(Warning: This may be one of the longest post you'll ever read;
however, I promise it will be worth it:)
Welcome to St. Maarten, my personal favorite port of the cruise! The island is half French and half Dutch, which proved to be a very interesting adventure, but you'll have to read on for further exciting details:) Sorry I had to keep the picture so small, I couldn't risk everyone getting a close up of us in our bathing suits after just riding horses for 2 hours:) But if you look past us, isn't it beautiful, it really was a spectacular place! This pic is courtesy of a very kind cab driver, who kindly pulled over and took this pic of us from one of the highest mountains on the island for a spectacular view, I'm sure he was hoping for an extra tip out of it:) Here is a larger pic, since the small one doesn't quite give you the full picture....
This was a much anticipated port of call since it was the only island we traveled that had horses anywhere on the island for our much awaited ride on the beach. Kendall had done some research before the trip and found Bayside Riding Club, a stable that offered "beautiful rides down the beach with an exciting swim in the ocean on horseback" note that I quote that from their very impressive website. Side note, since we had to arrange all of these details ourselves, it wasn't offered or even mentioned on the ship, months before we even left for our cruise I had to call and make reservations. I had no idea it would be so difficult to call another country, I also didn't consider what a phone call to an entirely different country could end up costing you. Let's just say I learned my lesson later when I received the phone bill!
Once again we are having to fight the crowd to get off the ship with enough time to find a taxi and drive to the other side of the island in time for our riding reservations. The ship docks on the Dutch side of the island, so most of our shipmates stay on that side; so needless to say our taxi driver was less than thrilled to drive two measly tourist all the way to the French side when they could have taken three car loads of tourists just downtown in the same amount of time. This would prove an even bigger dilemma when you are trying to find a taxi driver to come back and get you from the French side to go back to your boat on the Dutch side after your riding adventure. After 30 minutes of calling every taxi driver around to find one willing to come get us, thanks to Otis (our riding guide), then waiting another 30-45 minutes for them to finally arrive!
This is starting to sound more like a gripe session rather than our wonderful vacation, so finally onto more pleasant memories... Surprise, Surprise, when we arrived at Bayside Riding Club the stable did not appear at all like it was advertised online, so much in fact that we thought we must be at the wrong place; however, since there are apparently no other horses on the entire island this had to be the place. Let me remind you that this is the slow season for cruising and therefore not many tourists on any islands, including this one. We were in fact the only tourists there all day long, and we did end up stuck at the stable almost all day:) Apparently they send half of the stable workers home because business is so slow, our new friends Otis and Isaac were the only stable hands left to feed, saddle, ride and wash all 30 horses.
Ride em' cowboy, Kendall's horse, Wizard, was about as calm as they come, his horse had to follow my horse to prode it along from the backside. My slow, but "spirited" horse was called Amedaus, and he insisted on trying to eat anything he could along the way:) Don't you love our cute little riding helmets:) Once we get over the initial shock of being dropped off in the middle of nowhere at this poor decrepit stable with apparently no one else around, we find Otis. Otis informs us that his credit card machine is also gone, so that expensive phone call a month earlier to prepay and reserve everything was useless, he can only take cash. Needless to say we thought it was already paid for and weren't planning on spending that much cash off the boat, so we didn't bring enough to cover the cost of horseback riding. We ended up giving him every last dollar we had to ride the horses, save 20 bucks to get a taxi home, which still wasn't enough. We had signed up for the extra long ride because you get to ride your horse into the ocean for a swim, which of course cost a little extra. Conveniently, once we couldn't come up with the cash Otis informed us that we would not be able to ride into the ocean because he had seen many sharks the day before. Sure, we thought he just came up with a clever way to get out of taking us on the extra long ride because we couldn't come up with the cash it would have cost!
Look very closely, if you'll notice there are three shark fins sticking out of the water, and many more swimming in the water which you can't see in this picture. I know this picture is difficult to see, trust me they were much bigger then they look, you could even see their large bodies swimming through the water. It was hard to get a good shot of them, but I promise they were there, lots of them, big ones, as big as the ones on TV. I was so sorry I ever doubted poor Otis, I was definitely not going into the water! Since we were the only ones on the ride with our personal guide Otis he made sure we still got the long ride. As much as I love horses, and the beach, I was starting to get a little saddle sore and would have been just fine with the basic ride. Otis took us everywhere, it seemed we saw more of the island on horseback then anywhere else. We rode horses right across from the island of St. Barts, which I've only heard of because that is where all the famous/rich people go to vacation. As far as I could tell it was just as beautiful as the island we were on!
