TravelTalkOnline Forums Trip Reports (Read Only) SXM Trip Reports and Photos Trip Report with Pictures, 11/24 - 12/1

Kent and Marilee - Trip Report 11/24 to 12/1/2007

Saturday 11/24

This is our fourth visit to SXM in three years, each time staying in a private villa in Orient.

Departed Atlanta direct to SXM on Delta on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Although we could have done carry-on only, we elected to take some liquids and check our rollers. Flight left a bit late, but we arrived pretty much on time. Parked on the tarmac, as always with Delta, and proceeded to take 30 minutes to pass through immigration. Once through, our bags were waiting and we headed on to pick up our Suzuki Grand Vitaro soft-top from Unity. Traffic between Unity and Royal Palm took about 20 minutes to negotiate. From there, we picked up a cellphone from Sharon, stopped by Maho Food Express for a case of Carib, six pack of Stella Artois, and some water. Travel from the Royal Palm to Food Express took at least another 20 minutes due to traffic.

Proceeded toward Phillipsburg and on through middle region over to Orient (avoiding the road construction in Marigot). Stop by Cap Caraibes to find Magali to take us to our villa - Villa Jeluca, in le Jardins de Orient (across the main road from the main Orient entrance). The villa was well up the hill, as you can tell from this view of Isle Pinel from the villa.



To better understand where the villa is, see this photo which was taken from the Rancho del Sol sign, facing back to the south. Villa Jeluca is circled in yellow.



Since the villa had satellite TV, I quickly went to find my football game whose tickets I had given up for this trip - Georgia vs Georgia Tech - which was being broadcast on ABC. I guess the coverage was regional, as the ABC station we got was showing West Virginia vs UConn. That games wasn't close, and the coverage switch to UGA vs GT in the third quarter. Shortly thereafter, my Yellow Jackets wilted to the Dawgs. Oh well.

Off to our traditional first dinner in SXM - Talk of the Town. Ribs, Shrimp, corn and fries with a few Caribs. We then enjoyed a quick stop over at Calmos Cafe before returning to the villa for the evening.

Sunday 11/25

Hoping to catch Bruce for a SNOBS Tshirt, we swung by Baywatch close to 11am. We just missed him, but we hung around and had lunch. I had the chicken parmesan meal and Marilee had the chicken philly sandwich. Both were delicious. Needing provisions for the week, we set out for Grand Marche before it closed at 2pm. Picked up breakfast and lunch foods, as well as a couple of dinners. Also had to stop by Ace Hardware for an electrical adapter. While I had intended to bring one, I inadvertently grabbed the wrong adapter. Further, this villa had three-prong plugs, which I hadn't encountered on the French side before. One of the standard two prong adapters wouldn't fit.

After unloading the groceries at the villa, we ended up spending the afternoon in the villa and using the grill to prepare a wonderful filet mignon dinner, complete with grilled zucchini/yellow squash mix, with rice and a salad.

Monday 11/26

Intent on hitting at least one new beach from our previous visits, we elected to try Happy Bay. After a leisurely morning, we packed up the beach bag and the cooler filled with Caribs, and headed off to park at Friar's Beach. We had no trouble finding or following the trail to Happy Bay, and after our previous experience of hiking to Petite Cayes, found the trail to be pretty easy (shoes or sandals required, no flip flops).

We arrived at Happy Bay and found only a few other folks there, all nude I might add. We setup in the middle of the beach and spent all day laying in the sun. We had packed "fruit and frommage" with crackers for lunch, and thoroughly enjoyed our day. When the sun started to get low, we headed back down the trail and went back to the villa.

After cleaning up, we headed down to the village for dinner. We were disappointed to find La Chappelle closed. We ended up eating at Safari Grill after grabbing a baguette at Tap Five. I had the Beef Kabobs, and Marilee had the Tilapia with mango salsa. Both were excellent. The Beef Kabob was served on a vertical skewer, with a lettuce and balsamic vinaigrette plate beneath, which made for a very tasty dish. After dinner, we played a couple of games of pool at the Rocking Chair and then we found a little party going on at Bikini's beach bar, and hung out there for a few cocktails before retiring back at the villa.

Tuesday 11/27

After our normal leisurely morning (we don't get out of the villa til 11ish on our best mornings), we made our way down to Club Orient. Parked behind Pedros, and had no trouble finding two chairs just past the Perch. Orient was quite windy. After enjoying a happy hour beverage, we went back down to Baywatch for lunch. I had the Tuesday Special - the New Jersey Dip, and Marilee had garlic shrimp ceaser salad. As always, the meal was excellent.

When the sun went behind the trees, we headed back to the villa to rest and clean up. That evening, we went back into the village. We grabbed a baguette and had a couple of Carlsbergs at the Tap Five bar with the locals. Dinner was back at the villa, with tortellinis and a nice salad with leftover filet mignon.

Wednesday 11/28

We decided to make this a "villa day", and ended up laying out on the villa deck and enjoying the pool. We made sandwiches for lunch, and that evening, after Pina Coladas, we grilled pork chops. As has been our experience, for whatever reason, pork on SXM has so much more taste than the pork we get here in the states. It was wonderful.

Thursday 11/29 (earthquake day)

Having enjoyed Happy Bay so much on Monday, and after the nasty wind on Orient on Tuesday, we elected to head back to Happy Bay. There were more people this time, and more evenly split between nude and textiled. As the day progressed, the mix leaned more toward nude. We did have our first "bushwacker" experience. He didn't approach us, but stayed up by the trees, in plain sight to us, but no one else. We ignored him, and after a half hour or so, he left. No big deal, really. For lunch, we again did "fruit and frommage", but we also added a leftover pork chop - yummy!

