Wednesday 23 January, St. Barth day 3: Lost and found credit card, watched planes landing, and attempted a night out.

Woke to very gusty east winds sweeping through the valley where the aircraft land. We are in no hurry today. Making an easy day of it before we hire a car for the next 2 days.
Mid morning we head into town. Lots of the super yachts have gone, only 2 or 3 left now. Hm, how unusual.

We are on a mission to buy a SIM for my phone which we can use both here and St. Maarten. Of course, the French islands don’t conform to the rest of the Antilles common phone system (for which we have a SIM), they only have European networks like Orange. Same as everything for tourists here, a pay-as-u-go SIM is very expensive. Euros45 for the first 1GB and Euros15 for every extra GB, about 10 times the cost of data on our Caribbean SIM! That is bloody expensive!!! So it’s off to a coffee shop to get WiFi, where, surprisingly, I manage to on-line chat to Orange in Romania and learn that my Romanian SIM is Euro5 for a GB on roaming. So I have a solution… I’m connected to the world again! Whoopy! Long may it last!

Despite the heat, we walk up the hill to watch where the aircraft land over the road. It’s a must-do in St. Barth’s. Out of town the walking is a bit precarious – no pavements and like all French drivers, they give you dangerously little clearance as they pass. What a contrast to the US where they literally won’t pass a pedestrian unless they can give you at least 1/2 a road width!
We survive the walk and as we approach the “gap” which the planes fly through, 2 planes come into land. And of course, when we are actually there no more planes come! After 20 minutes wait we are treated with the spectacle as it literally dives for the runway, clearing the traffic by only a few meters. Must be thrilling to be a pilot here.

After that we go shopping in the supermarket. Oh my, we have missed French food. Just where to start? And reasonable prices too. As we check out though we discover I have lost our only remaining credit card! (the other one had to be cancelled due to fraud activity, and the replacement is waiting for us in St. Marten.) We go back to all the places we last used it but all are shut for lunch.
Back at Cloudy Bay we check the bank and luckily there is no misuse. So after lunch we head back to town and, thank goodness, we find it at the rental car shop. So we would have got it back tomorrow morning anyway!

The harbour is now completely clear of all super yachts, and we start to wonder what do they know that we don’t? A visit to the capitannerie answers the puzzle. There is forecast to be a huge northern swell coming tonight and tomorrow, which would make the harbour dangerous due to surging. So all the super yachts have headed out to anchor. We wonder if it’s wise to hire a car tomorrow. Maybe better to be on the boat.

As the sun goes down we walk to the southern end of the town and onto Shell Beach where we find a very chic beach bar with lots of very chic clientele. We are tempted to stay for a drink but there isn’t really any comfy area to sit. No way are we going to have expensive drinks only to sit on a foot stool in the sand!

We head back to town in search of early evening life there. We end up in Le Select, a very down-to-earth local bar in the middle of the chic shopping area. Drinks are rather cheap and the place is pretty full.
As we find a seat we joke about the “type” of people there – many of them hippie-ish not wearing shoes and others, well just plain rough! But the atmosphere is good, apart from the intense cigarette smoke. Again, only in France! (can you still smoke in a public place!).
We start to giggle that it should be called the Less Select bar, not Le Select!
Soon a band starts up. Well, a ramshackle of players and instruments jamming together. Entertaining, but not really our music.

So it’s off again to explore other venues. We walk the town end to end. Lots of bars, some quite fancy, but most deserted. And this is high season? Or did all the clients disappear along with the super-yachts we wonder?
On one of the upper streets we hear an African music sound, lots of drums and rattles. And strangely the sound is coming from a public terrace where 10-15 people are jamming. Most with drums, some with rattles and one with a Conch horn. And all the participants clearly very into the rhythm, most with their eyes shut! I would say the “music” has the sound of a build up to a human sacrifice! Or have we been watching too many movies?

Well, looks like no one is going to light the fire under the nightlife tonight, so we head to Cloudy Bay for an early night as we await the swell tomorrow.