Windjammer Cruise

(Note: Clicking on any image in this travelogue will bring up an enlarged version of the image.)

Monday, March 17
Sint Maarten / Saint Martin

Sunday morning we breakfasted at Zee Best again. No chance encounters with New Jersey pals this time. We headed out to Phillipsburg to check out the Tourist Information Office and see what it had to offer. The desk attendant at Mary's Boon had given us the address, and that it was next to a gas station. But when we found the street and the gas station, there was no Tourist Information Office. I drove the Kia up on an embankment (parking is scarce in Phillipsburg) and we got out to investigate. We eventually found it concealed in a nondescript office block with an 8-1/2 x 11 sign taped to the door. They gotta work on their outreach. We got a few nice leads on a zoo, an "Old House", and a couple of beaches. We poked around the downtown shopping area for a bit, stuck our noses into a little Sint Maarten museum, and then set off for the zoo.

The zoo was small, but very charming, and worth a thorough exploration. The animals were kept in fairly roomy habitats, and some, such as peacocks and iguanas wandered freely amongst the patrons. There were lots of colorful birds, some primates and felines, and a reptile house. There was a very large caged-in habitat for birds that we could enter. And there was one very sociable cockatoo that delighted in having its head skritched through the grid of the cage wires. I spent a lot of time with her.

I had taken some pretty copious notes to identify the subjects of my photos. But somewhere I misplaced the notebook after I got home. So some of the captions may not be accurate.

The folks at the Tourist Information Office had told us of "The Old House". This was sort of an unofficial museum that was actually a private home owned by a fellow named Pierre Beauperthuy V. This sounded fascinating, because apparently he is the scion of an old and powerful family dating back to the colonial days that made its fortune, and his, in the harvesting and sale of salt. He is purportedly quite a character with endless stories to tell of the island, its history, and its politics. The house is not a conventional museum, but rather his home, chock full of stuff. Stuff with historical, political, and artistic significance, and stories attached to everything. We headed up to the general vicinity, crossing again into the French side of the island. After trolling up and down the road where it was supposed to be located, and not finding it, we pulled into a local police station to ask directions. The gendarme happily jumped into his police car and led us to the entrance, which did have a sign, but not a particularly prominent one. We went down a driveway with potholes big enough to swallow our Kia whole, and found ourselves in the scruffy yard of a scruffy house with an abandoned truck and a wary, but curious dog. Jenny went out and knocked on the door to no avail. A woman appeared in the yard from somewhere on the property, and informed us that the Old House was closed on Mondays, but M. Beauperthuy might be back later and let us in. This intrigued me even more. We went and got some lunch, and returned to the Old House an hour later. Alas, the place was deserted. Not even the dog was there to greet us. My one regret of the trip.

We had yet to swim on this day, so we looked at the map and saw a public beach at nearby Dawn Bay. We crossed back into the Dutch Half of the island and headed there. This southeastern coast of the island is characterized by rugged cliffs dropping down to the ocean. As we approached we saw the entire landscape completely obliterated by huge resort hotels, with not a speck of rock or vegetation all the way down to the beach. And there did not seem to be an access to any public beach there. We stopped at the entrance to the hotel and inquired at the entrance gatehouse. The guard reluctantly admitted that yes, technically the beach was open to the public. But we would not have any access to facilities such as bathrooms or a place to change clothing. And we were not to use any of the beach chairs. God forbid any of the denizens of Friar's Bay Beach might show their faces or tits on the property.

I changed in the car in the parking lot. Jenny was wearing her suit under her dress. We slunk off to an unused corner of the beach and tried to look simultaneously inconspicuous and like we belonged there. The beach was sandy and lovely, but with occasional outcroppings of rock in the water. I stubbed my foot on one of those outcroppings. Didn't think much of it at the time, but it was to come back to bite me later.

We hung out at Dawn Bay until sometime around 3:30 or 4:00, and headed for Guana Bay, which Jenny and I had fondly remembered from our 1998 trip. This was what Dawn Bay might have looked like before it was developed to within an inch of its life. The landscape is arid on this coast. Jenny calls it "Scotland with cactus". There's a rough walking trail that hugs the coast, climbing up and down over the remains of ancient lava flows covered with scrub grasses and bushes, and leaving the rock bare in the steeper portions. Wild sheep graze on the slopes. It is spare and wild and peaceful and beautiful. Probably the only reason that it has not been developed is that the land drops straight down into the sea with no beach to speak of. That lonesome place is one of my fonder memories of the trip. We walked in silence for a mile or two, careful of the sometimes treacherous footing. And then I just sat in by myself for a bit contemplating the rocky coast while Jenny continued on around the next point. As the sun drew low in the sky on our last evening in St. Maarten, I watched as she returned. And we headed back to the car before it got too dark to see the trail.

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We headed back to Mary's Boon, caught a quick supper someplace, and prowled along the beach in the moonlight. My foot still hurt where I had stubbed it at Dawn Bay, and examination showed a little dark speck below the skin. I must have gotten a shard of rock or coral in it. I did not relish the prospect of traipsing through airports lugging my luggage on that foot, so I resolved to go to a local clinic the next day to see if they could get it out..

