Day 9 – 1/10/2022 – Sint Maarten

We woke up this morning to discover that we were sharing the pier with a really big sailing ship – the Club Med 2

To start with, today was pretty much a bust. The excursion was a bust. Trivia was horrible (How is it that I can’t remember that it was Google who bought YouTube?). And the announcement that we heard as we were making our way from the Explorers’ Lounge (trivia) to the Theatre (Port Talk) just kind-of put the icing on the cake.

So here’s the deal. We looked at excursion options for St. Maarten and weren’t thrilled. They didn’t even have an option to bus us over to the nude beach. But beach was important, and we were feeling a bit adventurous, so we signed up for the “4×4 Dune Buggy and Beach” experience.

They bused us across the street (almost, but pretty close to that) where we all sat in a room and filled out forms. Then we went outside and climbed in 4 person UTV’s. I got to drive first shift. They gave us a short instruction (here’s the key, turn it. Put it in H – for high. The gas pedal is on the right, the brake is on the left). Our guide climbed on her 4-wheeler. Our blocker climbed on his 4-wheeler. And we were off.

That was the good part. The not so good part is that we worked our way thru the town of Philipsburg, across the pass to the other side, and up to the beach – all on paved roads.

There was a good part – watching our blocker work. He would enter a roundabout and block traffic from interfering with us. Then he would speed past us to the next roundabout. Philipsburg has lots of roundabouts. Actually there is only 1 stoplight in the whole city. Our guide was telling us that after it was installed there were many accidents at that intersection until the locals figured out what the lights meant.

So we arrived at the beach – Maho Beach, also known as Airport Beach. This could be really exciting.

This is what we were expecting.

This is what we got.

We were hanging out in a bar where we had tickets for one free non-alcoholic drink. They had the foresight to post landing times – note they are all in the afternoon. We were there in the morning.

Cheryl wanted you to check out the beach chairs. Note that they are all bunched up at the side of the beach. Apparently the blast from planes taking off is even more thrilling than watching them land. We didn’t witness that either.

On the way back (still on paved roads) we stopped at an overlook point to take a few photos. Note the very expensive yachts just outside the harbor.

There were quite a few really expensive yachts hangin’ around today.

I mentioned roundabouts. As part of the rebuilding process after a major hurricane they have added sculpture the the islands in the center.

Back at the garage they brought out their monkey.

This is a rescue monkey. His mother was killed and they have adopted him. He’s young and skittish, but pretty cute.

Back at the ship we had lunch, read, and worked on a BLOG post until time for trivia. Following that we were walking down the hall to the theatre when the captain came over the loudspeaker to announce that St. Thomas has closed its port to all cruise ships – so all excursions for tomorrow are cancelled, and we will have a ‘sea day’. Not that I mind a sea day, one of the things I wished this itinerary had was a sea day. It’s just that our St. Thomas excursion was a Kayak/Hike/Snorkel event that we were really looking forward to more than any other excursion on the trip. Oh well, we’ll just have to come back after this madness is over.

So anyway, they cancelled the port talk so we returned to our stateroom to work on the cruise evaluation forms they had left in our cabins.

At 6:15 we attended a lecture on Unusual Creatures of the Deep Caribbean. Very interesting. Then it was off to dinner followed by the 9:00 show – a salute to the crew and the vocal quartet performing an Abba retrospective. As one would expect they were great.

So that’s the day that could have gone better. I suppose each adventure needs at least one of those.

Around and about the ship.

Here is a look at the various pools/tubs. It’s noteworthy that we didn’t have (or take) the time to enjoy any of these.