Car rental day! We decided it was pretty easy just to walk up to the airport at Grand Case and get a car so that is what we proceeded to do at the quite civilized hour of 9am.
We had a couple of errands that we wanted to run and then the rest of the day was dedicated to sight seeing. First stop we tried to pay for the remainder of our mattress bill but Geraldine was still out of the office so we headed off to our next stop at WinAir to get tickets to go over to Saba next week (yay, we're going, but more on that later.)
The traffic on St. Martin is insane, barely moving across the top of Marigot at mid-morning, stalled on the new causeway bridge as it opened to let boats through and then crawling around from the airport to Philipsburg all afternoon. There was way too many cars on the island, and of course we rented one of them, but I wouldn't want to try to operate a business or get around on a regular basis with the level of congestion.
Nothing daunted though, we made it to Maho Bay to watch the planes land over the beach (and our heads) and then after a tour around the luxury gated areas of Terres-Basse with a stop at Long Bay Beach, we pulled up a set of bar stools at Bucaneer's Beach Bar on Simpson Bay for a delicious lunch.
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| Enjoying the beach at Maho. |
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| Get ready, here it comes. |
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| Love the stop-motion on the props. |
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| The unabashed selfie with friends. |
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| Heading to the bar? |
By the afternoon we made it across Philipsburg and to the eastern windswept side of the island where we took a little hike above Oyster Pond with fabulous views out over Orient Bay. Jim had fun with the camera capturing the late afternoon light as it swept across the hills.
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| Getting ready for a little walk. |
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| With St. Barth's in the background. |
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| The east coast of St. Martin. |
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| Capturing the light. |
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| Through fields of grass. |
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| Not sure what this is, but very pretty none-the-less. |
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| Interesting mix of local farming with resort roofs in the background. |
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| I sits and sits... |
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| Surf school, time to come in! |
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| The (in)famous Orient Bay. |
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| Are we in the Caribbean or Wyoming? |
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| Time to head home. |
