Hi all,

Here is the next installment in our observations of the island itself during our recent trip. As I put the notes together, it became pretty clear there was going to be more than just “one” more post to all of this. For those of you running out the clock, don’t worry, this will all end soon… really.

Again please understand that these are my views. They are the result of combining an active imagination with a first time visit to Sint Maarten / Saint Martin and your experiences or opinions may vary.

Also, if you haven’t had the opportunity yet, please try to read the previous post “The Island – part 1” and possibly even the others in the series, since that will answer some questions that may arise when you read…


The Island – part 2


Prologue…

Even from the distance of Maho Bay Beach on Sint Maarten, the cruise ship approaching Saba Island seemed large. Yet, from Sint Maarten no one could hear or see the troubles that were about to be visited upon the serene little island in the distance. Memories had faded of the naval aircraft carrier tragedy from so long ago and even the rumors associated with that event had subsided. Indeed, memories had also faded of the events that had unfolded here on Sint Maarten in Philipsburg in the not too distant past. It was difficult to find anyone who remembered a time when the giant ships didn’t come. It was harder still to locate anyone who had warned against the promised “prosperity” that these ships would bring. The list of advertised benefits was long and very few people were thinking about the potential consequences back then. Most bought into the concept on simple short term thinking, since that’s always the easiest way to go and the Cruise Empire knows this all too well. No, if you cast your eyes off to Saba on that fateful day, all you saw was a scene played out in so many ports throughout the islands that it probably didn’t even raise one’s curiosity. The people looking out to sea from Maho maybe never really even saw the leviathan draw up alongside the tiny harbor and send its heavy anchors straight on to the lovely reefs bordering the shoreline since, by then, another aircraft was approaching the runway at SXM, and it was time for another round of “spin the tires”… Whooo Hooo.


The island…

Whenever we travel to a new place, we often try to understand what makes it tick. Why do people live there and why would people want to go there? We attempt to find what it was that brought people in the first place (both as residents and as visitors) since that more often defines the soul of a place. We wondered, as we became familiar with the island, what is the “soul” of Sint Maarten / Saint Marten? Perhaps this question is made more difficult to answer because of the very juxtaposition of the two countries. Sint Maarten and Saint Marten, both tiny places, both trying to claim their own sense of identity, joined together out here in the Caribbean very far away from their respective manager countries. The soul… It isn’t jewelry. It isn’t nudism. It isn’t timeshares. These are all things that have gravitated to the island because it was worth the while of the companies offering the products or the services or the people wanting to partake of the activity to set up on the island, or because it was a natural place to express one’s self that way. These are things that came about on the island because there were people there willing to buy or people willing to disrobe. Those people, of course, came because of the soul of the island. Hmmm… But what was it?

The TTOL forum is a truly unique and powerful travel resource. One way that I misused the forum, though, was that, through my detailed research, I tended to elevate my expectations for a given establishment (like a restaurant) to a point that, on any given day, the place might not be able to meet. I ended up over-reading the posts. If I did my research and saw 100 posts about an eatery, and there were 97 raving about it (the other 3 would have been made up of people who rented their cars from the majors like Hertz or Avis – so they clearly weren’t of sound mind, according to the TTOL regulars, and their opinions didn’t count), I figured the place would be fantastic. Well, you know, that just might not be the case on, say, Tuesday, June 26. So it was that on that Tuesday, June 26 we hastened over to Zee Best to have zome breakfast. The breakfast itself (fresh crepes containing fresh ingredients) was good and the darling young lady who served us was helpful and efficient, and eventually, pleasant. We ate well and it wasn’t pricey. But, I had developed an expectation of the place that was artificial and I found that this actually detracted from our experience. I don’t quite kno how to express this but I kind of wish I hadn’t done the research on TTOL to the depth that I did.

I’d eat at Zee Best again without hesitation but I came to realize that the expectations for the place had been set arbitrarily in my mind and that can be pretty unfair of me when I am judging a place I’ve never been that has, in fact, done precisely what I wanted it to do (feed us well, in this case). I felt like I wanted the place to be even better. I can’t quite put my finger on what I was expecting either. So instead of rushing back to my laptop to post a note saying “Zee Best Zucks Big Time…”, I reminded myself that I would definitely recommend it to anyone else and that nothing we ate there killed us or even made us look like we had been travelling between the islands on the Edge ferry recently. In fact breakfast tasted good and was served with a smile by a young lady who has seen more than her fair share of “visitors” demanding that their coffee taste just like it would at home (“Make sure it’s 2 percent!” – because God alone knows just how bad it would be if the restaurant had the unmitigated gall to put half an ounce of whole milk in the coffee that the guest would drink while they were eating that freshly baked chocolate croissant). It actually took me a while to realize why I felt a little disappointed until I realized it was me.

