Hello all,
It has been so long yet it all still seems so real to me. I had to finish the story if only to tie up the loose threads I left you all with so long ago (it was only July of last year for goodness sakes!)…
I’m back, and the same disclaimer applies. What follows are the observations of someone who visited the island and brought his vivid and twisted imagination with him. Should you be tempted to try any of the places or life changing events mentioned herein, your results may (and probably will) vary… you have been warned.
With apologies to “chbpod” for the wordiness, I give you…
The island – part 3
Prologue
It wasn’t the tiny harbor. No, that could be enlarged. It wasn’t the quirky roads. They could be flattened, paved and widened. It wasn’t even the lack of food facilities and lack of a mindless array of little shops selling nothing in particular. These could all have been built in short order. No… in the end, what drove the giant ship away were the Saba islanders themselves. These people had the temerity to actually want their island to stay just how it was and weren’t too eager to flatten it, pave it and over commercialize it just to make the Cruise Empire happy. As the legions of over-fed passenger-zombies made their way into the tiny harbor in their brightly colored landing craft they were cheered on by happy sounding, bright eyed “cruise directors”. “Okay folks. After you’ve spent the day decimating whatever place this is, be sure to be back at the landing here by 4:00 with your Empire Card in hand. We need to be sure you aren’t a bad-guy!! Nobody gets back on the ship without their card! Oh, and don’t forget to be as rude as you can to anyone who serves you. Remember, Empire Cruises has a reputation to keep up!!”. But as the flaccid bunch disgorged onto the tiny and impossibly steep roadway at the harbor, a rumbling sound could be heard from far above. In keeping with their ancient tradition, some islander had removed a shoring piece and released a veritable torrent of logs, dead goats, used vans and other debris which was then hurled down the tiny strip of road at the hapless cruise ship warriors. With terrified screams (and not a few complaints) the bloated masses scurried back onto their bright little boats which then hurriedly made way for the giant ship, which was dragging its anchors across yet another patch of thousand year old pristine coral. Beaten, the emperor was displeased. He would need to take an extra measure of bounty from his next port of call to make up for this transgression. As he gazed up towards the top of the nearest hill, a van “popped” a goat, or possibly a pedestrian, into the sea. The ship weighed its massive anchors, tearing out another acre of brightly colored sea life and, in the process, apparently snagging a small inter-island catamaran laden with seasick humans, and, as the huge vessel began to make way, it discharged waste from the previous evening’s festivities. The dark sludge settled to the sea bottom and discolored everything it touched. This brought some small measure of satisfaction to the defeated crew and their ruler. There would be no celebration tonight.
Driving
Some years ago, I watched with fascination as the first few news stories about the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers were published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Those tiny little craft so far away from home roaming along the surface of the red planet and then encountering craters big enough to swallow them completely were incredible. Those canny NASA-JPL engineers would send signals out to gently guide the rovers along their path in steady, precise directions. Oh the time and careful deliberations they took before sending out each instruction and then the tense moments waiting for the long traveled communications to return over the vastness of space to our pale blue dot here in the heavens. There were scenes of joy from the rover controllers as they realized that the twelve meters they had just directed the little machine through had been navigated successfully and yet more astonishing pictures of dry red dust were happily beamed back to the waiting computers so grad students could spend years determining that, yes, the soil in that spot was just like the soil in the last spot. Those beautiful little vehicles made such graceful moves taking all the time in the world while being directed with incredible patience by truly brilliant young minds here on Earth.
Of course, neither of those rovers were being pursued at breakneck speed by a giant ugly green H2 Hummer that was trying to crush them (although I have a feeling that such an event taking place on Mars would have made a pretty big splash in the news!).
This was on my mind as we approached the quaint little town of Marigot about half way through our circumnavigation of the infamous lagoon. We came upon potholes that were truly stupendous! Maybe in a typical American vehicle those holes in the pavement would have been merely bone-jarring but in the Tieros they were nothing short of mind blowing. I had the impression that the folks in the Hummer behind us would have been treated to the curious view of the incredible disappearing and reappearing toy SUV. One second there would be this little white car they were trying to kill and the next second – poof! – it would literally disappear! A second or two later and it would suddenly jump back up before them and be back in their sights. I guess the roads maintenance folks around Marigot provide these holes as a sort of fun game for those on the island hardy enough to drive a large vehicle (like a stupid green H2 Hummer!). We used to play “kick the can” as kids on the street in Berkeley. Here they play “crush the car”, and the best drivers of the teeny cars (see Tieros) manage to duck into a crater just before being run over. Cat and mouse indeed…
At times when we approached the rim of one of these calderas my cliff rescue training began to kick in and I thought about setting up a multi-point belay and lowering the car (and my hapless beautiful wife) via a series of climbing ropes and a well placed figure of eight descender. I might have tried it if it wasn’t for the local “big car” drivers and their dates with car crushing destinies. No time. No time! Move on and duck into that one… there… THERE!
