The island of St. Marten is divided in half, east to west. The northern half belongs to France, the southern half, where we are, belongs to the Dutch. The island has been divided since the signing of the Treaty of Concordia in 1648, which today remains as one of the oldest treaties still in effect. There are no border crossings or passport control stations, although there was an attempt to create them in August of 2020 in response to Covid-19. That met was significant disapproval from the populations of both countries, and was quickly eliminated the following month. The incident gave visibility to the ongoing effort by some to unify the two halves.
Wikipedia’s article on the island, when discussing the climate (classic Caribbean weather: dry season from January to April and a rainy season from August to December), Hurricane Irma was discussed, and gives insight into what can happen during the season if one of these horrific storms descend on an island. “On 6 September 2017 the island was hit … (Category 5 at landfall), which caused widespread and significant damage, estimated at $3 billion, to buildings and infrastructure.” The article goes on to say: “Some days after the storm had abated, a survey by the Dutch Red Cross estimated that nearly a third of the buildings in Sint Maarten had been destroyed and that over 90 per cent of structures on the island had been damaged.” Thankfully, you would hardly know it now as you walk the downtown area of Philipsburg. All of us who would be frantic if even a Category One hurricane threatened Connecticut cannot imagine witnessing a catastrophic storm such as described in this article.
Riviera arrives as scheduled at 8:00am. We are one of four cruise ships, and by far the smallest. Our neighbors are the Carnival Magic, Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas, and Aida Cruise Line’s Aidaperla, each of which has a capacity of over 3,000 passengers. And this is only the Dutch side of the island. To suggest that this island depends on tourists in general and cruise ships in particular is an understatement. Interesting fact: Tourists are permitted to stay in St. Martin for a maximum of three months. Why we don’t know.
We are on the Dutch side, have no excursions planned, and intend to just walk through downtown Philipsburg, which is a half mile from the cruise terminal. It’s not an easy walk because the sidewalks, when there are sidewalks, are narrow and the street signage is sketchy. We make the trek, and are convinced that the taxis we are told are all over the downtown will definitely be utilized for our return to the ship.
We spend an hour or so walking down Boardwalk, which is a wide pedestrian walkway adjacent to a beautiful beach area. Merchants are politely entrepreneurial here. Almost as soon as we arrive, a lady invites into her small open-air store. Good move on her part. We find several things that will make wonderful gifts for members of the family, and a gorgeous beach shirt for Steve that cost all of $10. A quick aside: as you would expect in an area annually visited by millions of Americans, US dollars are cheerfully accepted, almost as a second currency. That applies throughout the Caribbean. Very convenient, as anyone who has had to make money exchanges will tell you.
Island of Saba
All along our walk, lovely, genuinely friendly people gently urge us to frequent the restaurants and shops. We take one up on her offer and stop for water and coffee. Super friendly people that instantly make us feel at home. We continue our walk for a while, then turn around and find an open-air restaurant (actually, almost every shop, bar and restaurant is built as such) named the Blue Bitch Bar & Restaurant.
Okay, sounds like a dive, right? Here’s the real story, written on their website: “Take your mind out of the gutter! A blue BITCH ROCK is a shiny rock that can be found along the shores of the island. It was given this name by generations before us. The Blue Bitch played a significant role on our island. At the beginning of the 20thcentury, when local men left the island for work, Ladies made extra money by selling Blue Bitch Rocks as gravel for mixing cement.” We see patterns of these rocks in the beautiful concrete floor of the restaurant.
After lunch, we go inland one block to Front Street, shown above, the highly acclaimed shopping street of the town. It’s lined with high-end stores selling very high-end products. We wander down the street and are greeted by two lovely young ladies in front of a store named Dor24k Cometics that sells all kinds of skincare products – extremely expensive skincare products.
Wow, these two saw us coming a mile away. We stop (mistake one) and are invited to try out a couple of lotions by one of the young women. She introduces herself as Kim and tells us that she is from Israel. She applies stuff to both of our faces that will take away the bags under our seventy-something eyes. We hate to admit it, but the stuff is really effective. After she convinces us both that this stuff is something we truly can’t live without, we actually buy some.