I did do something really embarrassing at the restaurant, though, so I might not return if only for fear of being remembered for something that was my fault. When the server presented the bill, I checked the price (which was $33 plus change) and I drew enough cash to cover it and a decent tip. I almost never read bills when I’m at a restaurant (which is probably why we’re still poor – or at least one of the reasons) but I glanced at this check for some unknown reason. On the bill there was a section that said “Total” and which had an amount of $17 odd dollars written in it. Then there was a section that said “Tax” in which was neatly written “$16”, and underneath was the final amount of $33-odd. Okay… Tax? And… more than 90% tax? I already had the money out to pay the bill so I figured the server wouldn’t think I was giving her a hard time, and I was really just curious when I pointed to the tax box on the bill and said “Umm, Hi, can you tell me what the tax rate is in Sint Maarten?” “There’s no tax on Sint Maarten” was her speedy reply and I immediately felt like a heel. If I had thought about it a little I would have realized the “Tax” is Papiementu for “Drinks” and the $16 covered our two glasses of orange juice and two coffees (with whatever type of milk that they contained since neither of us were fussed about such things). Still, I didn’t think about it and I’m sure the young lass had now pegged me as a “visitor” of the worst kind. I did tip her and thank her earnestly so I hope she didn’t take it too bad. I’d just paid a total of $33 dollars for two good breakfasts in Paradise, and I doubt I would have raised an eyebrow if I’d paid that just for myself in some of the business hotels I frequent in Manhattan. I had to learn to use a site like TTOL more effectively since it provides so much valuable information. But you can really overload yourself while attempting to research a place or two.

By the way, just across the lane from Zee Best there is construction going on at a building in between various shops there. Don’t be surprised when this building disappears. It will have been coated in RP-CAP since it is a new access point for the mega-yacht marina CASH station. If you’re a Rich Person, you’ll still be able to see it and it will look quite charming. To the rest of us, however, it will simply be another empty space that people will occasionally comment about, and others will occasionally disappear into.


Through TTOL, I also over-planned, of course. I extracted a list of about 5000 restaurants, 180 beaches, 17 places to stay and 6 places to rent a car from that were “absolutely the best!!”. Obviously this wasn’t going to work but I at least built up a list of restaurants based on a month of research prior to the trip. We had so many places to try for restaurants that, for all the meals we had during a week on the island, we ended up doing a grand total of… 2. In addition to Zee Best, one of the other suggestions for restaurants that we ended up taking on was Paris Bistro. This actually happened by accident. We had foolishly decided to walk along what passes for shops in the Maho area on Thursday afternoon and, after discovering a largely empty indoor shopping area in a plaza next to the Food Express and after walking the line of shops on the other side of the road and realizing they were selling all kinds of things we weren’t about to buy, we found ourselves standing at Paris Bistro without even realizing it. This was one of the restaurants “on the list” and so we decided not to cook tonight and to actually finally eat out. We were so glad we did! When we showed up for dinner later, we were greeted by an ebullient French fellow who seemed glad to see us and bubbled us over to the table of our choice, a little bit away from the street. The restaurant is open air (but covered) and overlooks the main street a little bit up the road from the Food Express. It is directly opposite a casino and timeshare resort hotel and there is a lot of activity on the road during the evening. There is a very convenient and safe ATM right next to the casino. It’s convenient since you can simply extract your cash and then go into the casino to have it extracted from you. It’s safe for the very same reason.

We’re not into noise and bustle being too close at hand so we asked to sit away from the action which seemed to surprise our host. He recovered immediately though and introduced us to our server, Gail. She is a lovely young woman with a warm and welcoming smile and she let us know about some specials and left to fetch our drinks while we considered the menu. One of the things I had noted from TTOL posts was that people had warned about going to a restaurant and not ordering expensive drinks. This can apparently result in poor service. We didn’t notice this at all here. Neither Sonia nor I drink alcohol anymore. I think when we first met both of us moved in separate circles of seemingly indestructible young folk who thought nothing of regularly drinking themselves into a stupor. That kind of living took its toll on us early. I guess I find it hard to do just about anything in moderation so I decided a long time ago it would be safer for all concerned if I didn’t develop a drinking habit since not doing that in moderation could easily get me killed. Gail didn’t seem the least bit fussed at Sonia’s request for Iced Tea and my order of a whole Diet Coke and she delivered both with a cheery request for our food order.

