TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Petites Cayes

One of the highlights of our past trips have been the enjoyable hike from Friar’s to Happy Bay. We want to try Petites Cayes on our next trip and would love any input/advice from those that have visited. We are runners and shape/conditioning shouldn’t be a problem. We have found how to get there as far as the road to take but where to park was not mentioned. Thanks in advance to anyone that can help us on this day trip!

We are also runners that have hiked to petite cayes twice. First time we parked near the dump across from Pinel island and hiked about 35-40 minutes. The hike is over a lot of broken conch shells. Some of the hike has a path. The downside of hiking from this side is the car did not feel very secure. You just park along the beach in no mans land.
The second time we drove into the Anse Marcel area and parked. Car felt way more secure. Big populated parking lots. You have to find the start of the path. Park to the first open lot on your right after driving down the hill into Anse Marcel. Now you have to start hiking down a service road on the opposite side of the marina. When you see a green water tank you walk in behind it and pick up the path. It is a steep and rocky path with a lot of stove pipe cactus along the way. About a 45 minute hike. View the path from google maps satellite view.
It is kind of a coin toss which is better, but we did not worry about the car from the Anse Marcel side.

We parked at the dump (just park alongside the road where it ends, there will probably be other cars there). It's true that it seems pretty isolated, but I figure leave nothing in your car and take your chances :>). It's a nice hike around the NE point of the island (good ocean views), then you stumble across dinner-plate-sized chunks of eroded coral all along the beach towards Petite Caye. Wear good shoes (I wore tevas, my wife, Merrills) We went on a weekend, and I was disappointed with the number of people there, maybe a dozen. The pools around the east point of Petite Caye are pretty nice. Take water, and food if you intend to picnic, of course. The beach when we were there wasn't very nice actually - steep, rough rocky sand and a big drop-off in the water - of course this changes over time.