I'm a little late on this than I intended, but here is our general report from our August trip. I will also file a report today on Club Orient in the Nude beaches/resorts section of TravelTalk on Line.
TRIP REPORT August SXM 2004

We departed from CVG on American Eagle on August 15. Our flight was about half full and arrived early into Miami. We had just enough time to grab some sandwiches to take aboard our flight from Miami to SXM. The MIA SXM flight left about 15 minutes late but was able to make up for the late departure. This is the first time we have been able to fly to SXM on AA with only two flight segments. The flight was only about half full.

We had a reservation for a rental car at Hertz and in about half an hour after the plane arrived we were on our way to Club Orient. (I should add that other than our airline tickets, all of our car and hotel reservations were made by Jim Rous at Caribbean Islands Travel Service – a TTOL advertiser) Our air tickets were frequent flyer tickets.

I might add that the rental car was perfect. It was a Sentra with scrapes on every side. This really can come in handy if someone scratches the car while it is parked. We were fortunate and no one hit us. While the Sentra is a shade smaller than the 04 Xterra that I drive at home, the Sentra is better suited to island travel – smaller and much easier on gas than our Xterra.

We were able to get to Club O before dark for a change and actually have a little beach time before dinner. We will post a report on Club O separately.

I had planned this trip in detail using 15-minute intervals but as soon as we hit the beach, the plan was destroyed completely by sand gravity. Every one of my time slots had to be rearranged. Our 15-minute jewelry shopping segment ended up being several portions of days literally visiting 95 % of all the jewelry stores on the island. My wife went looking for a sapphire bangle and ended up with a diamond and sapphire bangle, a 4.65 caret 10 diamond bangle, a large opal pendant and a opal bracelet. So much for planning and budgeting!

As we always do, we visited the Butterfly Farm. As a nature photographer I love this place. This year was no exception. It seems that each year the assortment of butterflies, moths and their caterpillars gets bigger and more impressive. We made some great images on both film and with digital of which we will post selected images on the SXMphoto site. For those photographers which may be visiting the Butterfly Farm, I will mention the equipment that we used. Camera bodies were 2 Nikon F5s (film) and 1 Nikon D100 (digital SLR). Lens were the Nikon 60 mm f2.8 AF Micro-Nikkor the 24-120-S AF VR G Nikkor (used with 25 mm extension tube) and the 80 –200mm f2.8 AF-S Nikkor (with 25 mm extension tube). Flashes were the Nikon SB-800 and Nikon SB-29s ring light.

We also went to the St. Martin Park (AKA the zoo). This zoo is small and doesn’t have the space to offer the natural looking display space found in some of the larger US zoos such as the San Diego, St. Louis or Cincinnati zoos. It is never-the-less, a must see for SXM visitors whether on their first trip or their 25th. Wisely they have chosen to emphasize mostly animals from the Caribbean or other tropical areas. Animals appear to be in good health and are well cared for. There are two exceptional exhibits - a walk-in aviary of mostly local birds and the new fruit bat exhibit. As with many small zoos, photography is difficult because of the amount of cage wiring. We found that a 400 mm lens is a good lens as it gives a good amount of magnification and due to low depth of field produces a more natural looking out of focus background. We used the 80-400mm AF VR Nikkor. Some animals were more approachable such as the chachalaca and the Toucan where a 60mm was all that was needed for head shots.

There are numerous opportunities for the birder or the bird photographers on SXM. For a number of years, we have been using Bond’s Birds of the Caribbean as our primary field guide on SXM. (Historical note: When Ian Fleming was looking for a name for his fictional British Secret Service agent he allegedly spotted the book Birds of the Caribbean by James Bond sitting on the book shelf in his Jamaican home.) Bond’s book is really quite dated. Jim Ruos had suggested the newer (1998) A Guide to the Birds of the West Indies by Herbert Raffael et al. This book is very good and I would now recommend it to serious birders in the Caribbean. One must note however that it does not cover the ABC islands, Trinidad, Tobago nor the Caribbean coastal areas of Mexico, Central America, Colombia or Venezuela. Other than those exclusions it is very good.

It has an extensive checklist of birds by island. While this may be helpful in excluding some possible birds when trying to identify troublesome birds, it, like most checklists, is not always accurate. For example the Ruddy Duck does not appear on the checklist, but it is a common duck on the salt ponds of the Dutch side. The common Moorhen is listed as uncommon, yet we have seen it on every trip since 1986 which should elevate it to common or fairly common. Also absent from the checklist is the Eurasian Collared Dove which is very established at least along Orient Bay and the Madame Estates area. Also listed as uncommon is the Magnificent Frigatebird which can easily seen around Lee’s Seafood Restaurant and Marigot Harbor on virtually any day. The White Cheeked Pintail is listed as rare (occurs less than twice a year) but has been common on the salt ponds for several years. So use the checklist as a guide and be sure to check all of the field marks of any species not on the checklist.


This year the most exciting new birds for us on SXM were the Hudsonian Godwit (4 individuals) and the Whimbrel (5 individuals). Both of these birds were found on the salt pond that is alongside the road (or what passes as a road) to Club Orient. Also along this road we observed Lesser Yellowlegs and Short-billed Dowitchers as well as the more common shorebirds. This salt pond is a great birding area but the amount of traffic can make the birds very nervous.

