A Short Flight to St Martin and Two Days at Full Idle

Day 7 of the epic adventures of Ann and Dan DeDona.  It's Wednesday the 13th of February 2013.  Not a lot of pictures to share today as we did a lot of shuffling between rooms and airports, and only a bit over an hour of flying 

FltPlan.com this morning for a 1000 departure and they seem to be sticky about adhering to times.  Plus or minus an hour or so seems to be a big deal and we're trying to comply.  WIFI at Malecon House is working well, and we can even get weather for PR.  Good news is once again there is no need to do anything with US Customs outbound from the US.  

We knew it was about a 20 min drive back to the north side of the island to fill the Jeep at one of the only two gas stations on the island (both located within 100 yds of each other), and then on to the airport.  We knew this because we'd scouted the previous afternoon on the north side in and around the larger of the two cities, Isabel Segunda.  Nice little town but built up more than Esperanza.  It had more the feel of a moderate sized city than a small town -- lot of typical town businesses vice tourist traps.  We had lunch, and while we were in the area visited "W", a huge resort that had been recommended by Jim Parker.  Ann and I had a drink, admired the facilities and the views, but were grateful we'd decided on Esperanza for it's more relaxed and intimate setting.  "W" is what you would call a super resort.  Good news is it's a great facility.  Bad news is if you stay there you'll never really get any sense of life on Vieques.  This would be an outstanding, if expensive, place for a conference, though.

Anyway, back to the bag drag to the airport.  George of Maritza's Rental Cars is just arriving for work as we pull up.  It turns our George and his wife had a great day on Puerto Rico and now have groceries to last for a while.  We unload bags and George takes the jeep back to his parking area.  In a few minutes Ann and I are flashing IDs and my pilot license for TSA, and headed for the plane.  

After a preflight, we're off to St Martin Grand Case Airport - an 0957 departure.  On departure you have to watch for what seems to be a permanent TFR over the entire east end of Vieques, covering the nature preserve up to 6000 ft.  By the way, TFR stands for Temporary Flight Restriction, so the whole concept of a permanent TFR is a bit of an oxymoronic idea.

The route to Grand Case is more or less due east of Vieques and passes both the American and Brittish Virgin Islands.  The island to the north in the picture above is Anguilla - St Martin is to the south.  Grand Case is on the northwest side of St Martin, maybe 6 nm to the south on the southern island.

Jim Parker recommended Grand Case (TFFG) on the French (north) side of St Martin vice Princess Julianna on the Dutch side because Julianna is way more complicated to get in and out of.  San Juan alters our course a little to the north of a direct route to SLUGO intersection.  I suspected they did this to keep us clear of Julianna traffic it also turns out this lines you up for the main runway at Grand Case.  Although we're staying at the Holland House on the Dutch side, right on Great Bay, landing in the north is not really a big deal as the entire island of St Martin is only about 5 nm X 7 nm.

Landing and parking are easy enough.  Christian of Chris Aviation, one of a few FBOs, walks out to help us with our bags and basically walks us through the entire customs and immigration procedure, taking us to the front of the line as crew.

A few minutes later, after finding our way outside the small, busy terminal, we're looking at the closed Avis counter ;-).  It has a note they are only there routinely for a few hours in the morning, so if you go, check ahead.  After stumbling around for a few minutes trying to figure out how to call the number to get someone out there, Chris to the rescue again.  He makes a quick call and 10 mins later the Avis guy is there.  15 mins after that we're picking our way south to Philipsburg.

Roads all over St Martin are an improvement over Vieques, at least in width, but not by much, and there is a lot more traffic.  Still, it moves pretty steadily until we get to Philipsburg.  The area in which we're staying is on a sliver of land sitting between Great Bay to the south and an inland body of water roughly the same size as the bay called Salt Pond to the north.  Depending where you are on this sliver of land, there are at most 4 - 5 streets serving the entire tourist structure on the beach side, all the shops and restaurants just behind that, several casinos, and the cruise ships and other docks on the east end.

All the streets are crowded, but on arrival we learn a special exercise has been arranged just for us to make arrival more of a sporting event ;-).  Portions of Front Street, the first from the beach, are blocked off because there are four cruise ships in port.  Naturally, Holland House, which is located on the beach, is in that blocked section.  We get to do a windshield tour of Front and Back Streets.

When we've circled back to a point that seems close to the address for Holland House on Back Street, Ann hops out to start searching for Front Street and the hotel.  I pull up on a Back Street sidewalk to wait.  This seems to be perfectly acceptable.  There was enough room for cars and vans to pass on the left, and pedestrians had plenty of room to gawk and point as they passed on the right.  The only "advice" we got was from a taxi who suggested pulling further onto the sidewalk.  A passing police car didn't seem to think anything was amiss.  Eventually I decided to move again.