Kim, now seeing us as a couple of pigeons possibly ripe for plucking, “throws in” a free application of more products, to be applied by the “owner” of the store who, we are told repeatedly, has appeared on the “Ellen” show. We make the bad judgment to go along with this, and are led to the inner reaches of the store. Uh oh.
The guy that now has us in his clutches cranks up his sweet-as-can-be hard-core sales pitch. We are intrigued about what will happen, are physically too far into the store to run out, and haven’t quite reached the point where we’ve had our fill of this entire razzle dazzle. We’re just not comfortable just getting up and making our escape, making a really awkward scene in the process. These pros have us just where they want us.
The guy does indeed apply some very nice stuff to Cathy’s face that will take away wrinkles and such, all the time yacking and yacking about how fabulous we are and how this stuff is just what Cathy needs. God, we’re there for at least a half hour, and finally find out the cosmetics he is pitching will cost … are you ready for this? … $6,000! No, that’s not a typo. Six thousand and no/100 dollars. But, there’s more!, as they say. He brings out some ultraviolet gizmo that costs $4,000. We are incredulous, and begin to wonder how in God’s name he has so misjudged the people he is talking to.
Now the close. After telling us over and over that we really need to take care of ourselves and strive to look better, he offers the entire package for a mere $4,000. Already we’ve saved thousands! But, because he is in such a generous mood, he drops the price again to the bargain-basement price of only $2,200.
We don’t have any idea who this guy thinks we are or where we are from that we would think nothing of spending over two grand for some skincare products. He keeps it up but is sensing there’s trouble ahead. He feigns deep concern that all we think about is money instead of our health. We both sense that it’s time to bring this to a close. To accomplish that, Steve finally says: “Look, you put on a phenomenal sales performance, and we can see that you are convinced that we would want these amazing products, but we just are not in the market. This is not going to happen, I’m sorry.”
Now, a true professional would 1) get it, 2) admit to himself that he just wasted almost an hour on two yokels who just are not going to take the bait and spend the kind of money you only see so casually spent on LA’s Rodeo Drive, 3) hand us his business card as a last desperate measure, 4) wish us a good day, and 5) ask himself how he so misjudged these two.
Well, not this guy. He storms off to the back of the store in a huff, leaving us with an assistant that stands there embarrassed and apologetic. We grab our meager purchase and get the hell out of there. On our way out of the store, we say goodbye to Kim and the other girl, who are hard at work roping in another tourist.
Cathy is angry that we wasted the time. Steve, on the other hand, says that, what the heck, we didn’t really have anything else to do, and we stood our ground. I mean, it really wasn’t that hard to not spend $2,200 on cosmetics, but the pitch itself was fascinating in its way, and we small-town chumps from the middle-class environs of Wallingford CT will never see such a performance ever for the rest of our lives.
We walk down Front Street until we see a cab. A price of $6 is offered to take us back to our ship, and we hop in. A pleasant 10-minute drive later, we are at the cruise terminal and see that yet another cruise ship, the Costa Deliziosa, has joined us, berthed just ahead of us. On to the ship for naps and a quiet afternoon.
Around 3:30pm, Steve is walking on the fitness track and sees another ship approach the harbor. It sends out a couple of tenders, we guess for those passengers eager to go ashore. Apparently, it isn’t due to dock until much later. Beautiful clouds make for a dramatic photo. He watches the Costa Deliziosa depart.
SailAway commences at 6pm, as the sun goes down. It’s a beautiful evening, made even more interesting because four of the cruise ships with whom we shared the harbor are still in port. They are all lit up and quite spectacular, especially the Aidaperla, that is equipped to put on quite a light show.
This was an interesting day. Sint Maarten, whose primary industry historically was extracting salt from the Great Salt Pond for export throughout the Caribbean islands, has, over the several centuries, adapted to its changing environment. It is still in the extractive industry, but the activity is centered around extracting money from tourists in exchange for time spent in a beautiful locale inhabited by friendly, hospitable people.
