02.01. - St Maarten 🇵🇭

It was a beautiful day on the Dutch French island. The sun gently tickled my nose and woke me up. We leisurely got ready for breakfast and went ahead to the restaurant. Luckily, we could have a quieter and more relaxed breakfast today. Shortly after, the other two joined us. In the end, we also met the Stuttgart couple from the airplane and talked about the cruise. One of their highlights was the tour in Grenada through the rainforest and the 7 waterfalls that you could jump off. But if you decided to do it, you had to go through all of them and there was no turning back. They hadn't booked anything so far and had learned most of it through the local tour operators. As time was running out, we said goodbye and prepared ourselves for the beach with the airplanes. When we left the ship, we immediately noticed the well-groomed harbor. The tourist information was located at the entrance, followed by small colorful houses with shops. But no, I didn't go in. We had planned to go to Maho Beach first. Depending on the desired destination, queues formed. We lined up at the sign for Maho. We drove first to Phillipsburg and then along the coast towards the airport for €8 with about 8 other guests. During the drive, we were surprised by a shower. The whole sky was gray. When we got out, we quickly took shelter and were lucky. It stopped after a few minutes. The beach was very narrow and separated from the airport by a road. There was a beach restaurant at one corner, which housed the famous surfboard with the arrival times of the scheduled flights. Unfortunately, there was no shade on the small beach. Danny rented two sunbeds and an umbrella for €20. We were a bit stingy and decided to have something to drink first. That's where we met the small Swabian family again and joined them at the table overlooking the beach and the approach path. We ordered Carib beer and tortilla chips with Guatemala dip. They brought us black and fiery red chips as well as a stone bowl with the dip. It was simply delicious. Stephan and I took turns going to the beach to admire the incoming planes. The propeller planes were quite high. But the bigger planes came down pretty low and we were able to take nice pictures. Around late noon, we took our things to Danny and Franka and took as many pictures as we could with the planes. But not only the landing is spectacular at this place, the takeoff of the big planes was also remarkable. The pressure from the turbines regularly blew hats, sunglasses, and other smaller objects into the sea. You could see some people running after them, and others were practically pushed to the ground. It also smelled strongly of kerosene there. Nevertheless, we spent almost the whole day there. At around 5pm, we had a small drink and met the Stuttgart couple, who were also very enthusiastic about the nearby airport. We exchanged stories, Stephan took a picture of the two of them, and we all smiled at the grandpa behind us, who was listening to the radio traffic with a walkie-talkie. Together, we took a taxi and drove back towards the harbor, except that we got off in the city. At a small stand, I finally bought a long-awaited beach bag since I had left mine at home. We were about to take a photo at the courthouse when it started raining again. So we continued walking to the right through the shopping passage. However, it was not very interesting. One jewelry store followed another. On the other side were the more interesting shops, and we once again met Gaby, Marcus, and Lukas :-). They were also rather disappointed and, like us, had hoped for more shopping. There was Michael Kors, Tommy Hilfiger, and Sunglas Hut, but they had already closed. A bit disappointed, we walked back to the harbor for about 15 minutes. Our ship was beautifully lit up and was already waiting for us. We quickly took a shower and tried to live up to today's motto, 'White Party', at least to some extent. We quickly checked the photos and actually wanted to have a cocktail. But the server was so busy that she didn't have time for us anymore. So we went straight to dinner. Exhausted and knowing that we had to get up at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning, I followed the food and conversations with only half an ear and was glad when I could finally go to bed.