We ordered items from the menu and sat back to enjoy each other’s company and to people watch. Another habit we have as far as dining out is concerned is to get to a restaurant early, usually around the time it opens. This often allows us to chat with the host and servers since they’re not yet busy. This was true here as well and we enjoyed our conversation with Gail and a brief discussion with the host, who spoke with a very pronounced French accent. A few other diners showed up while we were there including a fascinating study in human nature in the form of a woman of about 40 who was on her own when she arrived to regard the menu just outside the dining area. She was talking animatedly on a cell phone. The host moved towards her but waited a while to see if she would indicate that she wanted to dine. She finally stepped in to the restaurant, still chatting on her phone. The host walked up to her and, as he was about to inquire if she would, indeed, like to dine at the restaurant, she gave him the Yuppie wave-off. This is done by partially extending the arm that isn’t holding the cell phone and then, using a circular motion of the wrist, extending the index finger upwards in a motion that ends with the implicit statement “don’t interrupt me, I’m busy right now talking on a cell phone”. The best Yuppies manage to execute this gesture without ever actually looking at the person to whom it is directed. I’ve seen this done in restaurants, grocery stores and all kinds of other locations where these self-important people need to continue their incessant conversations. Since it is almost always the case that you can hear their side of the conversation, I must say that I rarely hear things like “Yes Mr. President, I can confirm that the Ambassador has agreed to make the necessary arrangements to convene the world peace conference”. It’s more often that you hear statements like “…so I told him that if he didn’t get off his butt and take Connor to soccer and Caitlynn to dance, then he could just cook his own dinners this week!”.

The woman on the phone felt that her wave-off was enough of an acknowledgement and she never looked at the host. He turned away and stood off, waiting patiently. I thought about how many ways I would break her finger if she did that to me and where I would stuff her cell phone while the person on the other end of the line continued the conversation “…Jenny your voice sounds so muffled all of a sudden. Are you sitting on your phone again?”. I guess this is why I will never work in retail again. My couple of years managing a retail store in a shopping mall in Olympia Washington was well before the cell phone era so I never broke a customer’s finger. After five minutes of rapid fire conversation by the woman on the phone while standing in the restaurant the host tried a second pass. This time he held up a menu as a shield against another wave-off and the woman, who kept nattering away on the phone the entire time, simply walked ahead of him to a table near us. She sat and the host gently placed the menu on the table in front of her. She never even nodded acknowledgement. This must have been an important call indeed. As the host walked by us he nodded and smiled at Sonia and I. We returned the gesture. Now it was Gail’s turn to try and extract the woman from her phone conversation and see if there was any civility or manners left inside. Gail approached and stood by while the woman kept chatting away on the phone. Eventually she did manage to point to one of the drinks on the menu, thereby indicating that she would like to order that one. The woman used the same finger to place her order and I began to think about meat grinders and garbage disposals. She never looked at Gail, who left to fetch the drink.

I know it’s not my place to fight other people’s battles but I find it hard to ignore. This is especially true when those people have been nice to me and are in an impossible situation (such as a restaurant server who will be faced with an indignant and arrogant patron). I also know all too well that people choose to live their lives in their own way, and that they don’t owe me a living of any kind and, as long as they aren’t harming anyone, they should be free to do as they please. I know this and I really o try to live it. Honest…. Still, I’m about ready to get up and either toss the woman’s phone, or the woman, or both of them, right into the surf. I bet she would have simply continued the conversation. “Hey Mary, you should see what this jerk is doing to me right now. He’s throwing me into the water right here at this beach… you know, the one where the planes land, Mako or Wahoo or something like that. Here I go! Right into the water… Anyway, so Todd told Cindy he was going on a business trip but Julie saw him the next day at that hotel by the little gift shop on 23rd. You know the one. Next to that place where that guy tried to hit on me last year when I was wearing the dress that I bought from Colman’s at the Bayside Shops where Vickie fell over when she bought the wrong Latte from that idiot at the coffee place we used to…” as she would sink beneath the waves, there would be many folks thinking about a rescue. None would move to help… In the end, I didn’t fling this bug into the waves since I’m against killing any living thing, no matter how obnoxious.