Driving on the island was an experience to be remembered. It’s now so long after we returned and I can still see it as clearly as yesterday. Sometimes personal terror has its upsides – at least where memory is concerned…
We made two circumnavigations while on the island. The first, as mentioned, was around the lagoon and the second was around the rest of the island in order to take in Orient Beach from our little abode on Burgeaux Bay Beach next to the Hyper Train construction mosque on Beacon Hill Road.
The lagoon
The lagoon trip was somewhat “off the cuff” with no particular planning. We left the house (remembering to press “away” on the pointless little house-alarm remote) and drove past the crazy aircraft tire spinners at the end of the runway waiting for the joy of being crushed or blown out to sea by a giant airplane as they tried to spin the tires and give the passengers a more comfortable landing. Instead of turning right at the roundabout, though, we kept going up through the Maho area. We had read a lot about this from the folks on the TTOL forum and knew of it as an apparently great nightlife spot. A real “happening” place with lots of action.
A while after we moved to South Florida from Seattle, we decided to drive down to South Beach in Miami so we could see what all the excitement was about and I could maybe see some of those “beautiful people” and try to imagine them on a clothing-optional beach. Maybe one of those super models or cute tennis players or some wealthy heiress would run out in front of our car and force us to stop suddenly. There would be an apologetic glance, a little smile, a knowing wink and then several months of a deeply passionate, romantic affair in one of those improbable “Princess and the Pauper” or “Beauty and the Beast” situations where… Oh, sorry about that! I get a little carried away with my thoughts sometimes. Well… where was I? Oh yes, as we drove along the famous stretch of Miami street we were suddenly struck by how incredibly ordinary it all looked. In fact, at around noon on a typical weekday, South Beach looked positively drab. The various nightclubs were shuttered and most seemed in need of a good coat of paint and a little fixing up here and there. There were no beautiful tennis players or super models. Just the Beast (or maybe the Pauper – or both). How could this be? After all the hype and the allure, I had to remind myself with a little “what did you expect?!” since they don’t call it “nightlife” without reason. Perhaps there really was something to the whole South Beach scene but we missed it and drove on.
In the early Sint Maarten Sunday afternoon as we drove through the mostly deserted Maho area I felt a similar South Beach type reaction coming on. The place was deceased. Bereft of life. Quiescent. It felt like we had just ridden in to a ghost town. “Shane! Shane!!” I thought I heard in the distance. We resolved to see the place at night some other day to truly experience what people had raved about.
We drove on through a valley of tall buildings, with sleepy shops on either side of the road, to the top of the hill. The road at this point seems to almost be a driveway and we slowed down as we began to think this was the end of the line. We discovered that slowing down on a highway on Sint Maarten can be foolish indeed. Keeping in mind that “Objects in the Mirror are closer then they appear”, I was suddenly shaken by the partially blue-shifted view of a crazed young man in what I was later to learn was a “bus” racing up behind us. My options were to step on the gas pedal or turn the Tieros and its terrified occupants into a small hood ornament for this maniac. I stepped on the gas…
All of a sudden we were out of the Maho area and driving through what appeared to be a deserted golf course. The maniac-bus screamed past us and faded in a red-shifted haze in the distance. I felt for the passengers, if indeed there had been any on board. This golf course was utterly devoid of people chasing after tiny white balls that are apparently the size of hail stones (or is it the other way around, I can never remember). When we travelled to Maui some years ago I remember driving along side various golf courses that were literally teeming with people roaming around in carts or pulling wheeled bags behind them assured of the rationale behind having paid several hundred dollars to walk among grassy fields, sand traps and people exclaiming “Mahalo!” often. Golf was clearly not a priority on Sint Maarten. Perhaps the course was closed so they could rejuvenate it after the damage caused by being overplayed by thousands of happy golfers but it really didn’t look that way. One thing to note as you make the transition from Maho is that the road now appears to actually be a golf cart track. A slender ribbon of concrete which, we discovered to our amazement actually appeared to become wider whenever a vehicle approached and passed us from the opposite direction. Don’t be alarmed as you make your way along this failed monorail track, this may simply be there by design in order to prepare you if you should happen to be travelling to Saba Island during your trip. The roads there look exactly the same.