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Tuesday, March 18
Sint Maarten and Home

We had to be out of the room by 11:00. But our flights weren't until early afternoon. So we packed and left our luggage with the front desk. I walked out to a local clinic in Simpson's Bay to see if they could attend to my foot. The doctor opined that I had a tiny coral spine in my foot, and to remove it would cause more of an injury than to leave it in and let it work its way to the surface over time. He prescribed an anaesthetic cream to kill the pain. I wound up using the cream for maybe two days before it became unnecessary. 50 bucks for the visit. 50 bucks for the cream. Oh well.

We headed back to Mary's Boon, and hung out at the beach until it was time to go. I took Jenny to the airport around noon, and then about an hour later returned the rental car and had them deliver me to the airport for my own flight.

The rotten end to a great vacation started at the Charlottesville NC airport where I was to meet my connecting flight to Newark. After I went through customs, I went down to the baggage pickup area. My bag showed up fine, but not the guitar, which I had gate-checked in Sint Maarten. No panic. First of all it was my "beach guitar", not the Martin. I informed the US Airways rep in the baggage area. She disappeared behind a locked security door, and I sat down to wait. I had about 45 minutes before I needed to catch the connecting flight. About 25 minutes later, as I was starting to get nervous, she showed up carrying the guitar. I made the flight just fine.

Bill picked me up at Newark, and I drove home, arriving around 10:30 just in time to start a classic What Can Go Wrong Next series of events worthy of a 3rd rate sitcom. While I was away, I had engaged with a local contractor from just down the street to do a major refurbishment of my bathroom: New tile on floor and walls, new sink, and various other improvements. I was looking forward to the first long hot bath I'd had in 2 weeks. (Water scarcity in the Islands meant short and unsatisfying showers all during my trip.) I walked in the door to discover my toilet sitting in the middle of the living room floor. I went to the bathroom, and found that almost nothing had been done other than to remove the toilet and sink. I called up the contractor, waking him up. I didn't care. I was plenty pissed. Except I didn't have a pot to piss in. The story was that for the entire time I had been gone, it had been too cold to lay any tile, because the cement wouldn't set. Bummer! I didn't want to risk staying the night at home, because I generally need to get up in the middle of the night to use the toilet. And I didn't have one. And I wanted that damn bath! The hell with it. I'll go take a room at an el-cheapo motel and deal with it tomorrow. I booked a room at the Red Roof Inn in Parsippany, and got my stuff and headed out.

From just about the beginning of the year until the day I left for Sint Maarten, my car had been living in a shovelled-out spot at the end of my driveway, and I had been accessing my house via a trampled-down path through the snow. When I arrived home, it looked as if the snow had melted sufficiently that I could drive to my garage. I had succeeded. But when departing, I got stuck in the snow trying to turn around to exit forward instead of in reverse. After a half hour of spinning wheels, and shoveling the rock-hard snow, and cursing, I finally got a box of sawdust that was in the garage, and used that to spread under my wheels to give me enough traction to reach the mouth of the driveway.

I had gone no more than a mile or so, when my dashboard display lit up with a message saying "Engine temperature is too hot. Continue to drive moderately." The message stayed lit for several minutes as I drove moderately before it finally extinguished. As I continued to drive moderately it lit up again with the same message, and then went out a bit later. I had just turned onto the interstate when it lit up in red, saying "Engine overheated! Stop engine! Do not open hood! Danger of scalding! The apocalypse will arrive in 3 minutes!"

I pulled over, and waited about 15 minutes to let the engine cool, and then gingerly re-started and made my way to the nearest exit. I had noticed amidst all this drama that the heater did not seem to be working, and I suddenly put two and two together: Engine overheating? No heat from the heater? I must be low on coolant! I nursed the car to an open gas station after one or two more stops to let it cool off and bought a gallon of anti-freeze mix. The car swallowed the whole gallon. I drove a little further, and then stopped for a donut (and a bathroom). When I came out, I noticed a little puddle of green coolant under the front of the car. Rats! I had holed the radiator bulling my way out of the driveway in the deep frozen snow. It later turned out I had also ruined the condenser of the air conditioner.

I drove on, looking for the Red Roof Inn. Did I pass it? Finally got so far that I knew I must have overshot it. I turned around at a cloverleaf and retraced my steps. Drove carefully back the opposite way looking carefully for the sign. I got almost all the way back to where I got on the road, and knew I had overshot it again. I was stopped at a traffic light. The light turned green. I checked ahead of me, behind me in the mirror, and both ways down the intersecting road. Not a car in sight. I made a U-turn, and a few seconds later was greeted by the flashing red lights in my rearview. Of course! I pulled over and met the cop at my window, papers in hand, saying, "Congratulations! This is the perfect capper to what may be the worst day I've had in ten years. Let me tell you my tale of woe, and then do with me what you will." I told him my story, probably all the while dripping antifreeze on his shoes. He gave me back my papers and said, "Don't do it again." I said, "No, sir. I won't. Can you direct me to the Red Roof Inn?"

At 2:00AM, I left a trail of clothes from the door of the room to the tub. I went to sleep in the tub until 4:00, when I got out, dried off, and went to bed.

.For the rest of the week, I slept in a spare room in my contractor's house (3 doors up the road from me) until I had a working toilet again.