When Gail came back with the woman’s drink she actually had the temerity to ask if the woman would like to order some food. Just like that! She simply stood over the woman and asked if she would like to order. Well… the phone lady simply gave her a full-force wave off and kept right on talking. Gail shrugged her shoulders and turned her attention to us. At this point I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all and Gail, in a moment of weakness, followed suit. Thankfully, the phone idiot didn’t notice since I would have hated to get Gail in trouble for simply acting like a human being. Eventually Gail returned and, once again, our favorite phone talker demonstrated her incredible multi-tasking prowess by simply pointing to a couple of items on the menu without once acknowledging Gail and without breaking stride in her conversation. As she approached our table, Gail commented to us something to the effect of “Oh well, I guess this is how our new technology world works now…”. She said it with a sigh that made me like her even more and she and Sonia and I shared a laugh over it.

Sonia and I had a delightful meal. The salads were fresh with a wonderful and light dressing. Sonia had a Veal Scaloppini and I had a marvelous Filet Mignon. One of the ways I can tell how professional a place is going to be is how they react to how I like my steak or beef cooked. I know I shouldn’t, but I like it well done. In my case, if it bleeds, it leaves. I’ve had restaurants where the server will actually begin to “educate” me on the perils of ordering meat this way. I will take it in stride, since I know they are only trying to ensure that I enjoy my meal but I already know that I really like my meat well cooked. I ordered a steak at a roadside restaurant in South Dakota once and the Waitress called out to everyone in the place “He wants it well done! I tried to tell him but he just won’t listen”. Needless to say, I haven’t been back there. At Paris Bistro there was no such discussion and the meat was perfectly cooked and delectable.

At the end of the meal one of the owner’s brought around a large bottle of what he called “Banana Rum” and a couple of tiny shot glasses. He proceeded to pour the drinks and said they were with his compliments. He left with a smile and so I decided I would go ahead and drink the tiny amount of liquid. It was delicious and I figured it was pretty safe given the small quantity and the fact that we were so close to our villa. I paid the bill and left a generous tip since we had indeed enjoyed terrific service and had loved our meals. We vowed to return. When we left, the woman was still yakking away on her phone and had never once even looked at anyone who had served her during the evening. I hoped she wasn’t given any complimentary rum…

When I got back to the villa I discovered a little secret about the incredibly poorly named rum. It may have been called “banana” but don’t be fooled. It was the best anti-libido agent I had ever encountered. I figured “Droopy” was a much better name. When a relaxing moment becomes the “right” moment, for goodness sakes don’t reach for a glass of this stuff or it will be the shortest “right” moment you’ve ever experienced. And I do mean “shortest” if you get my drift. If you’re concerned about an embarrassing moment when you go clothing optional on Orient Bay Beach, just drink some of this stuff and you won’t need to worry about that at all! It’s sneaky too since it makes you feel really “good” when you drink it. It just makes sure you won’t feel “good” later, if you know what I mean. It had to be Dutch since it surely wasn’t directed towards romance and the French would never consider it.

We did indeed return to Paris Bistro the very next day since we liked it so much on Thursday. I also wanted to see if there was a dead woman at a table with her head resting on her cell phone. If you picked up the phone you’d hear Lisa on the other end… “… so I told Janice to forget it. I’m just not into that stuff and I don’t think it’s right, even for someone who looks like her, you know? By the way, was that a gunshot I heard earlier? Jenny?? Hello…” There was no such dead lady so I suppose she had managed to wander off into the night. We had precisely the same meals on this second visit and the same folks served us. I asked Gail about the cell phone lady but we all just broke up laughing about it so I never did find out what became of her. Tonight’s people watching entertainment was provided by a young teenage girl who was part of a family dining at the restaurant. She had apparently recently received a digital camera but had yet to grasp the concept of just what someone does with one of these devices. She would aim the lens at herself and take a picture. She would then turn the camera around and express delight at the results. She did this over and over again. One day she’ll point the camera at something else and a whole new world will open up to her. The food was just as good this time as the night before and we were really glad we had come back, despite feeling so guilty that we hadn’t tried so many of the other places on the TTOL list. When our host brought the rum, I tried in vain to refuse it, mindful of its effects. He told me that it would be rude to refuse and I couldn’t argue with that so I downed a glass and consigned myself to the fact that the “right” moment wouldn’t be tonight.

