St Maarten/St-Martin

St Maarten

Today we visited the island of Saint Martin, a Caribbean island that is shared by Saint-Martin, a French territory, and Sint Maarten, a Dutch territory. We took a tour of the island, hitting both sides to be complete. The Dutch originally used the island for salt starting in the 1600s, with it later being used by both the Dutch and French to produce sugarcane. The island was split between the 2 countries in 1648, although it is not divided evenly, with the French side being about 60% of the island.

Crossing from the Dutch to the French side.

Iguanas. Excuse my from-the-bus iPhone photography.

The island is nice and green, but the beaches we were taken to were quite small. Maybe there are larger ones elsewhere. What we were most amazed at is the fact that there is still so much damage from Hurricane Irma from 2017. There are damaged empty buildings all over, especially on the French side and there are wrecked boats left to rust in the salt pond. Apparently the vast majority of the buildings were damaged or destroyed, more heavily so on the French side, but it is sad to see this much disrepair so long after the fact. We were told by our guide that they were without water and electricity for 3 months after the hurricane. I can’t even imagine! I know the costs of rebuilding on an island are huge, I would just hope that the tourism would help them catch up. I know that after this last hurricane season there are a lot of other Caribbean islands in the same situation. Of course, not all of the island is in disrepair, it just was really noticeable.

Hurricane damage.

French side.

It rained intermittently so we got a partial rainbow.

Mullett Beach

We spent the afternoon doing one of the cheesy tourist things to do here. We hung out on Maho Beach at the end of the runway for Princess Juliana International Airport. You may have seen this on a travel show. People hang out on the beach waiting for planes to land because you can be right under them right before they land. Better yet, you can unwisely stand on the beach at the end of the runway when a plane is getting ready to take off and try to stand up in the blast of the jet engine. Obviously, the second option is more dramatic…and more dangerous. At least one person has died being blown into a concrete curb. We stayed off to the side and filmed people getting pelted by sand and losing their hats during takeoff, but had fun being under the planes that were landing.

This is how the incoming big plane flights were listed at Maho Beach.