SXM trip #3 for us (previous visits were in 95 and 00) was from 6/29 to 7/9---ten wonderful nights! We stayed at Club Orient as we did last year in a mini-suite. We stayed at Green Cay Village our first trip and while we loved it, it is really hard to beat the convenience (not to mention the milieu) of CO. Our mini-suite was very clean and it was kept that way every day by CO’s housekeeping staff. <br><br>I am not going to try to give a daily report but will give some impressions and highlights.<br><br>EATING:<br><br>Not being gourmets, we eat rather than dine. Breakfast was usually fresh pastries from CO’s store. Several mornings we ate breakfast at CO’s Papagayos—they do a decent job with breakfast.<br><br> We ate most lunches at Baywatch which is just past Pedro’s. I mentioned in a previous brief report about how Andy of Baywatch had a reunion in April with a daughter he did not know he had. His life companion Cheryl shared with us the front page story which appeared in the Daily Herald. She has it laminated in plastic—just ask her about it and she will share it with you. <br><br>Last year we got to know Cheryl and on our last day as we were eating lunch, the Daily Herald sent a photographer and a reporter to write a feature for the weekly entertainment pages about Baywatch which at that point had been open 2 months. We were asked to pose as models for the photos. We asked Cheryl about the article this year and she said it had indeed appeared and we were in it. She promised to get a copy and mail it to us.<br><br>As for dinner, sand gravity overtook us more often than I expected it would. We ended up eating 6 dinners at Papagayos. The food is o.k. and the service is uneven—just as it was last year. The waiters at dinner always seem to be in semi-confused state. They had a special 4th of July buffet for $29 per person which really was not worth it and it was not particularly well attended.<br><br>We ate twice at California in Grand Case. They have a nice location on the water, a reasonably priced menu and (important to me) a really good dessert menu. Unlike a lot of the places in Grand Case, they are open all day. At the end of dinner, they take a Polaroid of you and present it with the bill. <br><br>We also had dinner one night at another favorite of ours---Il Nettuno. We had the same waiter we had last year---he looks like he just arrived from Italy with a charming accent and a large bushy moustache. They have a nice unpretentious Italian menu and also have great desserts. Like California, they are on the water side of Grand Case’s main street and dinner with the lights of Anguilla clearly visible is very romantic which is important to my wife. It and California are perfect—romantic views for my wife and good dessert menus for me. Life is good!<br><br>Our fourth non-Papagayo dinner was at Cheri’s in the Maho shopping area on the Dutch side. Last year, there was a great deal of reconstruction work going on this area due to the hurricane that had hit the previous fall. Cheri’s had just reopened at that time and we did eat there (we had eaten there several times in 1995). The Maho area is now pretty much renewed and very nice looking. We had a nice dinner at Cheri’s but the place and the shopping around it was not very busy. There is a large new time-share going up nearby next to the casino so perhaps Maho will soon be like it was on our first visit—jumping with a lot of people around.<br><br>BEACHING:<br><br>The main purpose of our SXM trips is to relax and we certainly did that. We stayed under an umbrella (included in the daily rate if you stay at CO) just to the right of Papagayos toward the water sports hut. The beach all along CO’s property was wide and nice. As soon as you got to Pedro’s, however, the beach really got very, very narrow for quite a long stretch—much more narrow than it was last year. Once you got past Kon-Tiki, it started to get wider. It was of little consequence to us since we did our beaching at CO.<br><br>When we arrived on Friday, June 29, we were undecided about taking the Tiko-Tiko cruise which we had enjoyed on our two previous trips. By the time Tuesday had rolled around we still had not decided if we were going to take it. <br><br>Our daily position on the beach was very near where Philippe and Emmanuel, Tiko-Tiko’s crew, met each day’s cruisers. On Tuesday, we were watching the cruisers start to assemble when, all of a sudden, one of them spied my wife and raced over. She and her husband had taken the cruise last year with us and we all had a great time. One thing led to another and it turned out that Philippe had had a cancellation---resulting in me racing to the mini-suite to get my credit card so that we could again take the cruise with our friends from last year. I told you that staying at CO is convenient.<br><br>As last year, we had a great time! All the other people on the cruise were great. One of the men was a little worried about getting sea-sick (he was prone to it) and the water was particularly rough this year. Nevertheless, he made it both ways in fine shape. The 45 minute cruise is so short and the Tiko-Tiko is so sea-worthy that I don’t think anyone should worry about getting sea-sick. <br><br> Had the usual great lunch served by Philippe and Emmanuel clad in white tie. During lunch, our friend lost her expensive prescription sunglasses overboard. Despite valiant attempts by others to dive and find them, they were lost. Three days later, I ran into our friend early in the morning at CO’s store and she had the sunglasses on. It seems that the day before Philippe went diving looking for the glasses and he found them and returned them to her. For this and many other reasons, the Tiko-Tiko cruise is highly recommended---a really fun way to spend a day that passes very quickly.<br><br>We were lucky during our stay—cruise ships were in only two days so the parade of black socks was not very often or very noticeable. <br><br>ODDS AND ENDS:<br><br>Crime seems always to be a topic when SXM is mentioned. Some folks were talking about an attempted hold-up on the road to CO in April—never did find out if it was true. CO’s security was always apparent and welcomed—day and night. In our travels around the island we never saw police but we never really felt we needed them. <br><br>Let me take that statement about not needing police back. What SXM really needs on both the Dutch side and French side are hard-nosed traffic cops. The driving by locals this year was far worse than we experienced our previous two visits. I am not just talking about speeding (which was bad enough) but just plain carelessness. Passing on hills and on curves, pulling out in front of on-coming traffic, motorcyclists popping wheelies on a whim------I heard more talk from SXM visitors about the driving than I did about crime. One of the reasons we chose to eat more often than we had planned to at Papagayos was that I just did not want to drive at night around the island anymore than was necessary. This is something for the powers that be on SXM to consider if they want to grow and expanded their tourist industry.<br><br>While the driving was criminal, the main roads on SXM for the most part were in good shape—especially by Caribbean standards. Rue de Coconut Grove (the road you take off the main drag to get to CO) really does need attention---it was almost impossible to navigate it without hitting at least one Hyundai sized pothole. The private road to CO was its usual jaw-rattling self but they did put down and grade some dirt at its entrance off Rue Coconut Grove when we there which improved the first 25 yards or so of the road. <br><br>Speaking of Hyundais, the most ubiquitous car our two visits were white Hyundai Accents (which we had). Awfully hard at times to find your care in a parking lot full of the same white Accents. This year, the most ubiquitous cars were gray Hyundai Accents. I don’t consider this progress but it is a change.<br><br>I was able to keep shopping to a minimum this trip!! No trip to Phillipsburg as even my wife was too tired to want to go. We did some light jewelry shopping at stores at Maho and that was about it. <br><br>To sum up, we wanted to relax on this trip and we did. CO was wonderful—we packed as we always do way more clothes than we needed. The weather was a little windy but otherwise very nice----what little rain there was mainly fell at night. June 2002 cannot come fast enough for us!!<br><br><br><br>Gary in CA