I know people will form and then express their own opinions of a place but both Sonia and I can heartily recommend Paris Bistro. When we return to the island, we will eat there again. This time, though, I will trust that my being a regular will allow me to politely refuse the “banana” rum…


During our Sunday drive, which was our first significant exploration of the island, we decided we’d head to the “big city” of Pilipsburg. This is where we were bound to find life and some sort of open stores, despite the day. We headed over the notorious, and now wider, Simpson Bay Bridge. I’ve just realized that, to a boater, the width of a bridge is what a motorist considers the length of it. That’s pretty interesting really… We then passed through the rest of Simpson bay up until we reached the famous “T” junction. We could continue on to Cole Bay and Marigot beyond, or we could turn and head to Pilipsburg. This intersection was quiet on this Sunday morning and this deceived us. I allowed myself to think that the TTOL folks who had posted about how crazy this intersection gets were mistaken. We hung a right and began the climb up the hills on the way to the great city in the distance. Once Philipsburg came into view, we could see the long pier jutting out from the eastern end of Great Bay. There were no ships docked today. We felt that driving to town when there wasn’t a cruise ship in port was a good move on our part, since we’d be able to walk the shops at our leisure, chatting amiably with the folks behind the counter at each stop, since they wouldn’t be busy serving the passengers. At a roundabout we turned right and headed into town. You can’t help but let the anticipation build as you head to somewhere you’ve never been. What will it be like? What will we see? How many evil doers and their accompanying sales pitches will we have to dodge as we stroll the main street? What awaits us? Well… as it turns out on this Sunday morning… nothing. Nothing that is, except for the suicide runners.

When I’m in a strange locale I try to blend in by driving as the locals do. That way you tend to avoid evil doers who will rush out to your car and try and sell you something. You just look like “one of them”. On Sint Maarten, they must have developed a sense of Caribbean identity by watching the movie “Cool Runnings” (about the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled team) and they decided to invent their own game called “vehicular conga street-luge”. Joining a team is really easy. Just get on the road and insert yourself into one of the convoys. You can identify the participating vehicles by the brightly decorated inspirational messages they place across the top three quarters of their windscreens (this seems to help them increase their driving speed) and by the noise makers they attach to their exhaust pipes (so you can hear them if you are driving while visually impaired – perhaps after visiting a restaurant where you drank some misnamed “Crystal clear Rum”). I’ve never understood why, when men are young, they have so little faith in all those highly skilled engineers at the automobile manufacturers and feel the need to completely reconfigure their vehicles. So on the island, I would find myself becoming part of a small caravan of tiny cars being driven at breakneck speeds on all sides of whatever road we were on with no apparent course or destination in mind. This is conga street luge, “SXM style”. They seemed to welcome us even though we didn’t have the suitable adornments on our windscreen and the little Tieros didn’t make any noise from its exhaust pipe since I’m not sure it actually had an engine. Street luge can be fun for a while but, despite our best efforts to blend in, it soon became apparent that we stood out even when we were driving amongst the conga line and so the attempt at “hiding in plain sight” was pretty much useless. A couple of times we’d go hurtling past a Dutch police vehicle and the only car in the group he’d be looking at was us… I’d wave in a fruitless attempt to say “Hi, I’m just a friendly American idiot caught up in a group of speeding, dreadlocked youths who are probably laughing themselves senseless as they direct us all over the town!” but, at the speeds we were moving, I think the cops must have thought that I was making rude hand gestures at them rather than waving. Still we didn’t get pulled over and neither did any of the other vehicles in the conga line.

