St Maarten, Day 3

lunching at the restaurant that Johan sent us to

street in downtown Phillipsburg, the capital on the Dutch side
the road into Marigot, the capital on the French side


one of the more rural views on the French side

We toured the island with a great taxi driver named Robert. He showed us all the basics - where to shop, where to eat, and where not to walk at night - as well as things of interest to our future cruising: marinas and protected anchorages. We went into the interior and saw the construction company owned by his brothers and cousins. Beaches of all sorts, including the nude beaches, the gay beaches, and the gay nude beaches. He dropped us off in town and sent us to "Johan,"
purveyor of (possibly pirated) island music. When we got to his stand he was playing some kitschy pan music, hoping to attract some cruise ship tourists. We asked to sample some soca, and told him, yes, we knew many of the words could be taken two ways. Next thing we knew, another island man had stopped to listen as well, and the four of us were bopping to Mighty Sparrow, and Johan was suggesting other things we might like, and the other guy explained that the double entendres were part of a game between the artists and the radio stations - the words are ordinary words, so the songs can't be 'censored' - but, how suggestive can you be and not get your song banned from the airwaves? My favorite of these is the one about the girl who has trouble waking up, so the neighbor suggests a rooster crowing. Pretty innocuous, no? It gets interesting where the song morphs into the singer recommending "a cock in the morning to get her going"!!! But as soon as we left, Johan put the kitschy pan back on, for the tourists.

Johan in turn sent us to a restaurant for local food, where we passed on the curried goat and Dan had snapper and I had mahi-mahi, both in a wonderful Creole sauce. We ambled back through town to do a little shopping. Prices for traditional tourist goods of the Hawaiian shirt and beach bag variety were ridiculously low. The island economy is 100% tourism, and there was concern about the upcoming winter tourist season. With Wall Street in free-fall, would the tourists come? We heard a scary radio ad urging people to buy American, because if the US economy is going, our island economy is going. Tired now, we walked back toward the resort, seeking ice cream along the way. We headed toward the boardwalk but were stopped by a woman in a public works shirt who explained that it was closed - last week's hurricane had buried it in sand. She noticed I was limping and told me where to get the local herbal cure for back problems, Nu-Ni (sp???) She repeated it about 4 times to make sure I got the name right.

And then, just as we got to the edge of town and were about to begin the climb up the hill to get back to the resort, along came Robert! He had indeed found Dan's forgotten camera, and he was going our way (sort of). He motioned us into the taxi, he was on his way to pick up a worker from our resort. So we got a little taste of the 'real' island and how the ordinary people live, the stuff that wouldn't be on any tour at all.

Later, back at the beach, we met Kyle, a younger black guy complimented Dan on his athletic swim out to the buoys and back. (Dan's convinced that the braids make me more approachable - certainly more recognizeable! - and as my tan builds I look less and less Caucasian) We got to talking with him and his sister. He said he saw us having coffee on the balcony every morning and asked how early we got up. I hadn't even recognized him as the guy in the unit next door - but of course he could recognize me as I'm pretty unmistakeable right now! So we told them the story of Dan's cancer survival and the ritual of celebrating each sunrise with something of a sense of wonder, never again taking the gift of another day for granted. Then we asked for their stories. It turned out that they're from Maryland and she's on 2 weeks R&R from Afganistan. She said she wanted to be with her family, and somewhere warm.