St. Maarten/St. Martin Trip Report April 1996
By Carol Hill

Following is our trip report from our trip 6/15/96
to 6/22/96 to SXM. We stayed at L'Hoste and have done a
separate report specifically about the hotel under the
title--SXM-L'Hoste. We should also have some pictures up on
our home page within the week, if you want to take a look
over there next week some time.
We booked our trip about six months prior to
departure, but waited until just around 60 days prior to
departure to purchase air tickets. Our patience was
rewarded by being able to get a non-stop flight from BWI to
SXM on USAir for $420 round trip. We left BWI on time at 9
AM and arrived a couple of minutes late about 1:15.
Fortunately for us, we were the first plane in and we were
about the 10th people off our plane, so we were through
immigration in 5 minutes! What a miracle! We grabbed our
two suitcases (Eric bitched for a week before we left home
about taking two big suitcases of clothes to go to a nude
beach!), and headed over to the Hertz counter at the
airport. We stood in that line, then the Hertz people took
us down to the lot where the cars are stored. We had
reserved a car ahead of time with Jim Ruos for $150.00 for
the week. The fellow who checked out the cars at Hertz
rejected the first car, as the a/c wasn't working perfectly
and the radio didn't work at all. According to this
fellow--"You have to have TUNES, man!" Anyway, we were very
happy with the car we ended up with, including the a/c and
radio.
After picking up the car, we attempted to head to
Food Center to the grocery store, then realized it had been
blown away. Unlike here in the states, there didn't appear
to be a sign stating where we might find another Food
Center, so we ended up going all the way past Orient to
Marigot to Match. After picking up supplies for the week,
we headed to the hotel and, even after the extra time of
having to go to Marigot, were checked in by 3 P.M.
After checking out the room and the view, we took a
walk down the beach all the way to Club Orient, to view
what was left of the place, which isn't much, of course.
The beach, except for the lack of palm trees, is still
beautiful. Eric liked it better than before. We checked on
the nude cruises for the week, which according to the sign,
were to be Wednesday and Friday. Of course, they said that
for this week, Wednesday would come on Tuesday and the nude
cruise would be on Tuesday. They suggested that we should
come back by Monday to pay and we agreed to do so.
Saturday night we headed to Grand Case for dinner. I
wanted Italian. Unfortunately, my first choice El Nuttono
was closed for vacation. I then wanted to go to
Sebastiano's, but not having been there before, we missed
the sign for the parking lot, and couldn't figure out where
to park. In any event, we ended up at Portofino. We had
eggplant parmesan appetizer, canelloni, mixed pasta and a
bottle of wine for $55, including tip. The food was good
but the service somewhat lacking. Since we had been
traveling most of the day and had not had much sleep the
night before, it was off to bed early this night, without
any trips to the casino.
Sunday morning started "the ballad of the coffee
pot". When booking L'Hoste, we found out that there was no
coffee pot in the room. Since I do not function well
without my pot of coffee in the morning and because our
favorite breakfast is coffee and croissant on a balcony
overlooking the ocean, we determined that we would be
happier and incidentally, save some money, by taking our own
coffee pot. Even though we knew that French current is 220,
we thought that we covered the situation by buying a
converter to plug the coffee pot into. We even bought a
metal carafe for the coffee maker, so that we didn't have to
worry about breaking the glass carafe. We were feeling
quite smug Sunday morning, as I made our pot of coffee. I
plugged in the pot, which immediately started virtually
SHOOTING the water through the grounds into the pot.
Obviously, our converter did not work. Since we had
already purchased croissant the day before in Marigot, and I
had to have coffee, I went down to the hotel restaurant and
paid $2 each for 2 cups of coffee. OK, so far we have spent
about $30.00 and gotten 2 cups of coffee out of the deal.
Pretty expensive coffee!
Leaving worries of expensive coffee behind, we headed
out to the beach for the day. For Sunday, we stayed at
Bikini beach, right in front of L'Hoste. Eric asked the
fellow that we rented the chairs from whether nudity was OK
there and he replied in the affirmative, so we were happy.
Throughout the week, there were many others who were nude on
the beach in front of L'Hoste. On Sunday there were many
locals on the beach, complete with all their various dogs.
Since we're big "dog people", we enjoyed watching the dogs,
as well as the people. Most of the women on the beach on
Sunday were at least topless, and many wore only thong
bottoms. There were several others nude, as we were.