15 mins later, and one additional lap of the area, we're beginning make friends and establish lasting relationships all along the route.  Ann finally materializes and flags me down on Back Street.  She says Holland House has a parking lot (actually a vacant lot with an electronically activated gate) near where she flags me, so we pull in and finally do the bag drag to the hotel.  The main reason I mention this is, as small as the island is, if you don't intend to explore a lot, a cab would probably be more than enough transportation, and there are cabs everywhere.  At 5 nm by 7 nm, the whole island is just too small to get lost for long.

Holland House is very nice and well maintained.  You can walk directly through their lobby, past a top notch bar and restaurant, and right down to the beach.  That is where we spent our arrival afternoon.  Beach chairs, umbrellas and towels are all included, and they have folks take orders for finger food and drinks on the beach.  The beach itself is beautiful, but unlike earlier stops, crowded more like Ocean City MD.  Still, the view is great, sun is warm, and there's a lot of activity on the bay with ships, tugs, water taxis and sailboats coming and going.  A very lively area.

That night while we're snoozing, some of the cruise ships head back out to the Caribbean.  

On the morning of the 14th, the rest of yesterday's cruise ships depart while three new cruise ships arrive.  The activity level visibly picks up all along the beach and the Harbor.  

I read in the local paper that morning about a group exploring the possibility of getting a tour boat or two home stationed there at Great Bay.  While the economic appeal is clear, so is the argument against it.  Part of the article noted the island simply does not have the resources to support a cruise boat.  There were several reasons, but they all came down to logistics.  

By their nature, cruise ships load an immense amount of goods, fuel, passengers, and so on at a home port.  From our drive yesterday, it was pretty clear Dutch St Martin would have it's hands full handling the traffic hauling that much material and passengers back and forth.  They already deal with the passengers by running a number of water taxis directly from the ships to at least two docs on the beach at Great Bay (that's one in the picture above).  This probably relieves a lot of vehicular traffic.  

That would leave all the other "stuff".  Problem there is all that stuff would need to be shipped to the island, offloaded, stored somewhere, then moved back to the docks when needed.  There is not a lot of land that is not already occupied in 5 X 7 nm, and it is almost certain the cost of goods shipped would be more than one could get just selecting a large port elsewhere with good logistics connected to existing sources of supplies.  In the end, the story was newsworthy for its ambition more than as something likely to ever happen.   

We spent the morning on the beach again.  This had the advantage of not having anywhere near as many people around, and offered the opportunity to get a few shots of the facilities at Holland House.




That's the regular bar behind the beautiful model above (heh, I can use all the help I can get ;-), and the continental breakfast bar to the right.

It really is beautiful here even though it is so thoroughly developed.  The views up and down the beach don't do it adequate justice.  

The second afternoon, after some time on the beach in the morning, we walked up and down Front and Back Streets.  Interesting divergence.

Front Street was almost exclusively diamond and jewelry shops, electronics shops, beach shops, and so on.  As close to a tourist mecca as you could imagine.  Hard to believe so many of the same kinds of businesses surviving in such a tight area.  

And just like clockwork, there's that beautiful model again to highlight one of the shops that apparently are more interesting than others.

Just one street away, the story is different.  Back Street is more oriented to folks who live there.  Lot of clothing stores, small department stores, hardware, et al.  There were a lot more local folks on this street as well, some looking oddly at us as if we were lost.  Another street or two and you start finding banks and a wider range of small businesses.  

St Martin was advertised as having the best food in the Caribbean, and we can't argue with that.  On our first night we walked to the Greenhouse, a good place near the docks area on the east end of Great Bay.  The meal was excellent and moderately priced.  Service was good.  

The second day was Valentines Day.  While scouting around in the afternoon we were advised to try a place called Sheer.  It was just down the street from the Holland House so we walked there to see what they had.  The menu looked good, but it was not clear how to get in to make a reservation.  We finally found some stairs and walked up to their business office.  The lady there was very efficient, and we got a reservation for early that evening.  This turned out to be simply outstanding.  All four courses were superb and service was well above average.  The price matched, but I had this thing going on with the model, so it was well worth it.

There is definitely more to see on St Martin than we were able to see in such a short time.  The large map of the island set into the walk just behind the beach was something.  Unfortunately, we're moving again on day 9, a Friday, headed for Nassau.  

Truth is the trip was planned to move from the more austere to more luxurious, at least in part to account for a certain amount of travel weariness as the trip wore on.  Philipsburg was nice in this sense in that it was very comfortable and there was a lot so see right around where we stayed.  In all cases, more time is needed to learn what there is to know about each stop.  

Nassau will be our final warm rest stop before the long haul back to snow and ice.  

 

More later.