One thing we did notice as we cruised along the rail thin strip of concrete was what appeared to be a rather fascinating holiday resort built up all around the golf course. This place was big. And it seemed to cater to hardy types. Perhaps marines or ex-foreign legionnaires with small obnoxious children that love to annoy scuba divers. You see the place consists of dozens of individual buildings, arrayed in a typical resort fashion and yet each one seemed to be missing at least one whole wall, and all of their windows and most of their fixtures. Many had a pile of what could only be presumed to be rotting furniture, bed sheets, dead animals and unexploded ordinance stuffed into a heap in the corner. The place must have been popular because there were a great many cars in various states of repair parked around each unit. And each building had a distinctive set of decorative paint swirls inside and outside that sort of resembled graffiti.
This place is obviously a tough guy’s dream! We eventually happened upon the most unique reception area too. The office building was surrounded by barbed wire and looked as run down as the various holiday units. What fun! I guess you have to run the gantlet to check in… We, of course, had already checked in to our villa, and my tough guy days are pretty far behind me, so we left the Mullet Bay resort behind as we ventured towards Cupecoy. At night this place would be the exact opposite of the South Beach (or Maho) situation. Instead of coming alive, it would be positively eerie!
I believe from my TTOL research that the place had once been an actual resort and had been damaged almost to the point of destruction by a hurricane. It has apparently sat in the state we saw it (June of 2007) awaiting the outcome of some internecine legal battle before it can be dealt with one way or another. If you venture here and decide to approach one of the many “guests” we observed to strike up a conversation or to discuss exactly how much cash you are carrying and how much is back in your hotel room, imagine yourself doing something like that in some run-down and destitute part of just about any major American city. My guess is you wouldn’t do it and I don’t recommend it here, if you know what I mean.
I got the feeling those folks milling around the units were plenty happy not having to talk with seemingly wealthy tourists, ex-marines included. For the most part they seemed to be budding artists contemplating their next expressive creation which they would paint on one of the many exposed walls. It’s best not to disturb artists at work. Can you imagine the Sistine Chapel a long time ago with a gentleman lying on his back on scaffolding painstakingly painting the ceiling when he is interrupted by a loud and deeply annoying chiming up with “Sir… Hey Sir… Is there a bathroom anywhere nearby and can you point me to a decent burger anywhere in this place?? I mean! Come on… What IS that stuff you folks call food around here anyway!?? Hey Harry, he won’t answer. I mean, how RUDE! He probably doesn’t even speak English. Hey buddy, I don’t think much of your doodles there… You call that color??”
I have a habit of resting my hand on my wife’s leg while I drive (or, she often does this to me). People sometimes remark about how the two of us still seem to always be either holding hands or resting a hand gently on each other. They find it cute and somehow quaint. I find it exhilarating still. Just gently touching my wife lights me up as it always has. I guess love does that to you. When we reach for each other while driving in our vehicle at home, the outstretched hand rests nicely on the other’s closest knee. In the little Tieros however, an outstretched hand from either of us would be scraping the road on the other side of the car. It took us a while to get used to the proximity (and we’re both proximity people). I was pretty sure I could pick Sonia’s far side pocket as we drove along and tried to avoid being struck by a maniac-bus. Had we been much younger and as risqué as we used to be, this closeness could have presented all sorts of possibilities. It might be fun to say something like “Yep! We conceived number two while parked in the Tieros behind the casino in Maho!”. Now the contortions just made us smile. We’ll leave the risqué stuff to some other youngsters.
We shot out of the golf course and found ourselves in a massive construction site we soon learned was Cupecoy. The building boom was plenty evident and I guess these places will be great when they’re finished. As it was I could only feel for those who were attempting to live or vacation amongst the cranes, tractors, cement mixers, dust and construction workers as the massive buildings took shape. I hope the view will be worth it in the end for those who buy in.