Not paying close attention to the time, I can't tell you exactly where we were or what we were doing when the earthquake hit, because we never felt it. Maybe we were in the water, I'm not sure. Totally oblivious. However, shortly thereafter, I felt the need to take some of the few pictures at Happy Bay. This photo was snapped 23 minutes after the earthquake.


Probably around 4pm, we headed back down the trail to the villa.

For dinner, we headed back to the village, grabbed a baguette, and had a few Carlsbergs at Tap Five. We picked up a Tap Five pizza and took it to the villa. Outstanding, as usual.

Friday 11/30

We were both pretty much "sunned out" at this point, so we decided to not spend a whole day at a beach. Again, hoping to see more than we had seen in our past visits, we took a drive that morning. We first headed down to Oyster Pond. Stopped at Mr. Busby's just long enough to take in the sights. Drove by the Westin just to see it, but we didn't stop or go. I started to continue to down the road past the Westin, but the road got rough, and it wasn't clear if there was anything further down the road, so we turned around (did we miss something?). On our way back, we took a right around Oyster Pond and headed toward the nature reserve. we stopped at the observation deck where we were approach by a couple of young women with scratch-off cards. Surprise, surprise, we won! The grand prize! $500 credit at a casino, a video camera, or a 5 day vacation. All we had to do was listen to a time share pitch at OBBR. We elected to forfeit our "winnings".

We continued on around to Le Galion. I even took my own picture of the now infamous sign.



Normally, our dinner on our last night in SXM is the same as our first, Talk of the Town. However, we knew that Orient Village is hopping on Friday nights, so we elected to head to Grand Case and do Talk of the Town for lunch instead. Same meal as the first time, and just as good. We walked the strip, even though most shops were closed around lunch time. We did stop and pick up a skirt for Marilee at one of the shops that was open. From there we headed down to Calmos Cafe, and sat on the beach for a couple of beverages. We eventually made it back to the villa to rest and clean up, and headed to the village for dinner.

We ended up eating at Safari Grill again. This time, I had the Mahi Mahi and Marilee had the Tuna. Again, excellent. After dinner, we sat outside the now open La Chappelle and enjoyed some draught Stella's, while watching the kids and locals in the courtyard. A very nice final evening.

Saturday

We packed up and headed out of the villa at 11am (they had a new group coming in that day). Stopped by Grand Marche so I could pick up five cartons of smokes to take back. Headed on to the airport around noon to check in and check our bags. No line at the Delta counter, and we were quickly back out. No charge at the airport parking lot - I guess we were inside the first half hour, which is gratis. We headed down to SSBB to watch a few planes come in before gassing up, returning the phone, and the car. We were back at the airport a few hours before our flight. We went straight through security, then grabbed some lunch. The flight back was on time and uneventful. Immigration and customs in Atlanta was quick and easy, but going back through security was a cluster****. Long line, and quite the PITA.

Observations:

Weather was great - it rained almost every night, and some in the morning, but each day was beautiful and partly cloudy. The morning rain did provide a couple of spectacular rainbows in the morning sun though.



Villa was great - while not totally private, it was sufficiently so. The pool was small and cold, but that was refreshing during the day. The villa had a great sound system - Bose Acoustimas with a Denon receiver to go with the satellite TV. I could easily plug in my MP3 player and jam. The villa had our other essentials - A/C, blender, grill, and a safe. It also had a dishwasher and a washing machine. This villa is new, and it was pretty clear that we were one of the first folks to stay there. While the kitchen was pretty complete, there were a few critical items missing, including a can opener. Luckily, I had brought my handy dandy swiss army knife (in checked luggage) to help open the cream of coconut cans for Pina Coladas. While there were plenty of plates and dishes, the coffee cups were limited to little espresso cups (about the size of shot glass). The first morning, we got plenty of exercise refilling the tiny mugs. That day, we stopped by a store and contributed two real coffee mugs to the villa. The satellite TV, DirecTV, happened to be the Latino package, so while we had lots of channel choices, many were in Spanish. Plenty of the shows were broadcast in English with Spanish subtitles, but it was difficult to use the guide, as all the show titles were in Spanish (still preferable to the cable TV with three French channels we had in the other villas). No internet, which would have been nice.

We followed the old axiom - take half as many clothes and twice as much money. It worked well. We used most of our clothes, and I returned with more than half of the cash I took!

Unity, as always, was wonderful to deal with. Late in our week, we noticed our back bumper dangling. I noticed that the fasteners that held it on were missing, and assumed it was that way when we picked up the vehicle. However, it appears that someone ran into the bumper when we were parked on the street in Grand Case (could have been elsewhere, but it was just after we had parked there that I noticed the bumper dangling). Michael was excellent about the issue, and we are happy customers of Unity.

Our first two visits were in May, our last two late November/early December. We agreed that we prefer May. Both are just outside of peak season, so the rates are comparable. However, in the winter months, the sun is always so low in the sky that sunbathing is more of a challenge, particularly anywhere where you are not facing south. In May, the sun is much more overhead, and easier to get good sun on Orient without having to turn your chair south, or later in the day, west. Its a bit odd to go to the beach and setup your chair facing away from the water. We are considering going back next May.

Between the two of us, we consumed two cases of Caribs, a six pack of Stella, and a bottle of Appleton's rum, and that doesn't include what we consumed at individual bars and restaurants.

Reference:
Our second trip - Villa Sunbird
Our third trip, with pictures - Villa Antilia
(I did write a trip report for our first visit at Villa Sunbird, but I can't find it in the archives)