Friday, June 20, 2008

Friday – June 20, 2008

Today we landed at St. Maarten, which is another part of the Dutch Antilles. It’s a little different, though, because it’s divided in half and one part is French while the other part is Dutch. This is important in many regards, not the least of which is the fact that things are lots cheaper on the Dutch side of the island, especially given the value of the dollar to the euro right now!

We opted for a little shopping in Phillipsburg, the capital, and then go on to the beach for a bit of lounging. While in P’burg, though, we hit the only rain of our trip. We were walking downtown and suddenly decided we were MUCH more interested in the junk shops than we had been, and we patronized a McDonalds front step for quite a while during a particularly hard downpour.

A cab (van) came along, piloted by Maria, and we decided to opt for a tour of the island and then a trip on to the beach. Maria, who’s mother lives in Roanoak, VA, has been here since 1974 and proved an able tour guide.

Phillipsburg is a 90% commercial town, with very few actual residents. The only product on the island is tourism, although there used to be salt production until 1949. In that year, the salt mill burned and nobody ever bothered to rebuild it.

St. Maarten was found by the Dutch pirate Peter Stuvesvant (which I’m probably misspelling, but I don’t have access to Google right now to check it) in 1633. He is the real “Captain Hook”, having lost an arm, leg and eye to a cannonball. He was the first Governor General of the Netherland Antilles and made a great deal of money managing the property for the Dutch Government. He did so well, in fact, that in 1646 they promoted him to Governor General of a little island in the new world called “Manhattan” and became the first Governor General of that little island. For a pirate, he seemed to do pretty well for himself in government!

The first stop on the tour was Doorn Beach. Sylvester Stallone has a house there. The seas were pretty rough and she recommended that we go to the other side of the island to swim.

Maria pointed out cactus that are all over the island (that look very much like the ones in Aruba and Curacao, incidentally). She said that these are not native, but were blown in by Hurricane Lewis on September 5, 1995, when they had 226 mph winds for over 3 hours. The entire hurricane lasted 18 hours, and there’s still devastation from it, not the least of which is a mega-resort which has been tied up in litigation since then.

There’s an island off the coast of St. Maarten which is inhabited by goats. When the British were trying to take over the island once, the Dutch inhabitants tied torches to the goat horns, and the goats, being understandably unhappy with their new job assignment, ran back and forth across the island. The British thought these were warships, fired on them and used up all their ammunition.

From Doorn Beach we went to Orient Beach, which is on the French side of the island. Beaches on the French side are “clothing optional”, which created a funny dilemma. There was a VERY black man who was doing some incredible sand sculpture right as you go onto the beach, and other than his ball cap he was as naked as the day he came into this world.

Bobbie Jean wasn’t sure what to do – her nature is to chat up a stump if they’ll engage in conversation, and this gentleman was very friendly, but the fact that he was naked was somewhat disconcerting. She opted to avoid the conversation all together.

One of the things that is happening is that French land titles, which are a disaster by most every stretch of the imagination, apply on the French side of the island. Much of the property that homes are built on is fill land, which was done with “verbal transfer of property”, meaning that although it may have been in a family for generations, there’s no legal record of it. Now that it’s valuable to developers, they’re trying to squeeze out the residents.

Orient beach operates on the “pay for pee” program, water here being produced by desalinization. 75 cents for the bathroom, $1.50 if you want a shower.

The island is 3 miles long by 16 miles wide. It has 74,000 legal residents and an estimated 16,000 illegal residents. The divided nature of the island is kind of strange. On the Dutch side, they have property taxes but things are cheaper. The French side is very subsidized, and their public housing is much nicer than we’ve seen elsewhere. There are no high rise buildings on the French side because they have a 4 floor limit.

After Orient Beach we went n around to ___ beach, where we ate lunch from some beach vendors who’d set up their own burger / ribs / chicken stand beachside and swam for a while. It’s amazing how clear the water is in the Carribean.

After we got back to the ship, we were held up while 4 people were very, very late. While they didn’t do the “run and jump” to land on the deck, they were definitely scurrying up the walkway from the taxi. Dad, mom and 2 daughters. Dad was carrying bags from an obvious shopping trip. I wonder who was the reason they were so late coming back?

We hit the 7:00 show in the theater. It was a Las Vegas review show. Not quite as good as the first one, but not bad. Dinner was lobster tails and/or prime rib. Meals here have been pretty good; not spectacular, but pretty good. The ship is designed to move people around much better than some of the older ships, so you usually don’t have to wait around in line for very long, even at peak times.