Having been for five days without electricity -- and, as a consequence, air conditioning, light at night, refrigeration for food, television, hot water, etc. -- we arrived on our vacation to find...
Ice!
Oh! Ice, ice, oh wonderful ice! How wonderful to have tea with ice! Water with ice! An icemaker in the freezer (not to mention a freezer at all, but ice is the wonderful thing!). Ice, ice, oh beautiful ice!
The electricity is on here. And we can drink the water straight from the tap! It doesn't have to be boiled or bottled!
Welcome to St. Maarten.
The last hop from San Juan was on a puddle jumper - okay, an ATR, a large puddle jumper. But a prop plane nonetheless. We were the only plane landing at the time. We were through Customs and had our luggage in no time. Then a snafu with the rental car -- the company I placed the reservation with wasn't there, though probably through no fault of theirs. My lack of electricity and phone service, courtesy of Hurricane Frances, for the preceding week probably screwed up communications. But of course there was a nice man at the airport willing to rent us a car -- there always is in St. Maarten.
It rained the evening of our arrival. It probably wouldn't be worth mentioning, except that last year it also rained the evening of our arrival. What's up with this? Last year we were caught at the bar, and I had to run through a downpour to get the car and an umbrella, and come back to rescue Judi. I got drenched.
There's a new traffic light in Philipsburg, on the road that runs by the Salt Pond. It looks like they're installing another one west of Philipsburg. There used to be only one light on the entire island. And that was part of the charm of driving here. Are the drivers here going to become as vicious as American drivers? There are some worrisome signs... today a guy passed me and almost got into a head-on.
That said, the new traffic lights look way cool. Black outlined in white, they are very modern. But they installed the crossbar holding the lights on the same side of the intersection as the traffic they're supposed to be directing, rather than on the opposite side, so when you roll up and stop you have to bend forward and peer up through the top of the windshield to see the light. These guys are obviously inexperieced with traffic lights.
Text and images © Copyright Gregory Smith or Judith Fulks 2004