Dear NEXT TRAVELER to St Maarten!
Highlights/Recommendations:
1. rent a car and explore
2. soak up several hours on a beach (Mullet Bay was incredible – LOCAL FAV)
3. Maho Bay & Beach (watching the planes) is a very small and crowded beach
4. enjoy French pastries in Marigot
St Maarten was one of our day stops on our southern Caribbean cruise. I had waited two decades to make it there. I could barely wait for our ship to dock and us to be able to explore the island. I had always been fascinated with the island being split between the Dutch and the French. I didn’t do a lot of research before. Honestly, I just wanted to get there and feel it. But I had read that the island was easy to explore by renting a car. I was so glad I took that advice and planned for that. A couple things were at the top of my list. 1. I wanted to go to Maho Beach and see the low-flying planes 2. soak up the sun on a beach 3. shop the French stores and eat French pastries.
Immediately when we arrived at the port, there were large car rental signs. We easily found Coastal Car Rental and Ronnie was incredible to us. Be aware of hecklers that want to rent you a car, but not with reputable car companies. Rent one in advance! It cost us $63 for a small compact car for the day-cheaper than some of the taxi fees we had been paying at some other islands. Ronnie make sure we were in the right place and gave us a map of the island and even recommended several places to go. He made sure we understood to plan a lot of time on return. The traffic is very heavy and several people have missed their ship because they didn’t plan enough time to get back. We had our cute little Toyota compact car, heavily colored map, and our phone’s GPS and we were off.
We worked our way around the island and tried to find “castle” the french ruins but only found very narrow streets and friendly people that looked like they wondered what we were doing. We moved on to Marigot. As we were driving into Marigot, the view was spectacular! Imagine a beautiful mountain background, lush green landscape contrasted by the beautiful blue shades of Caribbean waters and that is what we were experienced. The views were incredible. When we got into the town, I was not impressed. The streets were narrow and crowded and the shops on the main streets weren’t filled with Parisian styled items. It looked more like flea market leftovers. I was disappointed. We were about to pass Marigot by and head to the beach but saw a marina and decided to just stop by the water and see the boats. So glad we stopped! We saw some people walking toward a pier and followed them. The Atlantic Ocean and harbor were beautiful! So many impressive boats docked in the harbour. The water was the most beautiful shades of green and blue. Stunning!
We decided to leave the car parked and just walk a couple of the streets. We found the cutest little French pastry shop, L’Express. We had a delicious creme puff, apple pastry, chocolate eclair and two cokes. Great little shop with a beautiful view of the water and marina. We walked into the Indies Shopping Mall. There was some nice items but everything was marked in euro prices and I didn’t find anything I liked enough to figure out how much in dollars.
We drove on to Maho Bay where the airplanes fly super low to the beach. The beach was really small and full of large rocks. The fence where people hang on as the planes fly over is across the street from the narrow beach. We took pictures of the beach and the airport and called it good.
We decided to backtrack and find Mullet Bay (recommendation from Ronnie, rental car guy) which we assumed we had passed on the way to Maho Bay. We saw where several cars were parked across the street from an area with a lot of trees and took a chance and parked and walked across the street. The most beautiful beach emerged. There were palm trees…BEAUTIFUL sand…and the MOST gorgeous water that had amazing shades of blue and green. At the end of the beach was a rock formation.
After being there, just a few minutes, we saw planes flying really low and although we couldn’t see them land on the runway, we could see them preparing for landing. It was perfect.
We found a spot in the sand and laid down and enjoyed the beautiful sun and the waves, and watched local guys skim board. The waves were good size and the undercurrent was pretty strong. We didn’t go too far in the water. It was a little cold. We could not believe when we were walking across the sand how thick it was. I’ve never felt sand bog as deep as this sand bogged. It was very coarse, but beautiful.
At the top of the beach was a really nice restaurant. The food was fantastic, a little pricey but the view made it all worth it.
We left two hours before ship boarding time to be sure we made it back without any problems. The drive back was beautiful, so many gorgeous places to see. We parked at a scenic overlook and hiked up to the top and had a beautiful view of the entire Bay area. It was gorgeous!
We were back to the port area about an hour before boarding time. We easily found a gas station down from the port and filled up the car. A full day driving around the entire island was only $4. We turned our rental car in without any problems. Ronnie at Coastal Rent-A-Car couldn’t have been any nicer.
The island of St Maarten was even more beautiful than I hoped it would be. I hope you love it as much as we did on your NEXT TRAVEL to the Island of St Maarten.
Next Traveler 