Very nice last day on SXM. Lunch at Talk of the Town with a repeat of my $8 ribs and curry rice. Very iffy weather with a HUGE downpour around 9am...impressive rain. Sun/clouds after that.

Wandered around Porto Cupecoy which is a great place just to check out the ships in the port. Noticed the big Asian restaurant on the left as you walk in has departed. Black clouds coming in (again) so we decided to move on and as soon as we got back in the car WHOOSH! the sky opened up...short lived though.

Meandered back to TripleA to return the car. Office locked but a worker washing cars found our agreement, check the car, and drove us to PJIA..took all of 10 minutes.

JB desk at PJIA was quite and we checked our bags and got our boarding passes in no time. Mine had the dreaded "SSSS" on it so I was prepared for a special gate check of my bag.

Boarding pass scan was fine...took 5 seconds. Up the escalator to meet a line waiting for passport control. Two machines down so four in service. Some confusion but not that bad. Good thing is that it slows down the travelers getting to security screening so we had one couple in front of us...two scanners working. Not a problem at all.

So with no line at the JB deck...maybe 10 people at the boarding pass machines..MANY people waiting for passport control..it took 40 minutes to complete the process

Unfortunately we had B1 for a gate (actually ended up as B4) and went down into the den of humanity. Sunwing flight to Toronto was delayed 4 hours so that crowd (B5) added to the congestion...and the fact that 3 flights were basically boarding in rapid (for SXM) succession. Please, next time, I will pay extra for a jetway....please

The inevitable special security check happened...the two uninterested agents spent at least 10 minutes (slight exaggeration) arguing which SIDE of the table to inspect my bag,,,really..back and forth...kinda made the JB "early boarding" pointless...one tennis bag..took 15 seconds to examine but forever to start the process... then to the bus for our trip.

The flight was fine. No TV or wifi of course because of the "out of range" thing but one decent movie to watch. No issues. WIFI came on around 45 minutes out of BOS and it worked great. Answered some emails and sent some pics from the phone before landing.

Overall a fantastic visit with no real issues. Last pics will be a departing view of SXM and a kinda lame video from the room of one monsoon rain storm before we checked out. I wouldn't want to use the bus to get to the plane during that event.

View of Royal Palm/bridge and lagoon



View of SXM in it's entirety. Always amazed about the actual size of the lagoon



..and for all of you who have never experienced rain...

A slight mist in the air