JoCo Cruise Crazy 3: Day 5

On Valentine's Day, we docked in Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of the island.  The French side is spelled Saint Martin, if you're concerned about island spelling. 

I was really excited to see a Holland America ship when we arrived in St. Maarten.  Zooming in confirmed that it was the Westerdam in the port, which is the boat that I was on last year on JoCo Cruise Crazy 2!  

Still love the blue hulls, even if the average passenger age is 82.

We queued up to get off the ship extra early that day, given our experience the previous day. While in line, we met Jen, who I only knew from internetting with Sea Monkeys.  It was great to finally be able to meet her in person! Hooray for name tags!

No, the fisheye lens isn't getting old anytime soon.

We had booked a tour on the island separately from the ship excursions through Bernard's Tours.  I'd read good reviews on the internet, and knew that they went to both Orient and Maho beaches.  I really wanted to see both of those places and there wasn't a ship excursion that went to both of them.  Booking the island tour through Bernard's was only marginally more expensive than taking  cabs would have been.  We boarded our bus and were greeted by our guide for the day, named "Sexy," who I had read about on the internet, but not in a creepy way.  He had an excellent knowledge of the island and shared interesting facts as he drove.  

Our first stop was to see some iguanas. From pictures on the internet, I was guessing it was just a bunch of dirt with some iguanas, but apparently they have been working on turning it into a proper park and have been putting a lot of effort into landscaping and fencing.  It looks like it's going to be very nice when it's finished.  As promised, there were quite a few iguanas.  The guide fed them iceberg lettuce. 

Technically touching the iguana, but only technically. 

In addition to iguanas, there were quite a few ducks and roosters, which seem to be strangely common in the Caribbean.  

I am such a badass.

Our next stop was brief, at a scenic overlook.  As promised, it was scenic.  

I was pleased to see the clouds were largely clearing off by the time we got to Orient Beach.  We spent about 1.5 hours here, which was a good amount of time to enjoy the beach.  For $10 we had the use of two beach chairs, and umbrella, and received one drink each.  It's not a Caribbean island until somebody has handed you a rum punch.  It rained for about 10 minutes toward the end of our stay and the bathrooms ran out of water (which of course precludes toilets flushing), but the beach itself was beautiful.  

We hopped back in the bus and were driven to plaza-type place that had a pastry shop that our guide recommended (at times we wondered what kind of kick-backs the tour company gets from all the places they took us to, but they were all quality places so I really can't complain).  We were hungry after the beach, so decided to take him up on his recommendation. 

As promised, the pastries were very good. 

Finally, it was time for the entire reason that Jay bought a fisheye lens and what I'd been ecstatic about seeing since I first learned that we were going to St. Maarten: Maho Beach!  The airport on the island is directly across the street from the beach, so approaching planes are flying very low.  Mostly smaller planes fly in, but they do get a few large jets every day.  Our guide had timed the visit so that we would be able to see a flight from Air France arrive.   There were a few planes before the Air France jet, including a Delta jet, so we were able to get quite a few shots.  It was awesome.  The ones that Jay took with the fisheye lens are fantastic. 

Boring lens, but exciting airplane!

After about a 7-hour tour, we were back at the ship.  After, of course, stopping at a little souvenir shop by the port where they had KINDER EGGS!!  And I did stuff my pockets full of choke-y chocolates that are banned in the U.S.  As I didn't particularly want to find out how serious the U.S. is about the $300 Kinder Egg fine, rest assured, they were consumed before we arrived back in the U.S.  And nobody choked to death even a little bit. 

I like to toe lines like that. 

Not only is that a semi-appropriate segue, but it's also the last photo that I took with my camera before dropping it on the concrete pier.  After dropping my camera, it took photos like this one: 

It's artistic, I guess. 

My camera has been sent off to hopefully be repaired.  Jay was kind enough to lend me his Canon point-and-shoot camera. 

Due to not having a camera that could take good low-light photos of movement, I don't have any pictures of that night's concert, which featured Joseph Scrimshaw and Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett.  All performers were great.  It was the first time that I had seen Scrimshaw because his show on the previous cruise was a late-night  thing and I get very eyes-closed-and-dead-to-the-world after about 10 PM, so I was glad to be able to see him this year.  Incidentally, all of the performers from that night are Minnesotans.  :^)

That night, we returned to find that our room steward had gone all out for the Valentine's Day towel animal!

Aw!