February – 2018 – Day 9

We arrived right on time on the island of Sint Maarten or Saint Martin, which is only 37 sq. miles in size and is the smallest land mass in the world to be shared by two different nations.  It is owned by both France and the Netherlands Antilles.  We have landed on the Dutch side and we take the shuttle to the French side.  Not red tape, you just drive from one side to the other.

On the Dutch side are the tourist shops and more commercial areas.  On the French side is one of our favorite beaches, Orient Beach.

It is a beautiful day, with a few clouds and 76 degrees when we arrived and 80 very quickly and a light breeze.  This is as close to perfect as you can get.

This is the first time a Celebrity ship has docked at this port since the hurricane and from the ship, everything looked pretty good; however, after we got off, we realized that a lot of the buildings at the port were totally vacant inside and being remodeled.

We were also the only cruise ship in port when there used to be always 4 ships docked every day.

Right outside the port are the shuttles to all different parts of the island and we got on the one to our beach and arrived in about 15 minutes.  Along the way, it was amazing as to the number of buildings that were simply gone or virtually destroyed.

We found that the devastation from the hurricane to be total when we came to Orient Beach, one of the most famous beaches in the world.  Every building along the waterfront was destroyed and a lot of them just gone.  The regular side of the beach must have had 12 or more restaurants right on the beach and they were simply gone – nothing there but debris.   On the clothing optional side, the famous Orient Beach Motel property which used to consist of probably 40 small beachfront buildings, each containing one or two rooms, were a total loss.  They said that the storm surge was over the tops of the buildings.

We were told that it was the strongest hurricane ever to hit the island with sustained winds or over 200 miles an hour.

They had brought in new beach chairs and had made a new outdoor snack building, but that was all that was there.  We rented a couple of chairs and spent the next 4 hours on the beach along with only about 50 people compared to hundreds who used to us the beach. 

At 1:00pm the taxi driver returned to pick us up and he took us back to the Dutch side to the center of town.  We would estimate that about 1/3 of the businesses downtown were still closed.  Some looking like they might never re-open.

The people, like in San Juan were very up-beat and thankful that the tourists had started to come back and had hopes for the future.

We had missed lunch so when we arrived back at the ship, we immediately went to the food deck and had our missed lunch.

Then we cleaned up in time to walk around and go to the show.

The show tonight was a comedian named Ed Regine and he was the best comedian that we have ever seen.  A very funny routine.

After the show, we met went to dinner Brian and Sandi and of course the conversation centered on the destruction on this beautiful island.  Will the island recover – of course it will, but certainly will change a lot of lives forever.

Then we went to the casino where Ed had his first losing session and Barb lost just a little.

This was our last port and we will spend the next two days at sea as we head back to Fort Lauderdale and home on Sunday.

Night

Ready to go to the beach

Downtown

Destroyed cabins on the beach - the water was at 18' and destroyed everything

Total destruction - missing about 8 restraurants and severl other shops

Waiting out the rain!!