This was our 4th trip to the island.

We were there April 23 2006 thru May 2nd 2006.

Our flights there

Kansas City to SXM included an extra night in Dallas and routed thru Miami the next morning and then directly to St Maarten.

All flights down were good.

The inbound flight schedule allowed us to be on island with car keys in hand by 2:30 PM. Checked in, unpacked and went to the grocery store. We were back in time to watch the sunset.

We have learned from our trips to the island that the sunset is the one and only event we plan for and consistently stay on task with. All other plans we make are a guideline or wish list.

There is just something about an island sunset that can only be experienced.

Car Rental

We rented our car from Alain at AAA rental for the third time and will continue to use his services. Alain’s email is triplea@outremer.com He is very easy to work with and has never disappointed us with our rental. We have twice extended our days of need and he has had no issues with it even though on both occasions it was last minute.

Our car was a new corolla with about 6K miles. Seems as if they have gone away from white with the new cars and the new in color for the corolla is gold!

Our Stay

We stayed all 10 days at the Flamingo Beach Resort.

(We are timeshare owners there)

This was an anniversary trip (our 23rd) so I worked with the resort staff ahead of time to get a tropical flower basket left in the room for my wife and the staff came thru with a nice arrangement and decorated the room as well. Nice touch and thank you Brigitte!!

The room was great, we stayed in building #4 in a top floor room which provided us with a rooftop access. It is a nicely finished area with a grill, Jacuzzi and lounge chairs that provided a breath-taking view of both Simpson Bay and Saba.

Dining Out

With kids in college and our previous visit being in November (just 5 short months ago), we felt we needed to be a bit more frugal, so the dining budget was where we chose to do the trimming. We successfully did this by using the full kitchen provided in our room. We stopped by Grand Marche and stocked up. The store is comparable to shopping at home and had everything we are used to as well as lots of International specialties too.

Stopped by Zee Best every day except the two we went to Orient.

Had croissants (chocolate were our favorites) and juice along with a double espresso for me each morning! We purchased several croissants to use for lunchtime. Made for great ham and cheese sandwiches at the beach, throw in a Carib or two and some Ting and we had quite a meal.

Zee Best is just off of Billy Foley road which is where the Flamingo is located so it was very convenient to stop on our way to the beach de’ jour!

Anniversary meal

I made surprise reservations for the two of us to have dinner served on the beach at Mary’s Boon. (Simpson Bay) www.marysboon.com/ They do this for one group an evening weather permitting and only with advance reservations. They set you up on the beach just as if you were in the restaurant with the white table cloth and the works.

The bar at Mary’s Boon is an honor bar, you fix your own drink and just let them know when leaving how many you had and they add it to your bill. The drinks were charged at a flat and fair price.

The restaurant has a set menu for each evening (listed on their website). Both of our meals, Lobster Creole and Chicken Cordon Bleu, were outstanding and the service was absolutely delightful. Again we were the only people on the beach, the stars shone bright and you can see boats that are lit up anchored in the bay, WOW is about the best description I can give!

Peg Leg Pub Shawn was there (that to us is the most important part of visiting Peg Leg) The food was outstanding as always and the wait staff seemed a bit more attentive than in November. We had a Filet and Pasta primavera. They were out of the brand of rum that I am accustomed to drinking (they had it in November) but the barkeep took me behind the bar and let me choose from their selections. I picked a bottle from Antigua but don’t remember the name. It was a suitable substitute. She told me not to worry that would be my bottle for the evening. I took full advantage of that and put a healthy dent in the bottle! They always pour doubles! Good thing my wife isn’t concerned with driving on the island or we would have been at Peg Leg all night!

Baywatch This is where we eat lunch when on Orient, I love the grouper sandwich. Andy was there but Cheryl was on the mainland visiting with her ill mother. Andy was quite cordial but very busy and starting to show the ware of not having Cheryl there for a few weeks.

