I don’t know what’s wrong with me but again today I was up and ready to see the sunrise at 6-20! It wasn’t quite as beautiful as the previous day as the ship sailed into St Maarten, the Dutch side of this tiny island state. Once again the ship sailed right into the heart of the capital, Philipsburg. It’s a big port and there were two other cruise ships in dock when we arrived. There seemed to be a lot of modern development and to our left a huge turquoise bay of water called Great Bay. There was no historic town like we’d seen elsewhere but there were plenty of super yachts bobbing about in the bay.
As our trip today was once again in the afternoon, we sat in our new favourite place on The Venranda! It was very noisy with the sound of trucks, buses, drills, motorbikes, loud music, ships horns, construction, airplanes, trolley car bells etc. There was absolutely nothing natural about this place even the white sand seemed to be being imported.
In the afternoon we were booked on our 2nd catamaran trip. The Golden Eagle. This was a slightly smaller vessel than the one in St Lucia and the crew all seemed somewhat surly and unsmiley.
The first stop after about 10 mins of skimming across the turquoise waters was the snorkel spot. I chose to get into the water at the back of the boat. I didn’t want to slide and hurt myself so there is now a video of me sitting down and then face planting into the water with a huge ‘smack’ ! Ouch it hurt but I braved it out.
The snorkelling was v average as they were feeding the fish to attract them. There was a sunken submarine and apparently a helicopter which I didn’t seen. Everyone seemed very impressed that I’d seen the shopping trolley, however.
Next we sailed past lots of modern development and houses of the rich and famous, before we sailed into a picture perfect bay where we would be able to spend 40mins on the beach. The only problem was you had to swim to the beach. Hm…..in the adverts for this trip they’d shown the boat actually landing on the beach. Fair play to Jane, she stood up and asked how she was supposed to get there as, of course, she’s currently not swimming still. The crew were great and when Jane confirmed that yes , she did want to go ashore, they made it happen via the rib and a rubber ring on a rope. Don’t get me wrong this wasn’t a thrill ride but a slow careful chug with Jane smiling away behind. They were brilliant and got her ashore with no effort and no stress. I meanwhile swam ashore, it was absolutely beautiful.
This made us very happy and the beach itself was soft, soft white sand and sea of turquoise blue. This was Simpsons Beach. Not too crowded, just perfect.
Once we’d safely returned to the boat we sailed along until we reached the famous beach where the planes land right overhead at the airport. It was very exciting as the planes were coming in every few minutes and flew right above our heads as we cheered from the boat.
As we started our journey back , it once again began to rain. We took shelter inside whilst a few mad Rum Drinkers carried on the party outside in the rain. On previous boat trips our favourite song had become ‘Big Bamboo’ a very questionable song from 2014! By now the crew had all cheered up and joined in the fun with everyone as we sang along to YMCA and of course, Sweet Caroline, at the tops of our voices.
In the evening we went back to Islands for their Caribbean themed night, the food was excellent once again. Afterwards we scored 20/20 in the 70s quiz night but lost out on the tie break again. The question was how many copies did Mull of Kintyre sell back in the 70s?
After this we decided to go to the Live Lounge again to check out The Collective’s Country Night. We were a bit early and when we arrived the screen said we were listening to a pianist called Andrei. Indeed we were listening to music but there was no one on stage. Very odd business. We decided that perhaps Andrei was tiny little pocket sized pianist that we just couldn’t see.
The Collective were again very good singing a range of country tunes and there were a handful of people up line dancing. At 9:45 we retired to bed, once again exhausted!
Where shall we go to next? 