Saint-Martin / Sint Maarten

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We are on way today to St Maarten now or Sint Maarten as it is also be called. The Island is split in two. One half is Dutch and the other French. Both sides are very different. We are staying on the Dutch side up close and very friendly with the airport runway. American dollars are the currency of choice by the locals on both sides of the island and are widely dispensed out of ATM machines. On the dutch side they also take the Dutch Florin and on the French side they except the Euro (yes the same one they except in Europe).

We have a 11.25 am flight to St Maarten this morning where we will be spending the next 8 days. Again, security is very high at Miami airport today.

Our 2 hour and 25 minute flight on American Airlines went smoothly as normal.

As we have no car booked, on arrival at St Maarten airport, we took one of their local taxis to our accommodation. Think we must have picked the only unhappy person on the island. We showed her our booking for the accommodation, but she had no idea where it was. After consulting with her colleagues, she said she knew where she was going, but it was clear after a while that she knew less than us about where she was heading. She seemed to think it was our fault that we did not know exactly where the place was. We were asked to leave the cab at the end of the road and unload. George ran into the suggested hotel and found out it was the wrong address. The cab driver was very unhappy when we promptly reloaded her taxi with all our baggage and asked her to find the correct hotel.

After a quick call to the owner using two different mobile telephones, we found the correct address and were glad to be rid of our unhelpful driver. The tipping policy for the Caribbean was quickly pushed aside for our own guidelines. She was as unimpressed as we were. She will not get very rich doing this job in that way.

We have booked into White Sands. Not to be confused with White Sands Beach Resort that is at the end of the road.

We are in a small apartment with a patio right next to the runway. This is just how we like it. There are plenty of aircraft of all sizes throughout the day and early evening.

There do not have any large flights moving around at night, so no disturbed sleep here. The KLM jumbo and a large Air France Airbus are the largest planes to use this airport. Both arrive here most days somewhere between 1.00 pm and 2.30pm and leave again for Paris CDG and Amsterdam Schiphol between 2.15 pm and 4.45 pm. The last big plane to leave here most days of the week is at about 9.15 pm. The runway here at SXM is shorter than the norm so there is a lot of noise when they slow down after landing. SXM airport features as one of the ten most dangerous airport approaches in the world. There is no electronic guidance to help the pilots land the planes. There is a glide slope but the pilots have to find it for themselves and land it manually. The only things pilots do have to help them land are some red and green lights on the ground level on the runway just inside the perimeter fences. The last aircraft accident here was apparently in the 1990’s when the wheels of an Air France plane clipped the top of the runway fence. The airport is undergoing change. Currently, most planes come in over the heads of beachgoers onto the runway. When planes take off, because of the short runway, the planes normally reverse up to the airport fence and take off towards the mountain ranges in front of them. This provides them with the maximum take-off distance and flap lift. All the brakes are applied whilst the captain fires up all engines to maximum thrust. It gets very noisy. The brakes are then released and the plane takes off with maximum forward thrust to help it clear the mountains ahead. The forward thrust is notorious for blowing people off who were clinging onto the airport fence, down over the sand into the Caribbean, along with any beach furniture on the sand. Within a few minutes, the beach is tidied up and you would never know it had just occurred. We spend hours watching the planes here.

Took a stroll in the evening to have a quick look at the beach by the runway, and then ended up in a Spanish restaurant for dinner. Felt like home with the Spanish music playing.

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