Danny’s Grill on Cupecoy Great ribs, rival any we have tasted from the lolo’s and for $7 a plate the best money we spent on a meal on island. Danny took our order when we got there around 9AM and brought our meal to us around noon. Danny takes care of his customers well, checking up on you every once in a while to see if you need anything. We didn’t have to get our of our chairs all day except to take a dip and cool off.

Ramblings…

For most of the meals we ate in our room or brought sandwiches to the beach with a couple of bottles of beer and plenty of water. We packed a small collapsible cooler with us for just this reason. Each evening we would sit on the rooftop and have cheese, crackers and fruit with a nice bottle of wine and watched the sunsets. We spent less than $150 at the grocery store and other than water and Ting (my second island drink of choice, rum being the first) got everything we needed on the first day.

I know that there are numerous gourmet places to eat and we go back each year for our anniversary so we will slowly visit many of them but we have our favorites that are not gourmet but very good like Peg Leg and Baywatch that we insist on visiting each time.

We tend to choose to spend our money in other areas than restaurants. Have a nice collection of fine liquors that can be purchased way below state side prices and some fine jewelry as well. I seem to be developing a Swiss watch fetish that is easy to feed in St Maarten

TTOL Party April 25th

For those that may be reading this that don’t know what TTOL is…let me spend a few seconds and educate you… TTOL is short for TravelTalkOnline.. http://www.traveltalkonline.com/ This website is full of great information covering any topic you want to know about St Maarten and the Caribbean as well as some you may want to skip over! Just register and ask. The folks online are a limitless resource and you will find they respond quickly with great info.

There was a nice sized turnout at the Buccaneer Beach Bar. We met famous and or infamous TTOL folks such as Contessa and moderator Bob as well as Neal.

Was a nice party and Neal provided interesting drinks…shots (mudslides) from a toilet on the bar. Lots of photo ops taken there!!!

Hit it off with a couple from the Denver area and day-tripped to Anguilla with them later in the week.

Traffic

Not too bad at all, we avoided the draw bridge during it’s scheduled raising and we were surprised that the traffic was much liter than in November. We also found a way to avoid the intersection at the bottom of Cole Bay hill, that saved us some time and eased my tension level. Driving in St Maarten isn’t bad at all just remember it isn’t the states and a toot of the horn is a thank you or merge in front of me. They do drive a bit more aggressive than where we are from but it doesn’t take us long to adapt. I use the mantra…traffic on vacation is much better than traffic on my way to work!

Beaches

We visited Orient, Plum and Cupecoy.

We had not been to either Plum or Cupecoy before.

Orient

What can you say? Orient is Orient!

We got there early and spent the entire day on two different occasions.

Parked ourselves at Le String, located next door to KonTiki. Part of the criteria for our choice was a clean bathroom and reasonable price. Le String had two free drinks with the rental of two chairs and an umbrella. The price was the same or less than most of the other vendors and with free drinks a decent deal.

There had been questions asked on TTOL about walking the beach in the nude.

We saw a few morning walkers that were nude but not very many and then the repeat in the afternoon but during the busy part of the day most wore some kind of wrap or bottoms. There were also a few folks at Coco beach in the area next to the hill that were au natural but we chose to spend our days in the middle of the beach and didn’t participate in the bottomless activities. One of the days we were on Orient was a Sunday and it was not any more or less crowded than the middle of the week. I don't remember if there was a ship in port or not on Sunday.

Plum Baie

Was very nice and generally quiet but this beach has been discovered. Eahd day the end of the beach by the parking lot would become a bit crowded but if you walked to the South by all the villas there was lots of open quiet beach.

This is a nice beach for pictures but you would either have to arrive early or be willing to walk away from all of the people. I must say that the sand on Plum was blistering hot. Did not experience sand this hot at any of the other beaches but it was heated enough that we had to wear sandals coming and going and to want to warn others.

We tried to visit it again on the weekend but the parking lot was packed so we chose another beach.

Cupecoy

We went early one day to take some pictures of the beach before folks got there. Danny was there and gave us the $0.10 tour. He walked with us to all 3 beaches and pointed out where the caves were. He even warned us of the lurkers but shared that he tries to run them off before they become too self involved….