Once we finally found a taxi to rescue us, we had spent half the day at the horse stable and had much more we wanted to see before boarding the ship. Since tourist are hard to find this time of year our taxi driver seemed more than accommodating, and was willing to be our personal driver the rest of the day, he helped us find an ATM since the horse people took all our cash, stopped for photo shoots and even waited around while we watched planes at the famous St. Maarten airport.
I had heard of this legendary airport from my sister who had also visited St. Maarten on her past cruise, so I insisted, to Kendall's reluctance, that we check it out. If you haven't heard of it, you've got to get on You Tube and check it out, its a crazy place and I was one of those crazy people like in the videos. The airport's runway extends all the way to the edge of the island and ends maybe 50 feet from the ocean. There is one little road that takes you between the runway and the beach, as we arrived a huge jumbo jet was preparing to take off, so the taxi driver hit the gas to get us there before the jet took off so we could enjoy the "experience".
It all happened so fast, the taxi pulls up behind this jumbo jet which is revving its engines for take off, the taxi driver opens the door and tells us to hurry and get out so he can move the van off the road (apparently cars, especially vans, can't be on that road while a plane is taking off because the force is so strong it can blow the vehicle over). Do you follow this? If the wind from the jet taking off is forceful enough to blow a car over, why did he tell me to get out of the car to "experience' this? Sadly, I was the only one that made it out of the car in time, Kendall was trying to grab our stuff out of the car when the taxi driver just drove off and left me there. That's about the same time the jet hit full throttle and the most powerful winds I have ever experienced hit me full force! It literally blew me off my feet, as I kept stumbling to stand up and move further away with the rest of the on lookers on the beach. Sand was blowing everywhere, people were running all over the beach and into the ocean to try and save their belongings that were blown away. It seemed like forever, I couldn't stand up or move to go anywhere, so I assumed the fetal position in the sand and hoped for the best. When it all finally subsided, I look up to find Kendall way down the road sitting safely in the taxi watching me blow all over the place. He said, as some other people told me afterwards, that it was quite a site watching all of us crazy people standing too close to the jet engines. Wow, I'm just glad I lived to tell everyone about it, and recommend you all go there someday and try it yourself!
This is a great picture that Kendall took of a plane coming in for a landing, he has become quite the photographer. Apparently the runway is so short that the planes have to come in low and land as soon as they can hit ground in order to have enough time to stop before the plane runs out of road. We are actually sitting at a little bar right off the beach built exclusively for tourist to come sit and watch planes, they even post all the incoming and outgoing flights so you know what to watch for. It was a great afternoon, once I got all the sand off of me, we enjoyed a great burger, beautiful weather and the most awesome scenery you could ever ask for!
We managed to snag a van full of people on the way back to downtown,
which saves taxi fare! We recognized a woman in the taxi as one of the workers
from our ship, so we had a great talk with her and learned all about life on a cruise
ship. She was from Belarus, and only had one more cruise to complete before she
could finally go home to see her family. In talking to our waitress from the
ship it seems that all the workers have to sign six month contracts, regardless
of what their job is on the ship. Our sweet waitress from the Philippines hadn't
seen her five year old son in almost six months, I couldn't believe you could live on
a boat away from family for so long.
We made it back downtown with plenty of time to shop and enjoy the sites,
hitting up more jewelry stores with our coupons for free stuff! You have never seen
so many jewelry stores, or so many people from India. Kendall commented that
sometimes he wondered what country he was in because of all the people from India.
We were so tired, but there was still so much to see and still a couple of hours left before
we had to board the boat. We had some ice cream, which you'll pay about anything for
when your hot and tired. A great deal of time was spent in the perfume store smelling
everything to find just the right fragrance. Our friend "Shopping Shelby" from the ship
had highly recommended a little chocolate shop that sold Belgian chocolates. Luckily we
stumbled upon it and ended up buying way more chocolate then we should have.
Since this was our last port of call, we would spend the next two days on the ship and
therefore the last chance for souvenirs. We spent every last minute souvenir shopping, as
I'm trying to rush Kendall to pay while watching to make sure our ship is not pulling off without
us. As this was our fifth day as cruisers we had become quite confident that the ship would
not actually leave us on the island and therefore put off boarding the boat until the last
possible minute. It truly was a great day, we really enjoyed the island of St. Maarten, and
would go back anytime!
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