St Maarten - The Rest of the Story

Day 6

Golden Eagle

James claims that when one circumnavigates an island while sizing it up, it is called 'circumsizing' the island, and that is what we did on a charter catamaran trip. The crew was great fun to talk to and very inventive, the drinks flowed freely, and we really enjoyed the sailing!
This was only the second day the woman skipper Sam (at far right in photo) was in command, and she handled it very well. She said she'd been shadowing another captain for a couple of months. Dan spent a lot of time chatting with the crew, as one skipper to another.

This was a great day on the water. Conditions were just about perfect, with 15 kts of wind. The first leg was beating into the wind. We shared the trampoline on the bow with a smart 12-year-old girl (all the other grownups wanted to stay dry) and enjoyed the occasional splashes of warm water when we came down a wave. The crew did a great job of mixing up the activities, providing something for everyone, and conveying the sense they were having fun, too. The snorkeling was disappointing between the hurricane damage and the stirred-up water reducing visibility, but the swimming was lovely. We anchored off a nice restaurant for lunch and had the choice of swimming ashore or taking the dinghy. So of course I had to swim - I never swam into lunch before.

After lunch, more sailing, and one more swim stop, this one with a floating bar. Often the tour operators will feed the fish at a snorkel stop, to attract more interesting fish for the tourists to observe. I couldn't help but observe that the floating bar had the parallel effect on people that the fish-feeding did for colorful tropical fish. Surrounded by people floating with their colorful pool noodles, the bar looked exactly like "chumming for tourists!"

Day 7

Tweety

This is the car we rented. I am not making this up, the rental company refers to this car as "tweety bird." A taxi driver waiting at the taxi stand next to the rental kiosk explained to that to drive island style - "don't drive shy." So Dan with his greater directional sense was the navigator and I was the driver. With the best of the Washington Beltway experience to guide me, I was still tentative by island standards! The map showed only the most major of roads, and had no street names. However, there were few street signs either, so providing names would have been a waste. We managed to find almost everywhere we wanted to go, although in several instances we got there via the 'scenic route!'

Day 8

We've been everywhere on this island. We've had crepes for breakfast, driven up and down steep hills, found the beach, gotten groceries, and located the Moroccan restaurant we want to try for dinner tomorrow. We definitely still drive shy, i.e., not as aggressively as the locals. But hey, we don't know these roads. We spoke with one island woman who had also visited the States and asked how she felt about the driving in New York. "You can't speed," she said. "They're so strict about the rules." A far cry from what Robert told us: most of the traffic rules are treated as suggestions, but if you break a rule and end up causing a crash, the penalties for screwing up are much, much more significant than they are in the States. So, bend the laws at your own peril. For example, open containers are legal; drunkenness is not. Running a stop sign when no one's around, no problem; running a stop sign and causing a crash, big, big problem.

Interlude: Hurricane recovery

Category 3 Omar came through here a week before we arrived. Damage was moderate by island standards because the storm, although strong, was fast-moving, and no people were seriously injured. The south shore (where we are) took to worst hits. Water and sand smashed the plate-glass windows facing the ocean in
several of the ground-floor condos and public areas, and many plantings were damaged or destroyed. They're working hard to get things back in shape before the tourist season is in full swing. Here's a crew cleaning out sand and dirt that the ocean washed into a pool and patio area - note that there are both men and women working. Farther inland on the French side, you can tell which direction the winds were blowing: these trees are killed on one side by large amounts of salt spray.

Interlude: Politics
The American election is big news here - maybe because the economy on the island is so dependent on tourism, or maybe because people on this small island just feel it behooves them to be aware of happenings in their bigger neighbor. In any case, whereever we walked downtown on Tuesday we heard snatches of conversation and even if we couldn't make out the words due to the accents and that island lilt, we kept picking out the word "Obama." There is even a calypso
song whose entire lyric seems to consist of three words: "Barack Obama Hope." We bought the cd but I didn't play it until yesterday for fear of jinxing the outcome. The local bar had CNN on the big screen Tuesday night and was serving special drinks - a red something with cranberry juice and rum for McCain supporters and something with blue curacao for Obama fans.

Yikes! I just worked out that by the time of the inauguration in January the boss that I so enjoy working for will have retired, and he's said I'll probably be acting chief of the environmental affairs program until a permanent replacement is chosen. That means that in matters of policy, there will only be 3 layers of management between me and the President: Pres > Secretary of Interior > Bureau Chief > Sr Science Advisor to the Director > Chief of Environmental Affairs (me!!)