The Friendly Island

St Maarten

Ahh... paradise. There's nothing like casually hopping down to the Caribbean for the weekend. Well, it wasn't quite that easy. I had to pay my dues by staying up for 30+ hours doing a Newark Airport inventory audit first. I have personally never been so exhausted in my life - climbing ladders and moving airplane parts around. It got to the point where I literally could not sit down because I knew I would immediately pass out. Catching that 9:15am flight to St. Maarten right after made it all worth it though.

I flew down there Friday with my coworkers, Mike and John. The trip planner, Keith, met us there the next day (he was stuck finishing that Newark Airport audit). It was the perfect mix of personalities - Mike (the laid back guy), John (the quiet one), and Keith (the loudmouth).


Mike Me & John

The weather there was beyond perfect - 80 degrees and breezy... and the water was an unbelievable sapphire and turquoise blue (also at an amazing 80 degrees). This picture doesn't even do it justice...


Breakfast

Although Mike, John, and I had been up for an ungodly number of hours with only a short 2 hour nap on the plane, we immediately felt revived when we hit the beach, having dinner at the Sunset Beach Bar. Sadly, by 8pm, we had run out of energy and were in bed.

The next day, we got a hearty breakfast at the Fashion Cafe across the street from our hotel and headed back to Maho Beach. This is the famous beach that I referred to in my last post, the one at the end of the airport runway. Keith had just arrived, and we spent the next 5 hours or so sitting on the beach, swimming in the crystal clear water, and taking pictures of the planes flying over us. There were quite a few airplane enthusiasts there, guys with their super high tech cameras who planned on spending their entire vacation taking pictures of planes flying over Maho Beach. Here's the result of my own amateur photography.


Continєntal

Another activity that Maho Beach is famous for, although it is definitely not recommended, is getting jet blasted. The same runway that the planes land on is the one they take off from, so the fence only keeps you about a hundred or so feet away from the back of the jets during takeoff. If you're adventurous enough/stupid enough, you hold on to the fence directly behind the runway and wait for takeoff. The jet blast is so strong that you would get blown across the beach and into the water if you're not holding on, which some people unfortunately experienced. My coworkers convinced me to do it for the Continєntal 757 (the same one pictured above). It was great. Definitely a once in a lifetime kind of thing, but still dangerous. Keith got a piece of debris stuck in his leg when he got jet blasted by a A340 later.


Warning

After staying at the beach till 4:30pm, John and I decided to catch a taxi into town (Philipsburg), which was only like 6 miles away. However, since all the roads are two lanes, cars never really get above 15 mph. There are only 2 traffic lights on the entire island, and they happen to be in Philipsburg. We got there pretty late, so most of the stores were closing, but we managed to snag a few souvenirs before heading to the beachfront to find a restaurant for dinner. The first restaurant we walked up to, the Indigo Beach Bar & Restaurant, had a sign that said the special of the day was pork chops. As you can guess, I didn't bother checking out any other places. It was amazing having dinner on the beach. The bartender, who, strangely enough, was from Norway, came over and asked if we were on our honeymoon. In hindsight, we probably should have said yes to get some free champagne.


Philipsburg

After a quick stop in the Coliseum Casino, John and I rejoined the dynamic drinking duo back at the Sunset Beach Bar. The boys had been drinking Presidente beer that they bought at the Dragon Gate mini-mart for about 10 hours straight at this point. I decided it was time for my one drink of the night and had a delicious mango passion fruit daquiri.

Somehow, we ended the night back at the hotel drinking the bottle of Crown Special Reserve that Mike had bought for his girlfriend and watching John throw pretzels off the balcony.

The next day, we had breakfast at The Tortuga Cafe, and then we all headed out separately to buy various gifts before our afternoon flight. St. Maarten is known for their colored diamonds and island liquor. At one shop I went into, after the salesperson asked me on a date, he proceeded to tell me that I needed to try all of the different liquor flavors. I had to seriously insist that he stop pouring after 3, but I must admit that the chocolate tequila was quite good.

St. Maarten is an interesting place. We stayed on the Dutch side, never even venturing further than Philipsburg. However, I did count 10 Chinese restaurants in that little stretch of the island. Another curious thing to note, all of the shop owners were Indian or Arabic instead of islanders. Everyone spoke English (granted, with a Caribbean accent), and all transactions were done in US dollars. I had to ask around at the airport and finally convince a little old lady at a gift shop to trade me for some local currency, just to have as a souvenir.

It was hard to leave paradise, and the tough time we had in getting back to Houston didn't help. Our plane was late, they put the fuel in the wrong tank, we hit major turbulence and had to drop to a lower altitude, and a flap malfunctioned... and that was just our flight to Newark. I really appreciated being an airline employee after that, because when we landed, an airport employee drove us to immigration (passing all of our fellow passengers), and I got to go through my own person security line instead of waiting with the masses. That, plus the realization that I got to go to St. Maarten for $62.50 round trip, is why I'm not leaving this job anytime soon.