and port at Blowing Point in Anguilla.
The ferry terminal is miles away from anywhere so we grabbed one of the 64 taxis on the entire island. Luckily we came across Bernard. He was just about the nicest person we've ever met. Based on our experience in St. Martin I was expecting to be taken advantage of because we had no idea what we were doing (Erynn left our info book at O'Hare). We asked Bernard to "take us to the town," and he sort of chuckled. The picture shows the main street of The Valley, which is the closest semblance to a town Anguillans could muster. Anyway, Bernard quoted us a price of $12 and proceeded to take us to town and give us a little tour along the way.
Bernard ended being our de facto driver for the day. He picked us up after lunch and at the end of the day for the trip back to the ferry. He even took us on the little detour without charging extra (there are no meters in the taxis). When finally picked up a little tourist brochure, it had the published taxi rates between various points on the island and Bernard was spot on. He was so nice and we believe it didn't even occur to him to quote a higher price to obviously ignorant interlopers. Therefore, if you ever go to Anguilla, call Bernard on 497-5054 and you'll have a great experience.
Bernard recommended the English Rose for lunch and I had the best fish & chips I've ever had. They were made with fresh Red Snapper and it was amazing. I had to put a picture here because it was that good. Even after almost three years in England I didn't have anything close to this. Unfortunately, Erynn had the stewed Creole chicken, which was good but paled in comparison to my lunch. She was disappointed the rest of the trip. She even tried to make up for it by ordering fish & chips at Talk of the Town in Grand Case a couple days later, but it didn't compare.
The highlight of the trip and the reason we WILL go back (probably in the off-season again) to Anguilla was Shoal Bay East. Bernard dropped us off at Le Bar right on the beach where we had some refreshments. Part of the reason we will go back was because we didn't bring anything to swim or snorkel in. (Remember Erynn forgot the book) Anyway, as you can see the beach was amazingly beautiful and there were like five people on the entire 1.5 mile length of it. Plus, it had a great reef about 100 yards off it that could just swim out to and snorkel all day. The sun was oppressive and I've never been hotter in my life, and there I was without swim trunks to cool off, enjoy the water, or snorkel. The fact that I wasn't in a bad mood once tells you how amazing it was.
Therefore, I was left to sit on my beach chair with no one around listening to the water and re-enacting the Corona commercial.
Philipsburg is a tourist magnet. All of the cruise ships dock about a mile away, and there are a couple miles of jewelry stores all trying to convince people to buy crappy jewelry. From what we saw, all of the good stuff was in Marigot. The island bills itself as the jewelry capital of the Caribbean, which I don't doubt. There is, however, a pretty colonial courthouse in the middle of all this chaos.
Near Philipsburg, and protecting the bay, is Fort Amsterdam. As with most things on the island, you have to pass through a private resort (Divi Little Bay) to get there, but the view of Philipsburg was good. The panorama is of the fort itself, and the other two show the fort overlooking the resort and one of the fort's canons aimed at a cruise ship.
We spent another blissful afternoon on Cupecoy Beach. There's no obvious way to get down to the beach, but we saw another person go through this random gate so we decided to follow. We guessed right. The beach is below a cliff on the southern, Caribbean facing side of the island. They are currently building a high-rise condo directly above the beach so it may not be unspoiled for long. Here you can see the stairs that lead down to the beach from the Cliffhanger Bar and the beach itself. The weather and water were fantastic, but the day we showed up about 20 students from the nearby American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine were demonstrating why they couldn't get into a US-based med school in the first place. Stereotypical American "frat-boy" behavior and prancing about to get the attention of the ladies. Having a good time and completely ignoring those around them.
Within eyeshot of our hotel was one of the better snorkeling spots on St. Martin. However, it's within the nature preserve so you can't just swim or kayak out there yourself. You must go with a guide, which the hotel was willing to provide at $30/person. The weather was a little breezy, which made snorkeling the entire rock difficult but our guide, Damien, tried his best. We appreciated the effort. I had a bit of an issue with the underwater camera so the photo of Damien didn't come out. We had such a good time, I wanted to put it up anyway.
Here's a photo of Damien holding a starfish and Erynn holding some form of sea urchin. The sea urchin was so cool because the soft spines had little suckers on them that would stick to your palm. It was a neat sensation.
© 2005 Doug Rathburn