From the TTOL board, we would apparently know when we were driving past the clothing optional beach by the presence of several construction workers standing on a cliff touching their genitals. I’ve seen a similar form of this behavior when observing gang kids and certain rap musicians. They will make a quick grab through their deeply sagging pants for “old Harry” while singing some particularly important lyric or threatening a member of a competing gang. The gestures were beyond me until I watched a series of Discovery channel shows about apes and their behavior. Then it clicked. Just try telling me evolution isn’t real…
I guessed the genital tactile manipulations the TTOL posts were referring to would have been related to the fact that there were people choosing the “optional” part of wearing clothes on the beach. I figured that, if I saw some of the cliff-side finger-dancers that I would stop and do the clothing optional thing in front of them. I guarantee one look at me in that state and they would never bother another beachgoer again. As it was we never did see any of the observational pocket-pool players but, judging from the number of posts about them, they must exist. We drove right on through Cupecoy on our way around the lagoon. As we drove down to sea level we came across another ambitious construction project with some fancy name that didn’t fit with the present view. Why is it that we think that putting an “e” on the end of a word somehow portends wealth and luxury? Or anglicizing names to achieve the same effect. Almost every “Harbour Pointe” or “Willow Towne” I’ve seen hasn’t lived up to the hype. Oh well…
We climbed a small hill and quite suddenly found ourselves in what appeared to be a relatively upscale residential area. There were lots of gated homes fronting the road and some of them seemed to be quite fancy. No doubt a lot of these places had alarms and I wondered if the owners experienced the same sort of antics we had in the villa when we mistakenly pressed “Away” when we really meant “Stay”. Unlike our villa, many of these places had signs warning people approaching that the home was protected by one alarm company or another. I remarked about this to Sonia and the contrast to our place in Beacon Hill where the same signs all pointed inwards and warned the occupants that the place was “Secured by ADT”. Maybe potential intruders to a place in Beacon Hill were welcome to break in if they could make it past the dizzying array of defensive systems.
The road winds its way through this little suburb in the hills and then begins to descend to a fairly flat region at something close to sea level. On the way down we passed by some roads that led to some of the beaches we hoped to visit during our stay and we soon realized we were in France. There was Baie Rouge and Baie Longue. It was kind of cool to realize you were in another country and no one had asked you to remove your shoes first and to take your laptop out of the bag. We didn’t have the laptop with us anyway since we had left it for the burglars attempting to navigate the auto-turrets and the electrified pool back at the villa. We passed the landmarks and were now back at sea level on a fairly straight section of road pointed at Marigot in the distance. The topography was flat.
Terres Basse –the lowlands. We had seen some warnings on TTOL about being in this area at night but at this point it was early afternoon on a Sunday so we weren’t too concerned. As we made our way along we passed a road sign with the number “50” inside a red circle. I have driven vehicles on several continents and figured I knew that this meant the speed limit was 50 kilometers an hour. I lived in Australia when the country converted to the metric measurement system. Instead of determining velocity in furlongs per fortnight, we switched to kilometers per hour and I made the mental conversion just fine. I must confess that I liked the metric system once I got used to it. It’s kind of nice to have your weight cut in half when simply read off as numbers (kilograms versus pounds). Of course, in Australia prior to the conversion, we determined weight in a measure known as “Stones”, which equate to fourteen pounds each. Just why this was I never did learn but that was like measuring your weight in dog years. Kind of cool if you’re big, which I am. I think I’m about so many “hands” tall and I way some number of “stones”. Gotta love it.
Anyway, I felt comfortable interpreting the speed limit sign until we became aware of small local cars filled with people zooming past us, perhaps in their quest to get a good view of the gladiator sport ahead (of which we were at that time unaware). This happened several times and I soon realized that the speed limit signs here were just as meaningless as on the Washington DC Beltway, or I-95 in Fort Lauderdale or on Highway one driving through Sydney. Another one of those universal oddities about human nature and the automobile. Push it as fast as you possibly can. Push it until it breaks. Then curse at it. I now faced the typical moment of indecision that defines you as a visitor. Do I speed up and match the velocity of the locals? Or, do I stay just a little above the speed limit since I’m not sure just how tough the police are in this part of the world. When in doubt, run with the locals… Or maybe…
As we neared the outskirts of the metropolis of Marigot we realized we were a little more than half way around the lagoon on our journey. As I remarked about this to Sonia I noticed a green H2 Hummer far off in the distance behind us. I said something else to my lovely wife and glanced in the mirror again. This time the Hummer was right on us. He must have really been moving to close on us that fast. I felt it was ironic that we were in France but we were going to die on the bumper of a large General Motors truck… Just then we dropped into a large impact crater and I think the behemoth sailed over us since it was too wide to fit in the deep hole. Eventually, with further instructions from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA, we climbed out of the crater and continued on with our observations.
…and that’s about where I came in on this part of the story, so that’s where I’ll leave it for now.
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion of our drives on the island. Wild-eyed Gendarmes. Sand blasting and the thrill of experiencing a typical San Francisco scene in a pretty French town (or is it “Towne”)…
Thanks for reading this far. There will be more soon.
James
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