So it was that on this Sunday we were in the middle of a group of crazed drivers as we rocketed in to Philipsburg and ripped right past what appeared to be a small sidewalk off to our right that was lined with densely packed stores with vaguely familiar signs. The luge run took us further along before veering off to the right at an angle and then to a T junction where they all seemed to magically disappear. Just like that. Now we’re faced with a large green lake. Green sounds a little too natural and nice. I’m not sure what color to call it then, but when I say “green”, think of a bad green, something biologic. We turned right and headed along the road alongside this large pond only to encounter a curious new game being played out by hundreds of people who were apparently bored given that there was no one to sell timeshare apartments or jewelry to in town. These folks would line up on the town side of the road and, as we approached in the Tieros, they would lurch on to the road and run across it. First one would step out and then all manner of folks would follow and careen across the street just in front of us, within inches of being struck. It wasn’t just us being challenged by the runners either. Every vehicle became a game piece to be challenged, including a police car that was driving along a hundred feet or so ahead of us. It was wild and it amazed me that I didn’t see anyone get “popped”. I know it was a game being carried out on purpose, though, since it happened again when we made our way back through this section of town after we had driven by the eerily quiet cruise ship dock. Folks ran across just in front of us after waiting for us to approach. One woman actually pushed a baby in a stroller across right in front of a small truck and I was sure that she and her child would be crushed but she wasn’t. There was a hapless tourist family also playing and I was worried about them since the locals really seemed to know what they were doing and this group just looked like the Northern Europeans or Americans who participate in the running of the bulls in Pamplona... Stupid.

The other thing that struck us (pardon the pun) was that a great many of the local folks were heading over to the hot gravelly dusty area alongside the cesspool and they were spreading out blankets and setting down coolers to apparently have a botulism-induced picnic. Here we are on an island renowned for having some of the most wonderful beaches in the Caribbean and these folks are going to sit by the pond slime and watch the sickly-green chemicals bubble. We retraced our route without the company of a luge group and on the way out of town, we noticed that what I had thought was a sidewalk was in fact “Front” street, which is “behind” a row of shops and other establishments facing the beach at Great Bay. We resolved to give Philipsburg another try when things might be open since, during our trip, the whole town looked pretty uninviting to someone driving through at relativistic speeds in a conga line. It literally looked deserted except for the runners.

On the climb out from Philipsburg we turned in to the Divi Little Bay resort since Sonia had reached her “no-bathroom” limit and I thought there might be a place at the resort there that would fill dive tanks. Or, maybe they would only fill “Divi” tanks. Sorry… Anyway, we were ushered past a security gate by a security guard who must have used ESP to tell that we weren’t going to sell the residents more timeshares and didn’t have jewelry samples with us in the car, and we entered another world. It was very quiet. I had an image of a scene where tumbleweed rolls by and crows feed on the carcass of a dead evil doer by the side of the road. We pull up and tie up our trusty steed at the hitching post. We dismount and regard the area before us while we stand in the intense heat which casts waves over everything we see. A large bird shrieks in the distance. From the doors of one of the establishments facing the road could be heard faint strains of player-piano music. An old man sits perched against a wall of one of the resort buildings by the side of the road. A blade of Pandanus leaf extends from his mouth. A sombrero shields his head and face from the intense sun as I (“The Kid”) approach and inquire in a friendly voice “Howdy. Are there restrooms nearby?” The man slowly raises his head to the point where he is looking up with a deep squint at the tall stranger and his lovely companion who have just ridden in on their shiny white Tieros. He regards the newcomers for a few seconds and The Kid is just about to attempt to use charade techniques to indicate “urinating” when the old man nods almost imperceptibly to the left and then slowly bows his head back to its original position. The lovely companion beats a hasty path to the indicated restrooms and the Kid takes a look around. There’s a large, bedraggled, parrot in a gazebo style cage on the grounds and our hero wanders over to it while he waits for his lady to return. The bird looks tired and eyes this fresh faced stranger approaching him with a resigned indifference. Getting a dive tank filled doesn’t look good. Getting just about anything here doesn’t look good and the Kid got the distinct impression that this particular town didn’t take too kindly to strangers. When Sonia returned, she and the Kid got back aboard their little Daihatsu and rode out of town, leaving the sad parrot behind.

I’m sure the resort is really quite nice. When I was diving, I met people who had stayed there and they said they loved it and would recommend it to anyone. It must just have been the whole Sunday thing, perhaps coupled with the fact that it was fast becoming “off season” on Sint Maarten, but we really didn’t get a welcoming sense about the place. Maybe this was just a massive example of wary-local syndrome playing itself out before us. We continued on back towards Simpson Bay and our Villa at Beacon Hill beyond.


In part three of the story, learn about the dual circumnavigations, close calls with the law and the strangest luxury resort I’ve ever seen, among other things. I hope you enjoyed the post and will stay with me.

Thanks for taking the time and stay tuned.


James