Beachin'

We spent another day at the beach just soaking in the sun!

Lovely day

A few waves rolling in

Jackson playing in the waves

The sea was raging a bit more so I didn't go out in the waves. Darwinism won't take me if I can help it! :) We spent the majority of the day soaking in the last bits of sun before heading home the next day.

A final sunset from our balcony

We grabbed dinner out a Pineapple Pete's, a local institution. It was pretty good for island food! ;) The rest of the evening we took it pretty easy. Well, except for having a cockroach crawl out of our luggage as we started to pack it. That caused me to scream and run. SO GROSS. Island problems!

We hiked around on Sunday morning hoping to get some exercise in before spending the day traveling. I kept trying to memorize how it felt to be warm. We got to the airport far earlier than we needed to because we had heard it was necessary. Nope. We ended up just hanging out at the airport which was no big deal. We weren't seated together on the flight from SXM to CLT (Charlotte, NC). I was bummed at first but then I started chatting with the older gentleman next to me. He was from Boston and was a crane operator. What!?! So cool! His name was Terrill and though he was 65 years young we found plenty to talk about during our four hour flight. We chatted, laughed, watched a movie together, did a crossword puzzle, you name it! Jackson said he kept hearing me cackle while wearing his noise canceling headphones. Whoops! The baggage claim in Charlotte was broken so we couldn't get our checked baggage soon enough to catch our connection. Ugh! This meant we got to grab REAL FOOD (Ok, fine, not REAL, but non-island food) at the airport's food court. I was dying for Chinese food so I got that and Jackson had BBQ. Our stomachs were almost instantly upset. Ahh! We were not ready to eat like that again. We really had not been consuming much while we were away. It is crazy how quickly your body adjusts.

We finally landed around midnight on Sunday evening/Monday morning. I took the morning off of work to grab some sleep and get laundry done. Jackson spent the day catching up on emails and I did the same at my office. It was a little rude to be back, but we'll survive. It was a good trip, but it was good to be home! 

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."

Christmas in St. Maarten

Christmas in foreign lands are always interesting. We slept in and then wished one another a merry day. We looked outside to the view shown below and knew it would be a great day because 1. we were together and 2. we were in a tropical location.

Christmas with a view

We had a quick breakfast and then decided to explore our neighborhood and get some exercise hiking up the hills all around us. We thought we might be able to get a better view of the whole island and we were correct.

WOW! 

A busy boating day!

Exploring St. Maarten!

It was VERY warm during our hike. We loved it! We decided to get changed and head to the beach. We stopped for a quick lunch at the French bakery on our way and enjoyed sandwiches and macaroon. Seriously, the world's best little cookies!

Car picnic on the way to the beach!

We stopped off at Cupecoy Beach again thinking that perhaps being Christmas Day perhaps the nudes would have stayed home. NOPE. They were out in full force and this prude just couldn't take it so we moved on.

Gorgeous day at Cupecoy

We drove down the road to the French side of the island and went to a secluded beach there. You have to go to a guard stand and swear not to take photos of the mansions on the drive down to the beach. Clearly security is a large concern for wealthy landowners. We didn't take a single photo (I wanted to, though. It is like being told not to touch a hot stove! All you want to do is see how hot it is!) like good little Americans.

Baie Longue (Long Bay Beach)

We had the beach almost to ourselves for a bit. It got a little busier as the day went on and people finished with their family time, but it was still quiet and lovely.

Jackson getting ready to snorkel! 

My view as I finished listening to a book

Jackson is out there somewhere exploring

There he is!

Found something!

Pano of the beach

Jackson finished snorkeling and my book ended so we decided to head back to our place to catch the sunset. We are so fortunate that we left the beach when we did because a storm rolled in not 5 minutes after we left and everyone was just soaked. Whew. Dodged that one!

Note: The book I read was called Redeployment. It was a fascinating look at what it is like for soldiers to come back from war and try to adjust to regular, civilian life. If you're into learning about a different culture (because that is what the military is to me) and can deal with some crude humor and language, I'd highly recommend it.

Being that it was Christmas we didn't think many restaurants would be open so we dined at the condo. We bought pasta and sauce (since we have burners and no stove our options are rather limited) and dined out on our balcony. Jackson found candles and our landlord left us a bottle of champagne. Jackson drank the entire bottle! (I'm not a champagne fan. I don't see how drinking that nasty crap is a celebration!) 

Christmas dinner

We watched the cruise ships all lit up go out to sea for the evening. It was a quiet dinner with the man I love- what could be better?! As you can see, I blogged a bit and he played on his phone until the mosquitos came out in full force and we retreated inside. We watched "Maid in Manhattan" and then called it a night. It wasn't our busiest day ever but we had a great day together and that's all I wanted for Christmas!