We ate lunch at Bikini. I had a sausage & mozzarella
sandwich (only passable), Eric had a chicken guacamole
sandwich (excellent!) and fries, plus we had 2 drinks each,
for $23.50. Sunday night was our anniversary and that night
we had dinner at The Greenhouse--great potato skins, ribs,
filet mignon and iced tea for $46. Wonderful meal, great
service and some good conversation with our waiter, as the
place was basically deserted.
Sunday night we headed to the casinos. I knew that
some of the casinos were not open, but couldn't remember the
names from our last trip. Therefore we headed to what was
our favorite casino last year--the Grand, to find, of
course, it was closed. Casinos now open are the Lightning,
the Casino Royale, the Atlantis, the Pelican and the small
casinos downtown. I love roulette and love to play quarter
roulette when I can find it. The Pelican was the only
casino that had it this year. In fact, they had 3 tables
going of $.25 roulette basically all the time. For the most
part, the casinos were not busy at any time that we were
there. Sunday night was no exception in this respect. We
lost quite a bit of money and headed back to the hotel to
live to fight again another day.
Monday we headed to Marigot for breakfast. We ate at
the restaurant right next to Le St. Germain, on the marina.
La Brasserie, maybe?? Anyway, crepes with ham and cheese
and (AMERICAN!) coffee for $16. It was wonderful. Lunch
menu looked very good and a very decent price also.
On the subject of coffee (G!!), we were not going to
let that French 220 current get us down, so we decided to
buy a 220 coffee pot in Marigot. It was a good price
actually, at $16.00. We had some more shopping to do, to
get ready to meet a $P$ friend on Friday, so we headed to
Phillipsburg. After much searching for Corona beers, which
Eric said they didn't have at Match, when in fact they
did!!, we finally rounded up a 6 pack of Corona beers and a
cheap styrofoam ice chest and headed home. We stopped by
Orient to pay for our cruise for Tuesday ($50 PP) and
finally got back to Bikini for some sun around noon.
Around 5 P.M. we headed over to the Bikini Bar,
sitting at the bar, listening to some live music and talking
to a cab driver named "Happy Harold". We had several
drinks, some of their fried jalapenos (HOT! HOT! HOT!!), and
some cod fish balls. The latter sound gross, but they were
very good. Our drinks, appetizers and Happy Harold's dinner
came to around $30.00.
We stumbled back to the room and passed out for a
couple of hours, before getting up around 8 P.M. and heading
to Lightning, then Casino Royale (not much happening either
place), then to Cherie's for dinner--fried chicken and
spaghetti and cokes for $26. Not the best meal of the week,
but OK. Afterwards we headed to our favorite the Pelican,
played for a while and ended up even for the night.
Overall, a victory!!
Tuesday was to be the nude cruise to Tintamar, but
the day dawned cloudy and overcast. While casting an
anxious look out the sliding glass door at the weather, I
proceeded to make a pot of coffee in our new Marigot coffee
pot. Well, the coffee pot seemed to work fine, until I
picked up the pot to pour our coffee and couldn't figure out
why I was making such a mess of trying to pour coffee into
the cup. Then I figured it out--the carafe was cracked, all
the way down the side next to the handle! Feeling cursed
by this time, we poured the coffee into the carafe from the
now defunct coffee maker. Of course the old carafe did not
fit onto the warmer plate of the new coffee pot. We finished
our breakfast and headed out to Orient.
The cruise was supposed to leave at 9:30 and by that
time, there were around a dozen people, including us,
standing around looking askance at a very dark sky.
Guillome asked us whether we all wanted to go or not. They
were doing something with a jackhammer at Papagayo's and
Guillome said "well, it's either the clouds or the
jackhammer!". I replied "I don't mind five hours of clouds,
but I don't want to sit in the rain for five hours!" No one
was real strong in their feelings one way or another, so
Guillome decided we would go.
The decision to go for it on Tuesday was possibly
incorrect. We had no rain until we reached Tintamarie and
we were off the boat on the beach. Then, of course, it
absolutely poured. And of course, you are never so cold as
when you are stark naked except for the wet towel which you
have wrapped around you while the rain pours down on you!
Well, Guillome had brought along umbrellas (obstensibly to
protect us from the SUN--no chance of that THIS day!!), and
some floats to play in the water. So Eric, being the
enterprising soul that he is, constructed somewhat of a fort
out of the assembled umbrellas, plus making a wall behind us
of the floats, so that our hindquarters did not get rained
on. This, combined with downing the pina coladas and beers
which Guillome had brought ashore, made us somewhat happier.
