Simpson Bay – St Maarten

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We quite fancy doing a trip to the neighbouring Caribbean island of Anguilla whilst we are here this time. As we have the laptop with us, we thought – no problem we can use the Wi-Fi in the apartment – wrong. St Maarten, as with everything else they do, has very slow Wi-Fi which has not enabled us to anything. It’s the Caribbean way of life. Nothing we can see is ever rushed, just like retirement.

We have found a leaflet for a company that does the tour we want, so we decided to walk around 6 miles from the apartment to their offices in Simpson Bay. It was a lovely walk mostly along the beach. We booked the tour for Thursday.

After stopping at a KFC for lunch, we caught the local bus back to close to the apartment then walked the half mile back home again. There is no KFC in Tenerife so this was a really great treat for us.

The bus system here is very Caribbean. You can identify a bus as it has BUS at the beginning or end of it´s number plate. They have two sheets of paper in their front window saying where they are going to and from, you just have to work out which one is which. There are no bus stops. If you see the bus and it is going where you want to go, just flag it down and get in. Saying good morning or good afternoon to the bus driver is recommended and helps loads. Normal fare is about $1 to $2.50 depending on how far you ar going.

It was a nice relaxing way to start our stay in St Maarten. We had some major exposure to the sun today.

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