After the tour and a few pix of the cliffs we decided to stay. When in Rome!

We had never fully participated in the completely optional part of clothing optional but as of that day we have. It was an experience that after the first ten minutes was absolutely no different than being on a fully clothed beach. We loved Cupecoy the beach was awesome and the people were very friendly. We returned a second day, one of the couples that we had seen on our previous visit came up and asked us where we had been. There seems to be a lot of loyalty to this beach with the same people returning to the same spots daily. During our second visit the surf was up. The high surf made for some great pictures of the waves breaking on the rocks at the edge of the beach and shooting 10-15 feet in the air. The down side to that is that it kept you from getting too far in to the water to cool off.

We will definitely return to this beach even with the new wall.(and it does look terrible)

It was a great place to spend the day.

Touristy Stuff

We try to do something new each time, this year it was fort Saint Louis in Marigot. It isn’t real easy to find but we did find it. Directions are pretty simple..Look for the signs for the Marigot hospital and head that way. You can park just below the hospital but it is a hike to the fort.

We took a hike to the fort to get some pix of the marina. Well worth while but go with a group. Guess age and weight is catching up with me because I was a bit out of breath!

We made the trip mid-day and I figured we would be safe as this was on a business day, figuring that most non tourists were at work and kids in school.

My bad…..Danger Will Robinson Danger!!

We entered the fort and were walking over to one of the cannons to take a picture of the marina area when two young locals appeared from the rock ledge above the entrance. One headed to the only entrance/exit and was acting as a lookout while the other young man was headed for us.

As he got closer my wife noticed another tourist that had been out of their line of vision and pointed to him. The young man looked up at the other tourist and seemed to decide to move on to plan b and went to chat with his friend the lookout.

As they were chatting several more tourists decided to visit the fort and it got busy so the two “gents” went down to the hospital area below and hung out.

I don’t feel as if they would have hurt us as long as we would have cooperated and we would have) they were probably just after any cash and jewelry we would have had with us. Have to say there wasn’t much cash but there was some sentimental jewelry and a nice watch that they would have made off with.

Needless to say we didn’t stay long.

No, nothing happened but I am not a rube that has just fallen from the turnip truck either. We were lucky.

While in Marigot we also went to the open air market, while strolling from kiosk to kiosk we noticed that all the wraps and knick-knacks had a Rima’s label sewn or stuck on them and were marked up significantly from the prices at Rima’s. A trip to Philipsburg was now in the works. Mary made drapes for our guest rooms out of these wraps. They make unique curtains and go with tropical theme, we are from the center of the country and have to escape any way we can so have lots of tropical reminders thru out the house. We did however buy a watercolor painting from one of the local artists.

Day Trip to Anguilla

Flights Home

We left the island on American Eagle for San Juan. The rest of the trip was San Juan to Chicago and Chicago to Kansas City.

We cleared customs and immigrations in San Juan in believe it or not less than 15 minutes. It truly took us longer to walk to immigrations than to clear the area and get back in the line for security back into the main concourse.

The customs agent asked if we had anything to declare and we were honest and said yes. He asked what we had to declare and we said in unison rum! We had a bit more than our allowed quantity but he was good with that. He smiled, chuckled and said “Have a good day” then waved us on thru and we were off to security.

There are several nice things about doing carry on only. One is we don’t over pack and the second was while all the others were searching for their bags on the carousel in the customs area we walked directly to the agent and were on our way!

All flights home were smooth and we even caught a break in Chicago, we were scheduled for a several hour lay over but since our flight got in on time and there was an issue in Chicago that closed one of their runways for several hours earlier in the day, flights were backed up a bit. There was a flight leaving in about 45 minutes (was almost 2 hours late) went to the counter and asked if there was any way that we could go standby for the flight. Answer was an amazing yes! We got back to KS about 3 hours early! We are sad to say that we are back at work and saving for our return to the island.

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