January 26
Wednesday
We drove up the east side of the island to the French side, to Orient Bay Beach. The West entrance to this beach from the Dutch side had been closed for two days so we ventured to see whether we could get in from the only other direction. We were able to, and parked right in the downtown which had much newer and cleaner looking buildings than many of the other beaches.
The beach itself was nice -not as good as Mullet Bay- but still soft sand and clear water. There was more dead seaweed so we opted to rent beach chairs, which came with a free drink so it was a good deal. We walked to the Eastern end of the beach first, through the nude beach to a row of abandoned, storm-ravaged bungalows. There was something awkwardly poetic about watching an old naked man lean against a crumbling building to pull a spikey plant out of his foot, while palm trees swayed above him and the crystal blue waters lapped at the surrounding debris.
Back at our beach chairs, we ordered some Coronas and got ready to do some hard relaxing but were somewhat conned into getting beach massages. At first the lady said – let me give you a sample massage. And while I tried to tell her I only had $15 in cash she had laid me down on my belly and undid my bikini and smothered me in aloe. What the heck, Carl and I decided to go all in on the beach massage experience and said we’d find an atm for more cash after. The lady had a friend who came at just the right time and convinced Carl to get a massage at the same time as me. They both had aloe plant leaves that they swore were the real deal. The leaves had been hallowed out and they had squirted a bottles worth of aloe gel into them. The massage was close to an hour of them scooping out this gel and rubbing it all over our backs. They talked with us too and were delighted that Carl “came back” after his time at medical school here. They also told us the road had been closed because of protests over land. Families had thought they were leasing to own for decades only to find out they had just been leasing, and were not happy about it.
After massages we got our “free” cocktails and were surprised how strong they were. We lounged and read for the rest of the afternoon.
We barely made it to our neighboring Sunset Beach Bar for “all you can eat sushi” which we quickly realized was all you can eat because your waiter only comes by once and hour. No matter, we ordered as much as we could in the time limit and when we got full we shoved remaining roles into sandwich baggies and put them into my purse.
We went “out”: first to the casino and then to a rooftop bar but it was a Wednesday night and everything had to close at 11 so not much was happening. We had some fancy cocktails on a rooftop bar and reminisced over the trip so far.
January 27
Thursday
Before we left the US we had ordered some at home COVID tests to take with us. Our flight departing Sint Maarten had a layover in Miami before going to Bogotá and the US required negative COVID tests, just to be in the Miami airport for 2 hours. So we used our at home tests and submitted the results, only to find out they wouldn’t accept the at home tests. We should have known. Luckily, someone had given us a COVID test flyer when we first arrived so we were able to call them. The nurse actually drove out to meet us to do the tests. We had already checked out of our AirBnB by that time so we were sitting at the picnic tables at Sunset Beach Bar next door. No matter, Mary the nurse was unphased and did the test right there at the bar. She even congratulated us when our results were negative.
We had a few hours to kill before heading to the airport so I used the bars WiFi to do my taxes. Sunset Beach Bar Wifi really came through for us!
Once we got to the airport we gobbled down our leftover sushi from the night before and chugged our leftover guava juice. Had some issues with checking in because of the weak airport WiFi (nothing could compare to Sunset) but managed to get checked in with plenty of time to try the local IPA (which tasted phenomenal compared to all the Coronas and Heinekens we’d been having!).
When our plane taxied on the runway we could see all the tourists on the beach waving to us, moments before they’d get blown into the ocean.
We had an amazing week in Sint Maarten and I do think we will be back again someday when we need another relaxing beach vacation. We were sad to leave, but happy to go on to the next adventure.
Up next: ¡Colombia!
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