One of the best bird photography areas is the small fenced park at the Iillage Road roundabout. The smaller section of the salt pond has some very tame Green Herons, Snowy Egrets, White Cheeked Pintails, Black-necked Stilts, Caribbean Coots and Moorhens. With a little patience and a 300 to 400 mm lens or digital equivalent, you should be able to make some full frame bird images. Across the street in the bigger portion of the salt pond, we observed and photographed a mute swan (escapee), a bird not native to the Caribbean. Last year there were two, so it would appear that something has happened to the other bird.

SXM is the best place I have yet found to photograph Black necked Stilts. It is easy to approach them along the P-burg salt ponds. They are so used to pedestrian traffic that you can get within ten feet of them before they spook. A 300 – 400 mm lens is all that is needed to make full frame photographs of them. At most places that I photograph where there are stilts, they are irritating impediments to photography because they are so quick to spook. Usually I can’t get within 50 yards of them. Worse when they flush, they usually take my target birds with them. Worse yet, just in case they haven’t spooked off all of the other birds, they will usually circle making distress calls so that any birds that weren’t spooked initially will eventually spook.

While photographing in this area we saw many baby Tarpon in the 5 to 30 pound range. We also saw a number of Americans fishing for them, but no one seemed to be having any luck. We also saw a Tarpon which appeared to be 4 feet long and what I believe were small Lemon Sharks in the salt pond next to the free parking in downtown Phillipsburg. Well they were sharks at least. Both dorsal fins were the same size and the fish had a yellowish coloring. These are good indications that they were Lemon Sharks but not necessarily definitive.

SXM could really benefit from advertising of the baby Tarpon fishing. This is an important tourist market on Little Cayman, and might be in SXM as well.

Well back to the Birds. This is the list that we compiled when not under the influence of sand gravity. While not that impressive, I am confident that with just a little effort we could have spotted two or three times the number of species based on our other trips to SXM.

1 Brown Bobby
2 Magnificent Frigatebird
3 Brown Pelican
4 Laughing Gull
5 Royal Tern
6 Sandwich Tern
7 Little Blue Heron
8 Great Blue Heron
9 Tricolored Heron
10 Cattle Egret
11 Snowy Egret
12 Great Egret
13 Yellow Crowned Night Heron
14 Green Heron
15 Semi-Palmated Plover
16 Wilson’s Plover
17 Killdeer
18 Piebilled Grebe
19 American Kestral
20 Helmeted Guineafowl (escapee)
21 Common Moorhen
22 Caribbean Coot
23 Semi-Palmated Sandpiper
24 Lesser Yellowlegs
25 Black Necked Stilit
26 Whimbrel
27 Hudsonian Godwit
28 Short-Billed Dowitcher
29 Rock Dove
30 Eurasian Collered Dove
31 Zenada Dove
32 Common Ground Dove
33 Gray Kingbird
34 Pearly Eyed Thrasher
35 Bannanaquit
36 Black Faced Grassquit
37 Lesser Antillian Bullfinch
38 Caribbean Grackle
39 Mute Swan (escapee)
40 Ruddy Duck
41 White Cheeked Pintail

We went to the TTOL gathering at the Buccaneer Beach Bar on August 23 and were able to meet several other posters on the TTOL board including SXMRookie and her husband, who were on their first rip to SXM.

Driving on SXM can be a real adventure, but on this trip we found the drivers to be somewhat slower than at other times of the year. In fact many of the drivers were downright pokey. There were more suicyclists than last year although still far below historical levels. Still we saw a number of accidents including a spectacular one car accident that resulted in a car running off both sides of the road and ending in a salt pond.

While we had to cut short our trip by a few days due to Hurricane Francis, we still had a great 2 + weeks vacation. We cut the trip short not because of the impact of the Hurricane on SXM, but due to the fact we were making connections in Miami that Saturday. We made the right choice as the Miami airport was closed that Saturday. Due to our change of flights we were routed through LaGuardia. This is as close to New York as we have ever been. We were not impressed with the airport. We had to change concourses to get to our connecting flight and that meant going through security again! What a chore when you are carrying film. This is the first airport where we have had to go through security between flights unless we were coming in from another country.


On our departure from SXM we encountered the worst lines ever. It seems a lot of people don’t come to the airport until the last minute. As a result, the lines are long and at points they start to give priority to the late arrivals so they can make their flights. That meant when I finally got to be the first in line for the “mandatory?” search of luggage we had to wait 45 minutes for people who were supposed to have checked in more than an hour previous. Some of these folks were just getting into the airport! Our total waiting time was more than 2 hours. We almost missed our flight. I am not a big fan of airport security as it is currently practiced. It is more show than real. I was not disappointed in SXM. First as the flight departures were getting close, the “Security” guards stopped searching luggage and allowed it to be checked in without any search. When our turn finally came, they only searched 2 of our 4 suitcases. At the x-ray of the carry on bags, no one was even looking at the screens.

Part of the difficulty in getting people to the airport in a timely fashion is the ever vigilant SXM Police. While we were in line to check in, we watched at least ten cars get towed by police order for parking too long in front of the airport. While that sounds reasonable enough the mess made by the towing was worse than the parking problem. Each time a car was towed, the tow truck completely blocked the airport entrance causing the traffic to back up in both directions on Airport Road. It took 10 or more minutes to load up each of the cars that were removed! This appears to be the only place on the Dutch side where any traffic laws are enforced.