{"id":3775,"date":"2014-04-07T07:36:11","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T11:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/?p=3775"},"modified":"2014-04-07T13:03:48","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T17:03:48","slug":"st-martin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/?p=3775","title":{"rendered":"St. Martin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note:\u00a0 We have been to Antigua for a few weeks and are now back in St. Martin.\u00a0 Internet connections are often slow or non-existant so blog posts are difficult to upload.\u00a0 We will continue to write posts and upload when we can. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This and the last post are just catching up and will write about Antigua and Barbuda soon.<\/em><\/p>\n

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According to our “Lonely Planet Caribbean Islands” travel guide, there are over 7000 islands making up the Caribbean (only 10% inhabited).\u00a0 Although the islands share geography, these islands vary so much in history, government and culture.\u00a0 St. Martin is a good example of that diversity given that part of the island is French and the other Dutch.<\/p>\n

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The guide book explains that like many of the islands, St. Martin was populated for thousands of years by the Arawaks and later the Caribs. Christopher Columbus named the island having sailed passed it on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours in 1493. The Dutch were the first Europeans to actually settle here followed by the French. \u00a0 Apparently after some fighting they decided to partition the island.\u00a0 Today the island is independent however there remain\u00a0 ties to the Netherlands and France.<\/p>\n

As with many of the islands, plantations were established and operated using African slaves.\u00a0 Abolition of slavery in the mid 1800’s brought an end to the plantation days and things were quiet for many years until WWII brought attention and people to the islands. \u00a0 Tourism is the largest industry on most islands these days.\u00a0 Large runways built by the US navy paved the way to bring in tourists.\u00a0 Planes and cruise ships bring the bulk of visitors.\u00a0 Then, of course, there are those of us who arrive by private boats.<\/p>\n

\"SaintUpon arrival you can choose to enter either the French or Dutch side, clearing in differs between the two and we choose the Dutch side.\u00a0 On land you are free to move around without any complication but by boat it is necessary to be cleared in to the appropriate country based on where you are anchored.\u00a0 Weather while we were in St. Martin was not good for some of the other anchorages so we kept the boat anchored in Simpson Lagoon and did a bit of exploring by land.<\/p>\n

It was clear to us early on that we are a long way from home.\u00a0 We are seeing far fewer American flagged boats and hearing more accents and languages on the radio.\u00a0 The morning radio net is operated by a Dutch man whose accent and expressions are quite familiar to thanks to our Dutch friend Monique.\u00a0 English seems to be spoken by most travelers and locals although there is plenty of French spoken and written on the French side of the island.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN0143\"<\/a>As mentioned previously we have reconnected with some of our American friends from Luperon.\u00a0 We would meet up each evening at Barnacles, a nearby bar with free Internet.\u00a0 Since the connection is slow we all have tablets and computers on the table trying to download emails of check Facebook.\u00a0 Everyone seems to understand as people fade in and out of conversations based on what their computer is doing at the moment.<\/p>\n

The Dutch side provides all sorts of boating and provisioning resources while the French are more focused on caf\u00e9s and restaurants.\u00a0 Our first day was spent visiting the Dutch side picking up things that we needed and the second day we went by dinghy across to Marigot on the French side.\u00a0 It is a beautiful town and we stopped at a cafe for a coke and an Internet fix then headed up to Fort Louis for a view from the top.\u00a0 We were bummed that we had eaten lunch on the boat since there were inviting caf\u00e9s everywhere.\u00a0 After a few hours of exploration we did sit down for a cheese plate and glass of wine before heading back.<\/p>\n

\"\"We spent one day with our cruising friends and walked over to Maho Beach<\/a> which is at the end of the runway.\u00a0 Crazy tourists (Mary included) hang on to the fence as the planes run up their engines preparing for take off on a short runway. Hats, sunglasses, sand and all sorts of things fly off from their exhaust.\u00a0 Arriving planes come in so low over the beach it feels like they are just above your head.\u00a0 There happened to be a few cruise ships on the island that day so it was very crowded which made it an even crazier experience.<\/p>\n

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\"Posted <\/a>
Posted at end of runway <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Plane <\/a>
Plane landing at Princess Julianna Airport <\/div> <\/div>
\"Crazy <\/a>
Crazy tourists, Princess Julianna Airport <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Crazy <\/a>
Crazy tourists, Princess Julianna Airport <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Landing <\/a>
Landing at Princess Julianna Airport <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Crazy <\/a>
Crazy tourists <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"DSCN3287\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"OLYMPUS <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Landing <\/a>
Landing at Princess Julianna Airport <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Crazy <\/a>
Crazy tourists <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Given the weather conditions that made other anchorages bad a bad choice we rented a car one day and explored a bit of the island.\u00a0 Grand Case<\/a> is a nice little French town with a beautiful beach.\u00a0 We had an amazing Lobster and Shrimp salad at Le Tastevin<\/a>.\u00a0 It an extravagant lunch which we enjoyed a great deal.\u00a0 From there we moved on to Anse Marcel<\/a> both to explore and see a catamaran we hoped to visit.\u00a0 The visit didn’t pan out but we enjoyed seeing the area.\u00a0 Next stop Orient Beach where we hung out for a bit before heading back to Simpson Bay and the boat.\u00a0 Orient was quite crowded and is the place for both topless and nude sunbathing, neither of which we participated in.<\/p>\n

We did take some pictures during our road trip but must have dropped the camera somewhere along the way, none at Orient beach.<\/p>\n

The weather forecast was quite good for a passage to Antigua and we are expecting visitors there in a few weeks so we made the decision to go a bit earlier than we had planned.\u00a0 It can be tough to make dates as we learned in January and we do like little stress in our lives therefore took the weather window and enjoyed a beautiful moonlit sail from St. Martin to Antigua where there’s lots to see before Joel and Lisa arrive.<\/p>\n

Until next time….<\/p>\n

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Note:\u00a0 We have been to Antigua for a few weeks and are now back in St. Martin.\u00a0 Internet connections are often slow or non-existant so blog posts are difficult to upload.\u00a0 We will continue to write posts and upload when … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2y1a7-YT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3775"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3848,"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3775\/revisions\/3848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svecho.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}