Tuesday 19 February, St. Martin day 22. Road trip around French St.Martin, visiting some of the beaches.
Despite our early night, we amazingly sleep right though to our normal time at 8am. Maybe we nailed Oana’s jet lag in her first day back. It had taken her well over a week to recover when flying home to Bucharest.
After breakfast and coffee we venture ashore. We have the car till Friday so will make use of it in the coming days to see the island.
First a short walk around Marigot town, which has a real French feel, but is also a mixture of generally rundown and damaged buildings by Irma. There is a tourist market by the ferry terminal selling the usual tourist things to not many tourists around. All the shops are open but we only visit the post office.
Then we head off in the car, north towards Orient Bay. On the way, we visit Batterie Bay and Grande Case Bay. Grand Case is a very dusty and grubby village but the beach is really nice golden sand and most beautifully clear turquoise water. Quite a few people on the beach which is backed by many building still in need of renovation after Irma. We are thinking that even the poorest of islands, like Dominica, managed to recover and clean up so much quicker than this island which is fully backed by European money. Maybe it’s good UK is out of burocratic Europe, after all!
We take a detour to Marcel Bay, where we find a residential complex under reconstruction. It must’ve been one of the nice ones in St.Martin prior to Irma. And behind it a pretty beach with a nice restaurant and some very interesting looking gazebos. Certainly a posh beach.
Next stop, just before Orient Bay, is a bakery for coffee and wonderful French pastries. Hmmm is this really our last French island? We need to make the most of the cuisine before we move on.
At Orient Bay, likely the nicest beach and bay on St. Martin, we have drinks at the Bikini Beach Club while watching the goings-on at the beach. The wind is up and there are a few kiteboards out. But now is not the time for kiting. That opportunity was the last 2 weeks, when sadly there was never enough wind 🙁
Having covered 1/2 the island today we head back to Cloudy Bay for a late lunch and a leisurely evening. We declare this island, what we have seen of it so far, will not be anywhere near the top of our favorite list. It’s dry, dusty, messy and overpopulated with traffic. Good for provisioning and getting things serviced on the boat, but not a pretty island by any stretch of imagination.
The wind in Marigot Bay is still strongly gusting through the anchorage and Cloudy is starting her rocking dance as the swell is now creeping into the bay. Maybe it will be challenging to sleep tonight. We spend the evening watching a crime series we were 1/2 way through, and planning a trip to Saba in the coming days.
