Wendy,

As I’m sure you know, John and I have been visiting SXM every year since 1973 and often multiple trips in any given year so your question is of particular interest to me.

Back in the early 70s we would usually plant our sorry butts on Mullet Beach for the day and took many/most of our meals right there at Mullet Resort with the occasional trip into P’Berg and/or Marigot but that was about the extent of our travels. The roads weren’t great and we were less certain of our environs.

In the early 80s we began bringing our girls and later their friends and we started to do a whole lot more exploring all over the island. We found places we never knew existed and we loved the exploring. We thought we’d really come to know the island well but then our girls got married and started having families of their own and doing their own exploring which often included us. The unique thing about SXM is there’s always something new to find and find things they did so yes, more exploring.

But I guess things really do go full circle because in the last few years prior to Irma we found ourselves once again more inclined to spend many of our days at Mullet, and surprisingly, we were even content to spend many a day without budging from the Towers Pool.

But Irma brought about more changes and once the first few post-Irma trips were behind us, and we’d seen the devastation across the island along with the recovery efforts made and in some areas missing, we became once again more content to stay in our new environs. During the full two weeks we were on island in April, if we hadn’t had so many dinner plans we might never have left Beachside Villas and were perfectly content to relax there without the running from place to place.

Over so many years we’ve explored most of the near islands, and for what it’s worth and purely IMHO, with the possible exception of Saba, once you’ve seen them once or twice, that’s more than enough, my theory being a beach is a beach is a beach and the Caribbean sand and beautiful waters on SXM can’t really be beat! We have our favorite restaurants and shops to visit and island friends made over the years but for some of us, comes a point in life we just want to sit back and enjoy the things we’ve already found.

So to answer your question, yes! We are definitely more inclined to be perfectly content for the most part, staying put and relaxing in a spot we love and enjoy, socializing with people we’ve also come to enjoy without need to travel around as we once did.