However, we soon ran out of pina coladas. A couple from
our midst swam back out to the boat, supposedly to order
more booze to be delivered to the beach. We're no fools
though. We figured out when they didn't return in a half
hour and as the booze shortage became more critical, that
those bastards weren't going to bring us more booze after
all.
Guillome eventually came ashore and asked us whether
we wanted to go back "home" and offered to refund our money
for the trip. We elected to stay and have them cook our
lunch. This is the first catamaran that I have ever seen
equipped with a charcoal grill! However, it cooked just as
well as ours here at home and we dined on chicken
sandwiches, which were excellent. Eventually, it did
actually stop raining and some of us headed back over to the
beach and I did a little snorkeling, which ended up being the
only snorkeling I did for the week. Not a whole lot of fish,
but we didn't pay anything extra for the equipment. By the
time we arrived back at Club Orient, the sky was actually
somewhat clear.
Re-reading this report, one would think that we had a
horrible time on the cruise. However, we had a really good
group of people, who made lemonade out of lemons and we had
a good time overall. About half of the people already knew
each other prior to the cruise, which helped, I suppose.
However, even those who hadn't known each other before,
including us, got along really well also. Our group
included a retired gentleman who used to write for the New
York Times, a flight attendant (and his wife!!) who came to
St. Martin for the weekend on a free flight (I hate them!!),
a travel agent and her husband, and another couple who live
about 20 miles from us. AND, through them, we met another
couple who live about TWO miles from our home. Small world!
Despite the weather, we had a great time on the cruise
and we ended up speaking often to these people at Orient
throughout the week. We talked about it afterwards and
determined that this was probably about the best use of the
day after all. If we had not been on the cruise, I would
have been sitting in the room bitching about the rain all
day. Take a suggestion, though--do go on the nude cruise
early in the week, so that you can meet some people to talk
to on the beach. We are not "joiners" on vacation, at all,
but it really does make for a nicer experience to connect up
with people on the beach.
The combined effects of the open bar and late lunch
on the cruise made us not in the mood for too much in the
way of an elaborate dinner, so we opted for the Burger King
close to the Pelican. Headed back to the Lightning for a
while, then back to my favorite, the Pelican for the
evening. Wednesday dawned with beautiful weather and we ate
breakfast at Bikini Beach. Eric had a Spanish omelet and
I had something unpronounceable (but good!) which was
basically a casserole of scrambled eggs, ham, tomato, onion
and green pepper. Breakfast, including COFFEE (g!!) was
$20.
As we were eating our breakfast, we were amused by
the sight of an obviously honeymooning couple who had
apparently never been out of the U.S. before. The
waitresses at Bikini speak pretty standard English but, of
course French is their first language. Well, after some
discussion which I don't remember, we heard them asking the
waitress about the baguettes on the menu. Swear to god--I
wouldn't make this up--they said "Are those bagels plain or
do you have other flavors?" The waitress was totally lost
by this point. Eric leaned over and rescued them all, or I
suppose we might have had the honeymooning couple arrested
for not paying for their breakfast when they didn't get
their raisin bagel! The young couple weren't ugly about the
whole thing, but altogether too young to be let out alone.
Actually, that reminds me of a story from OUR honeymoon,
many years ago. But you don't want to hear about
that......
And so you thought that the saga of the coffeepot was
over?? No way, Jose! Determined that we would reclaim our
God-given right to a pot of coffee in the morning, on
Wednesday after breakfast we headed out to Marigot to
exchange our broken coffee carafe. Eric double-parked like
a true Frenchman, and I went in and exchanged the pot with
nary a whimper of protest from the shop keeper. We were
again in the coffee business! I have to report that the
(new) glass coffee carafe worked great the rest of the week
and even made it home in the suitcase without incident. We
have not yet begun the task of trying to find a metal carafe
to fit the coffeemaker to take with us the next time we
visit SXM. I don't quite have the fortitude yet to go
looking.
I am frankly not sure which day we met up with the
newest "road hazard" in SXM. We were following behind one
of the many, many trucks we followed over the course of the
week, which was carrying a load of metal roofs on the
back--debris from the hurricane. As usual, it would take
too much planning or forethought to tie down such a load.
Thankfully, we hanging back a bit from the truck when the
six foot piece of metal came off the back of the truck
towards us. Eric stopped the car in the middle of the road,
got out, threw the piece of metal off to the side of the
road and drove on. No problem, mon!! Except of course,
that we got honked at and passed by another large truck for
our trouble! Ah, the pleasures of driving in SXM!!