Day 22 Philipsburg, St Maartens, Virgin Islands

Well 5 days at sea…..it sounds pretty boring but in fact the time went rather quickly.  It felt like a holiday from our holiday……a time to relax and let some of the wonderful sights and memories sink in………..it was also a good time to do some reading.  We borrowed books from the library (now that there are lots of Americans on board the library “Eng” section has been added to with brand new, never before opened books!!!)

In the whole 5 days we didn’t see another ship or sign of another human on the planet.  WiFi was hopeless and the TV only occasionally showed programs so if you were interested in the ‘News from Serbia’ in Serbian, it was your lucky day.  Other than that forget it – even the in-house movies only worked for about 20 minutes before cutting out.

We got used to seeing flying fish.  They are just amazing.  Sometimes you see a group of 10 to 20 of them, sometimes just one or two.  It is hard to judge their size as we would usually see them from our 12^th deck balcony or from the 14^th while we were having a cuppa in the buffet.  Some of them seemed to ‘fly’ a long way before disappearing back into the sea.  Den was the lucky one who saw a turtle just swimming along. 

The other thing that impressed us was the beautiful colour of the Atlantic.  Even if the sun wasn’t shining the water appeared to be the most beautiful cobalt colour. 

We also thought of the early explorers – we felt totally alone in the world and we knew exactly where we were.  It was really exciting when we then came in the Port of Philipsburg, St Maarten, Virgin Islands.

Philipsburg, St.Maarten, Virgin Islands.

It was really hot as we left the ship.  Julee and Lindsay hadn’t been well yesterday as they had come down with the bad cold/flu that has been going around the ship.  But today Julee seemed better but Lindsay started out but then he went back to the ship in a taxi. 

StMaarten is a very busy bustling town. On our walk to the city we saw a strange sight – there were cave like shapes in the front of the cliff face.  These caves had goats in them. Some standing some laying down.  How they got there and how they left again was a mystery.  There were a number of local workers ‘working’ on the road side.  It must have been ‘smoko’ as they were just sitting around.  On our return these same workmen were having their siesta time.  One of them sitting in his wheelbarrow in the shade.  I would have loved to have taken his photo but with his sunglasses on I didn’t know if he was awake or not and I didn’t want to chance upsetting him.

When we reached Philipsburg we found every second shop, it seemed, was a jewellery shop selling diamonds and other precious stones.   Lots of shops sold cigars and of course rum. It got quite tiring having to say no to the people standing on the pavement trying to get you to come into their shops.   It has three main streets Boardwalk, Front St. and Back St. – hard to get lost.  I found myself thinking of ‘Death in Paradise’ (show on ABC) as we wandered around hearing all of the musical Caribbean accents.  It had been our plan to look around the shops and then go on a tour around the island, but that didn’t happen.  Den started to feel quite ill and the heat had taken its toll on Julee and me, so by noon we simply went back to the ship.

St Maarten is a very small island, one of the many discovered by Christopher Columbus.  He didn’t even step onto the shore.  They had come across it on St. Maartens day, so hence the name.  Tomorrow we arrive in St. Thomas…you can probably guess the rest.  But getting back to St Maarten – it is divided into two parts, we were on the Dutch side while the other half is French.  It is a pity we hadn’t been able to do more sightseeing but sometimes you have to remember you can’t do everything.