June 17, 2004

Times FeatureMurry Frymer

What we saw on our vacation

By Murry Frymer
Times Columnist

The restaurant was a delight. We picked a pretty table up front, overlooking the beach. The views were impressive.

A few hundred feet ahead the waves of Orient Beach were crashing on shore. The beach’s wide expanse was right out of everyone’s Caribbean fantasy.

And just to the right/front of the table, in a shady beach area, was a wide expanse of bathers, tanned, toned, and stark naked. I hardly knew where to look next, though my eyes knew and found their focus.

This, my friends, was my just completed spring vacation on St. Martin/Sint Maarten in the Caribbean. It was our first visit to St. Martin, our first visit to the Caribbean in fact. It’s a long way to go for a beach, considering there’s one just about 40 minutes from San Jose, but it comes with its alluring differences and, yes, we were looking for something a little different.

St. Martin is a very different place from near by Rio Del Mar, or Hawaii, a bit further. For one thing, it takes about 12 hours in the air and three connections to get there. That, considering two plane cancellations, came to more than 20 hours each way overall. Most flights require an overnight flight, but we managed to find one that left very early in the morning and, as it turned out, arrived late at night.

At that time, the island of St. Martin is just one lighted dot in a sea of lighted dots. Landing on some of these dots is not altogether a snap. On the nearby island of St. Barthelemy the landing strip is about the length of an aircraft carrier, hidden behind a small mountain. During the day, people sit on top of that mountain and duck the planes that are trying to clear the heights before skidding into the depths.

We picked St. Martin out of a Caribbean travel guide. It has become quite a popular Caribbean island with its own unique appeal. For one thing, unlike the other islands, this one is divided in its national sovereignty. The southern third of the small island (about 35 square miles) is Dutch. It goes by the name of Sint Maarten. The capital, Philipsburg, is where the cruise ships land, and when they do, the little shopping town is filled to the brim with tourists that cover the landscape like ants. We drove through that town at 1 mile per hour when we could move at all, our front bumper trying to disperse the crowds that blanketed the narrow street.

The northern two-thirds of the island is French, a different place. While English is the common language in the South, the French insist in speaking in French, unless you’re at a restaurant that wants your money, in which case they speak your language.

While both sides have their exotic locales with 37 magnificent beaches, there is a shlockier aspect to the south, with its fast food restaurants, its rundown neighborhoods and its unmovable traffic. You can’t really call some of the neighborhoods run down, since they have never been built up. The native black population lives in poverty in the interior; the rim of the island is for affluent tourists.

And while I am on the negatives, I should point out that some of the roads are muddy paths. Near our hotel was a severe dip in the road that remained a small lake during our entire stay. We worried each time whether our small Hyundai would make it through.

It seems ludicrous that the roads are a virtual sea of traffic bumps, one right after another, slowing the already minimal speeds to minus minimal.

Now let me get to the positives. We stayed in Yacht-land, a resort called Captain Oliver’s, on Oyster Pond, which opens to the Atlantic. To get to the beach, a small taxi boat scoots you about one minute’s worth to the other side of the pond where a lovely expanse, called Dawn Beach, offered up a lovely vista, a great little beachside restaurant, and its own nudie attractions.

Actually, Dawn Beach is Dutch, where clothing is supposedly not optional. But go complain! Captain Oliver’s is right on the Dutch/French border. The lodge rooms are French; the restaurant, built right over the water is Dutch. And, weirdly enough, there is a difference. The French side preferred Euros and spoke French. The restaurant people took dollars and chatted in English.

Speaking of dollars, you need lots of them on St. Martin, especially the French side where dollar/Euro exchange rate varies according to the restaurant’s predilections. In a short visit to St. Barthelemy, that exchange resulted in our paying $14 for two Diet Cokes. It was an extremely hot day that day and a number of drinks added up.

Getting to St. Barts from St. Martin on a small boat from Captain Oliver’s took just 45 minutes. It seemed like 45 years as the ocean tossed and twisted the boat from side to side, up and down. Our stomachs were in no shape to consume some of the gourmet food on that little French elite destination. Therefore: expensive Cokes.

St. Martin has no shortage of its own gourmet destinations. One little French town: Le Grand Case, is really but one narrow street. It is lined bumper to bumper with exquisite restaurants overlooking the Caribbean Sea and the task is to pick one out of the multitude.

Because the traffic was so bad, we spent less time trying to get to some of the Dutch destinations, which included a number of casinos stuck here and there. Near the airport are a string of beaches and lovely homes, but they entail difficult journeys.

As in all travel adventures, you wonder sometime whether there isn’t a conspiracy to rob you of those low-value dollars that you keep needing to take out of the ATMS. $12 to use a washing machine? $43 for lunch that consists of a hamburger and small plate of ribs?

To get our rental car, we had to enlist a taxi cab. No meters in these cabs. As the woman driver meandered around, seemingly unable to find the Dollar rent-a-car place, I muttered to Barb that this might be a ruse to raise the fare. We finally got to our destination and the driver asked for $25. But ten minutes later, while we were getting our rental car, she was back.

She held out a $20 to me. “You gave me an extra $20,” she said. My mouth fell open and I thanked her and shook her hand. I think it was our most memorable moment on St. Martin.

Contact Murry Frymer at murry@timesmediainc.com.