We arrived from Nevis at about 10:00 AM on 4/12/03 and stayed until 4/26/03 (Our trip report about Nevis will be posted in a few days on the General Caribbean site). We had reservations at the Cap Caraibe and they let us into our room as soon as the maid finished cleaning it. Our room was on the top floor in the middle building and provided a very nice view of the rear of the Waikiki bar/restaurant with the beach just beyond that. We did have an unobstructed view of the beach at Coco Beach Bar. All in all, the view was pretty good (more about that later).<br><br>We rented our car from Alain Arnell and (surprise!) got a gray Nissan Sentra. It had 27,000+ miles on it and a few blemishes, but it served us well for the entire duration of our stay.<br><br>As mentioned by others, Orient Beach was the most crowded that we have ever seen it, apparently due to Easter vacation by students in both the USA and SXM. In fact, on 4/14/03, the stateside students apparently had a license for an all-night party in the nearly-vacant lot between 7 Continents and Paradisio. We hadn’t heard them in our room, but as soon as we opened our sliding door we heard the continuous BOOM, THUMP, THUMP, BOOM! It was very audible on the beach and continued until 8:00 AM. Those kids must have been stoned out of their minds on booze and who-knows-what. And, if they don’t have permanent hearing loss, I’ll be surprised.<br><br>Our room at Cap Caraibe was very similar to the rooms at L’Hoste, except that the kitchen area was a little bigger and they had a shower stall instead of a fairly large bathroom at L’Hoste. We will not, however, be staying there again because their beach facilities are furnished by Waikiki. We had several problems with Waikiki. We also found our bed to be extremely hard! Bobbie likes a firm mattress, but got back pains from ours just as Bill did.<br><br>On our first visit to Waikiki, they insisted that there was no 15% service charge included in the price of their drinks. and food. They insisted that any tip should be in addition to the rest of the bill. We finally gave up and paid exactly the amount of the bill, and continued that practice for the balance of our stay. We were also charged about $25 for beer-batter shrimp which we later got several times for $14.95 (plus stated service charge) from Baywatch<br><br>We had several of the coupons for “buy 1 drink and get 1 drink free”. For the duration of our stay, whenever we tried to use one of those coupons at Waikiki, we got a hassle. The bar personnel always acted as if they had never seen such a thing before, could not read or understand English, wanted the 2 drinks to be exactly the same, had to call the manager to OK the transaction, etc. <br><br>On 4/15/03, we met a couple of friends who had arrived on a cruise ship As suggested earlier by this board, we met them at Chesterfield’s. This was an excellent place to meet people from a cruise ship. Our friends had never been to SXM before and their eyes nearly popped out of their heads when they saw the view of Orient Beach from our room. They kept exclaiming about the beach, water, view, etc. for the entire time that they were there.<br><br>Not having learned from our other experiences at Waikiki, we had lunch there with our friends who ordered from the regular menu. Bill was not hungry so he asked for a cheeseburger. He was told the sandwiches had to come from the Ti-Wai part of their establishment, but the waitress would procure the cheeseburger and bring it to our table. Bobbie and our friends were served relatively promptly, but we were told that the cheeseburger would be right up (HA!!!). While the rest of our table consumed their meals entirely, Bill was continually told that the cheeseburger would “just be a couple of minutes more”. Finally, just as the rest of our group was finished and ready to go out to the beach, the tardy cheeseburger arrived. The waitress offered to bring it our to the beach. Having relatively little choice, Bill accepted that offer and ate his cheeseburger while the rest of the group went in swimming. THAT IS NOT SATISFACTORY SERVICE!!!<br><br>Waikiki is also not nudity friendly. We expected that but were surprised by their personnel’s attitudes, even before 10:00AM. One morning, Bill was talking with another man who was sitting in one of the beach chairs. A beach boy come over and asked the other man to cover up. He did not ask Bill to cover up because he was only standing on the sand and was not utilizing Waikiki’s property. The other man did cover up, but later checked out of Cap Caraibe and went elsewhere. Another morning, Bill was asked to cover up just as he was about to retrieve his swim-suit from one of the chairs. If they had waited ten seconds, they would not have had to ask!<br><br>One pleasant aspect of our stay occurred on the evening of 4/24/03. There was a fabulous fireworks show from a barge anchored directly in front of Waikiki. We have seen many fireworks shows before, but this one equaled any that we had ever seen. They went on for about 25 minutes, starting at about 9:30 PM. There were always 3 or more skyrockets in the sky at once, and these were not cheapies. We got several answers about who paid for all of that, but the one that seemed to make the most sense was that it was funded by the Tourist Bureau for the benefit of a group of travel agents. Regardless, it made for a spectacular show for everyone on or near Orient Beach.<br><br>We also hooked up with Contessa and the other TTOL members that she mentioned in her report (Thanks, Contessa, for relieving us from having to remember all of the names of the people) as well as a few other TTOL members. We saw most of these people at lunch or on the beach several times and also participated in the pub-crawl.<br><br>We had planned to fly over to St. Barth for a day-trip. When we got to the airport, however, we discovered that inflation had struck there. The same trip for which we paid $75 per person in 2/02 was now 90 Euros per person round-trip. When we factored in the cost of renting a car on St. Barth for one day, meals and drinks, etc., and the fact that we already had OB at our disposal for no additional charges, we decided that the trip was not financially worth the cost.<br><br>All in all, it was an exhausting but wonderful trip, especially for meeting so many of the people who go with the names that we so frequently see here on TTOL We plan to return again in 2004, but back at L’Hoste where we have stayed before.<br>