Sun, surf, snorkel and OIL?!?!

We woke up to another sunny day in St. Maarten. It was Boxing Day which is a holiday we cannot completely understand. It appears to be a day off the day after Christmas to spend your money you got as gifts. Seriously. It is odd. 

Anyway, Jackson braved the hills and went for a run. I stayed at the condo and relaxed. I know. That is so unlike me. Perhaps island time is finally catching up with me. We decided to go back to Long Bay Beach since it was so nice the day before and we were not disappointed.

Spend the day here? OK! :)

My cute date

Ahhh...you can almost hear the ocean in this photo

I wanted to do a bit of snorkeling so we geared up and headed out.

Fishy, fishy

Pretty fish!

There was not much to see snorkeling at this spot so I didn't stay out long. It was really deep and rocky which to me means sharks and/or drowning. Jackson stayed out for about an hour and did not see any sharks and managed to stay afloat. Show off.

We got hungry and decided to head to Philipsburg for lunch. We grabbed lunch there and then decided to do one of their bucket of beverages, umbrella and two chairs for $20 deals. We convinced them to let us change the bucket of beers to bottled water and were in business!

Jackson loved the island basketball court

Lazy afternoon in Philipsburg

Ahh...it had been a nice day thus far. We'd managed to get a good parking spot near the beach and hopped back to our car to catch the sunset from our balcony. That's when disaster struck. We were driving up the side of a very steep hill and Jackson hit the gas to try to get up to speed. Just then our car made this awful bang sound and started smoking. Oil was everywhere! We slid all around on our own oil and ended up on the side of the road just short of the guardrail. It was pretty scary! We sat there for a second shocked. Then the man driving behind us stopped to make sure we were OK and to let us use his cellphone to call for help. The rental car place said they'd come shortly. Great. Shortly on island time.  Our new friend (the driver behind us) said he'd never seen anything like it and was glad Jackson was able to steer away from the non-guardrailed part of the road. Our car was still smoking and we were now stuck on the side of a very busy, steep road in a country where no one hurries unless they're driving. Excellent. We got out of the car and climbed below the guardrail so that if some crazy driver hit our disabled car they wouldn't hurt us. We had just been swimming and the sun was now going down. I started to get very cold. It was only 27 degrees Celsius. (FINE- that is 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit!) My swimsuit wasn't drying as fast as I would have liked and I was cold. My blood must have thinned or something. I don't know. Luckily we had laundry in the car that we tried to do earlier in the day and the place was closed for the "holiday" so I threw on a dirty sweatshirt and all was well again on the side of the road. About a half hour later the folks from the rental car place 13 minutes away by car finally arrived. I've never been so happy to see someone.

Well this is just GREAT

They brought us a new car and stayed to get our old unit towed. They were aghast at the damaged engine and amount of oil everywhere. They had not seen anything like it either. They were shocked we were able to not roll off the ride of the hill and told us we were lucky. Gee, thanks. We went to the rental place to sign a statement about what happened and were told that we had to pay for the gas we'd used in the disabled car at the outrageous rate you pay if you don't get gas before returning the vehicle. We tried to reason that we would have filled up the vehicle before returning it had it not blown up on the side of a hill. They were unreasonable and French. Ugh. We just paid what we had to so that we could go home. They didn't even apologize to us for giving us a crappy car that could have very easily been a deathtrap. Jerks. We made it back home in our new car without incident.

All of this excitement made us very tired so we came home and went to bed at like 8. Whew. What a day! Here's hoping today is less "exciting."