Sand Gravity Sucks! Thursday July 27th

It sucks you into your lounge chair and keeps you there for hours on end. This pretty much sums up our day. We awoke again to over-cast skies and took a more casual stroll down the beach to La Playa and then turned back around. After a breakfast of coffee and cereal in our studio, we decided to take a glass, fill it with ice and finish off our pot of coffee as iced coffee and took it down to our chairs on the beach. It wasn’t as breezy as yesterday and at times the wind died down almost completely as we sat there talking about how fortunate we were to be in St. Martin even though the weather wasn’t quite as nice as we’d like it to be. The sun was beginning to peek through the thick clouds but looked like a flashlight in thick fog for most of the morning. The beach boys never did put up the yellow umbrellas the entire day, though we began to see shadows in the sand when the sun finally began to shine more earnestly. The blue of the sky never did appear, as the clouds were the dominant feature of the day. However, it was warm even as the breeze picked up again in the afternoon.

We had a bloody Mary at the Perch but decided to bring our drinks back to our chairs and enjoy them there….another evidence of that sucking sand gravity. The next decision was what to do about lunch. Last year we walked down the beach and stopped in the Bikini Beach Bar for margaritas, nachos and calamari. Again, we requested the chef put cheese on the menu item “guacamole and chips”. We ordered our first margarita and then decided on another after finishing off the made-to-order nachos. I recalled our fate the previous year when after drinking two of Bikinis’ margaritas I had to repeat the phrase “ocean on the left, beach on the right” in order to find our way back to Club Orient. It wasn’t quite as bad this time around (I simply intoned, “walk INTO the wind, not WITH the wind”). Those babies are strong. We asked the waitress what they put in them and she seemed to say, what sounded like through our intoxicated eardrums, “5 shots of tequila in each margarita”. I may asked again to be sure….but before we start drinking.

We did make it back to our chairs and pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon there, pulling ourselves away from the sucking gravity a few times for an occasional swim to cool down. It was a bit brighter now and as I mentioned, the sun was trying to make another appearance since a couple days ago. All in all, we had a wonderful time on the beach. My wife slept on her chair while I watched numerous fully clothed or suited strollers make their way up and back the length of Club O’s beach area. At one point, I trekked out to the rocky area jutting out into the ocean in front of Papagayos, thinking I could walk it just for "something else to do”. Once I got there I realized that it was not going to happen in bare feet, so I stopped back at our studio and grabbed my Tevos and made the journey, hoping not to trip as I was certain the pock marked lava would surely leave an array of cuts and bruises on my body. Oh yeah (still recovering at this late hour from the margaritas) I made that journey in the morning before our stop at Bikini Beach Bar. I most certainly would have tumbled onto the rocks if I had tried it afterwards; the consolation being I would not have felt the fall.

After a three-hour nap we decided on dinner at Papagayos. I hate to complain, but we will not be eating dinner there again. If you care to know why, ask and I could give more detail in tomorrow’s report. If not, there are enough comments about things at Papagayos on TTOL to give you an impression of why we made the decision to dine elsewhere for dinner. I will say, we had a good burger and fries there yesterday for lunch.

Just a brief comment on our studio at Club Orient: some have mentioned the “paper thin” walls, but it really has not been an issue for us. We hear an occasional “yawn” and the banging of a drawer, but I have not been able to make out any conversation our neighbors have had since we’ve been here. But then again, they speak French….and I don’t!

Lancer