St. Barth's

These photos did not load in order and with island wifi I'm lucky they loaded at all. So expect me to jump around a bit...consider yourself warned. :)

We got up early (for vacation) and headed to Philipsburg to catch a boat to St. Barths for the day. The ferry ride was only about 40 minutes but the sea was very rough and it was like a roller coaster. We sat on top of the boat with a family we met from New York City. The lady, I didn't catch her name, quickly became my best friend. She held onto my leg because she was panicked. Her panic assisted me as I focused on her instead of my own fears and seasickness. We finally made it after talking NFL teams with the locals (big fans here!) and praying for the ride to end. 

Our view of St. Maarten from the bumpy boat ride

We were amazed to pull into St. Barths and find so many HUGE yachts docked. You've never seen anything like it. When we first got off the boat we walked down the harbor looking at all of the fancy boats and were impressed to see that they all had candy out with Christmas greetings. Friendly rich people aren't all bad I guess. It was like trick-or-treating in paradise. Odd and lovely at the same time.

Yacht row

We got to the island and noticed EVERYONE was on a scooter or ATV. We thought they may be on to something so we found a little storefront renting them and signed up. I was admittedly a little nervous about tooling around town all day on an ATV, but they gave us awesome helmets and assured  us we'd be fine. Clearly they didn't get the fact that since all of the roadsigns are in French we had right at NO idea what the laws of the roads were. Whoops. Even the waiver we signed was in French.

Note: St. Barths feels much more like a foreign place from a language perspective than St. Maarten does. Everything is written in French. There are occasionally English subtitles, but not often.

Our ride for the day: an ATV

Anyway, Jackson yelled out "YOLO" (You Only Live Once) as he does sometimes when he is making questionable decisions and we were off to explore the island. It turned out to be a lovely decision. We had a blast.

Ok, now is where photo order will not make sense. I'll just do captions and let the photos land as they may.

View from Saline Beach

Limousine tender- the boat that comes to get you to take you
to your yacht. Some ladies got in, but we didn't recognize them
as celebs. 

The sun going down from St. Barths

Another sunset shot

Again.

Yachts all lined up

An adorable church about to have services for Christmas Eve
(We had a boat to catch or we would have stayed to attend!)

Life in a screensaver!

Swimming at Eden Rock on St. Jean's beach

Jackson just had to go jump off that platform.
I believe he yelled "YOLO" as he did it. ;)

St. Jean beach

Eden Rock restaurant at St. Jean's beach

More St. Jean beach views

Rocky terrain near Saline Beach 

A better view of the little church

My view from the back of the ATV

Saline Beach again

Lunch at an amazing French cafe with this cute boy!

Our lunch was awesome. We eat had panini sandwiches made with fresh meat and that most amazing cheese with this sauce that I cannot pinpoint but was yummy. They served french fries ("freedom fries) but I think that was only because we are Americans. HA! I got iced tea which came out as fizzy peach tea, but it was amazingly delicious. They also had the best ice cream ever. We each got a dish of it after acting out that we wanted a dish and not a cone (ha- language barriers are not an issue when you can act out what you want with your hands!). Our waiter was a hoot as he was working on his English and insisted we teach him the work for dish. No free refills in this land so all said and done our little lunch was around $50. WHOA! It was tasty, but that was a surprise!

The world's second largest yacht's tender

The view from lookout point

GET MORE HANDSOME, JACKSON

We loved the view of the sailboats

The guy we rented the ATV from marked out a map showing us just where to go for the day. The first place was lookout point. It was just incredible. I'd never seen such lovely views with my own eyes. We hung out there for a bit before heading down to St. Jean's beach. We'd heard good things about the area and it exceeded our expectations. The water was just so beautiful. We swam around and played in the waves for about an hour before getting back on the road.

From St. Jean we went to Saline Beach. It was almost deserted when we stopped in. We swam around for a bit before getting back to the ATV. It was so fun to beach hop! We then circled back to town for lunch. You read about that above. Ohhh blogger.

We read that Gouverneur beach was worth the drive so we made it. It was awesome. The place was pretty much just ours. We spent a lot of time there before filling up the ATV and returning it to town. We sat at the harbor and watched the yachts and tenders until it was time to return to the boat. The ride back was much more smooth and it was just gorgeous. The weather was perfect and the sky was clear. The stars were amazing and it was the perfect end to the most fun day ever. We cannot wait to go back to St. Barth sometime soon!