Back from another St. Martin trip; here is a somewhat extensive summary. Flew AA from JFK to San Juan, where we stayed over in Isla Verde for 3 days, driving to El Yunque (a fascinating place), took an interesting tour of the Las Cabezas nature reserve, spent a little time on Luquillo Beach (very nice in its way, huge, busy, and totally unlike the St. Martin beach experience) and visited Pinones, where we learned not to drive route 157 on a late Sunday afternoon. But since this is a St. Martin report, I will not go into details. SJU to SXM on LIAT; a few minutes late leaving but arrived via Tortola pretty much on time mid-afternoon, with no competition at immigration. Rented our car from Michael at Unity, who gave the usual fine service. It was a much-maligned Ignis, but we found it quite comfortable and fully adequate in performance. Traffic was not heavy, except between Grand Case and Marigot where construction work caused huge back-ups. Our hotel was the Grand Case Beach Club, which continues to be an excellent value especially at this time of year. New construction along Petit Plage may change the character of that part of the beach in the future though.

As for the all-important weather, it was overcast but pleasant on our first full day, which we used for doing a bit of walking that we otherwise probably would not have done. The next few days were sun and cloud, very hot and humid, and the last two back to heavy cloud with some rain on Wednesday afternoon. Otherwise, rain was at night. I have never seen the island so green or with so many butterflies (and mosquitoes). Activities were mostly beaches, but not as concentrated as would have been the case if the weather were better; Orient, Dawn (at Scavenger’s; what a pity it will be closed at the end of the month - it has been posted here that they would be closing Sept. 1, but the guys there told us 4 weeks - and what is being done to that beach is disgraceful) and LeGalion. We also found the road from Grand Case to Friar’s – an extremely bad dirt road, but it is not a long way and it cuts off a lot of distance if you are going to Friar’s from Grand Case or Orient. Apparently, though, you cannot drive along the back of the beach to go out the other way. Part way along the dirt road intersects a new paved road into what appears to be an up-scale housing area (condominiums?) under construction. Couldn’t tell if the roads in that development will lead down to Happy Bay. A morning espresso at L’Ile Flottant in Grand Case when the beaching is not great was a great way to pass the time.

As for restaurants, I must first rave about the Wajang Doll. We used to go to it regularly in Phillipsburg but lost track of it over the last 2 or 3 years when it moved to Simpson Bay. Found it again, and it was great. Our appetites don’t handle the signature rijsstaffel too well any more, but they have added a number of individual dishes to the menu. The nasi rames is a mini-rijsstaffel and delicious. Carol also was impressed by the nasi gado-gado - vegetable salad with rice and chicken sate. If they have their fresh mango dessert, have it at all costs. Spiga was the only restaurant that was totally new to us; it lived up to its reputation. Others were old favorites, all as good as ever and all with warm welcomes for us – Yvette’s twice (the conch in Creole sauce, not listed on the menu, is excellent), Mark’s Place also twice, Bistro Nu, Le California and Le Mambo rounded out our dinners. The latter in a really good place that does not get much attention, and doesn’t seem to be popular with visitors who don’t already know it because they do not give 1:1 exchange. However, if anyone likes Creole food, the Assiette Creole is outstanding. One thing we found is that the old staple, conch, is missing from many menus, or is high priced, because of scarcity - over-fishing is doing this in too.

Although continental breakfast is provided at the Sunset Café at the hotel and is a great way to start the day, we did take a recommendation from this board to try the Kissing Fish, and enjoyed it even though they were out of banana pancakes. Better luck next year. For lunch, we went to Belle epoch (very good French onion soup), Scavengers (we will miss the veggie burgers here), Pat’s at LeGalion (great food but mosquitoes found us where we sat) and Papagayo’s. Stopped into Baywatch on the 4th for a drink but did not eat there; a good time.

The return trip was more interesting. The LIAT flight stopped in Tortola, but this direction all passengers had to disembark with their luggage, march into one end of the new terminal, go through it to the other end to have the baggage and passports checked, and then re-board. Thankfully, it was not raining on the march to the terminal. It was in san Juan, however, but we waited for a few minutes on the plane for it to stop, as it was another very long walk outside to the terminal. And LIAT couldn’t find any umbrellas. We had planned to stay over to enjoy an afternoon and evening at the Wyndham El San Juan, so no rush for connections. The rain that afternoon did mean that we could not take advantage of the pool and beach so that plan didn’t work perfectly, but still a nice time – in spite of frigid air conditioning in that hotel. When we arrived at the airport next day for our noon flight, we were told that it was delayed 2 hours, and shortly thereafter saw it rescheduled for 6:30. We immediately checked to see if we could rebook, even if we had to go thorough Miami, but the agent offered us seats on the 10 PM flight from the previous evening which had been delayed until 1:00 PM - someone’s misfortune was good luck for us, and we arrived in JFK within 25 minutes of our original schedule.

For a long time we have seen the uncontrolled development take away more and more of the charms of the island, particularly on the Dutch side, and the Dawn Beach and Coupecoy activities now going on will take away even more. I am quite sure that if this had been our first visit, it would have been our last, but knowing the island we still find enough positive things to bring us back again next year.