St. Maarten is the smallest island that is occupied by 2 countries - France and the Netherlands. The border is completely open and you can drive around the whole island on the main road that circles the island.
Oh, where to start with St. Maarten, I guess it was very "interesting". It was our most stressful and least favorite stop, and it didn't help that it was a gray dreary day.
When you got off the ship you took a water taxi over to the coast where, as soon as you went through a gate, you were surrounded by people trying to get you to rent their beach paraphernalia. "Hey, I'm Mr. Nice, when your ready for some beach chairs you come to me. I give you two beach chairs and two drinks and an 'umbrelly' for only $20." Two steps later, "Rent a beach chair from me today and I give you two beach chairs, two drinks and a magazine for only $15." If you went down the beach away from those entrepreneurs hawking their wares, the beaches were sprinkled with dog poop and when I say sprinkled, I mean sprinkled like a kid decorating sugar cookies if you let them shake the sprinkles themselves. This was not exactly what we had in mind.
There are some pretty sites to see in St. Maarten, but unfortunately we didn't get to see too many. They all must have been on the French side - which we didn't get to see.
Right before taking the water taxis to the island, we noticed the little guy these folks were toting around with them and thought we just may have something in common with these people:) I guess they were hauling Brutus to each stop for various photo ops.
We finally gave up on the port beach and decided to try to go to the beach we heard about that is close to the airport where the planes fly directly overhead to land no more than 100 yards away, so we began our adventure to get there.
After almost deciding to spend $40 renting a car or getting a taxi, we talked to a local who told us about the "buses." Now, bus is what the St. Maartenites call them, we here in the US call them "early-model-import-minivans-salvaged-from-the-junkyard." For only $2.50 each way per person, we got to experience real life bumper cars though by some miracle, there was no "bumping." We also learned that a honk can mean anything from an expletive to a friendly greeting, even though they all sounded the same and there were plenty of them. The only difference was how close our driver was to hitting the car(or person) he was honking at. Upon arrival at the beach, we pried our fingers out of the seats, thanked the driver we weren't harmed in the 5 mile trip and went to the beach to wait for a plane to fly over. This happened several times, though most were prop planes, we did get to experience a passenger jet (Boeing 717).
We didn't see any flying people or dead bodies. This sign is redundantly relaying an iterating message repeatedly.
Barely made the field goal!
You could almost see the people through the windows!
A shaky video to demonstrate.
Playing with our camera in the ocean.
Can you see the loch phalangess monster?
Getting out of there!
Back on the ship in time for tea - again!
And our 4th towel animal - I think it was a Toweling Feist.
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