St Maartin

Sint Maartin ............ The Dutch half of what is quite often called St Martin.

There were 4 cruise liners in port today – that means about 12,000 people descending on the place. That is a lot......
Not as many as a few days ago when there were apparently 7 ships in!

The 4 of us all had a relaxing waiter service breakfast before joining the madding crowd. We walked into town rather than getting a cab or a water taxi and then walked the length of the boardwalk (which is now paved rather than board) before setting up camp on the beach (very quiet that far out).

It was kind of overcast so instead of lying on the beach (which I hate) I spent the entire time turning myself into a prune in the sea (which is where I took this shot from using SWMBO's waterproof camera).

For a change we partook of lunch – in a very nice place called The Blue Bitch which had a band playing across the boardwalk. They were very good –and funny, making up rap songs about the people passing and getting the women (generally) to join in .... mainly with the leaders dirty dancing.
After that SWMBO and I split from A & L – we went to hit a couple of shops (SWMBO to get the free pendants on offer from a couple of jewellery shops and me to get a polariser for my big lens – very cheap) while the others headed back to the ship ..... or not as it turned out. They met the Scousers from the other day and settled into a bar for the afternoon. SWMBO and got a taxi and headed for the French side of the island.

That was a short stay!

There was very little there, apart from a market which was shutting down and a demand for Euros (although they would take US dollars (like the Dutch side) but with an exchange rate that made you feel the pirates were alive and well and living in Marigot.

So we negotiated a price and got in a cab to head back to the ship and very quickly got caught in a massive traffic jam. The driver then turned round and actually went all round the island to get us back. We thought that was very good of him because it meant we got to see much more than we expected (he knew we had the time).

He got a reasonable tip.