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Published: January 30th 2007
This was my second trip to visit Sarah in St. Maarten in two months so I'm not posting too many St. Maarten pics. We did, however, fly to a couple of neighbouring islands so it was still a new experience.
We flew to the French Island of
St. Barts (Saint Barthelemy) for a day so that Sarah could re-enter St. Maarten on her Dutch passport and save the school from paying for her work visa. The school paid for her flight so it was pretty easy to say yes. We flew to St. Barts in a 19-seat DHC Twin-Otter which is a little smaller than I would prefer. Sarah had warned me about the notorious landings at the St. Barts airport so I took my gravol before the flight but still got pretty nauseous from the rough landing. The pilots seemed to really enjoy flying to St. Barts but I don't plan on doing it again. I wanted to rent a scooter but we decided to sit on the beach for a while until the nausea passed. Then we took a short taxi ride to the capital of Gustavia and rented a scooter that made some pretty unhealthy noises. Sarah
bravely climbed on the back and we ripped around the hilly island with my very mediocre riding skills. Late in the afternoon we hopped back on the plane and flew back to home base. Staying the night was not an option as accommodations are close to $2000 (US) a night.
After a day of regrouping and relaxing, we flew to another neighbouring island called
Saba (The Unspoiled Queen). Saba is basically a mountain rising out of the Caribbean Sea; it's about 5 km across and the highest peak, Mt. Scenery, has an elevation 887 m. As there is a serious shortage of flat land there, the airport has the shortest commercial runway in the world at about 400 m. The landing was much smoother than St. Barts so I enjoyed the flight. We stayed at a rustic little cottage called the
House on the Path near Windwarside which made for a very cool experience. Hiking was our main activity and we covered a lot of the island. While we were there, an intensive search was being conducted for an American who disappeared while hiking alone on Dec. 28. They called off the search after searching for more than a
week, and I never heard if they found him.
The history of this island is pretty fascinating, mostly because of the sheer effort required to settle the island. Although it's officially a Dutch island (for now), most people are of English and Irish descent. The villages are hundreds of meters above the ocean and back in the day, all supplies had to be carried up a staircase called The Ladder. They finally started using donkeys in the 1920's. Our taxi driver told us a story about one lady who worked as a porter, giving birth in the morning and carrying a dining room table up from the harbour in the afternoon. The Ladder still exists so we hiked down to the ocean...and back up again. There's one main road that crosses the island; it's a concrete road that was built entirely by hand, connecting Fort Bay on the west side to the airport on the northeast side. Water supply has always been a problem so many houses are equipped to cisterns for collecting rainwater. Anyway, that's enough for today's lesson.
After our return to St. Maarten, Sarah had to go back to work, so I borrowed her car
during the day and did some things on my own. This included trying surfing for the first time ever. It wasn't very successful, but I had a cool instructor named Charlie and I hope to try it again soon. I also went windsurfing for a few days at Galion Beach, which was pretty fun since this is the windy season.
Enjoy the pictures.
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Mom
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Very impressive pictures!
Good to hear from you, Tim. I'm glad you finally got around to this, so we can see what you told us! It's even nicer than I imagined!