Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten

   Today we decided to explore the island of Sint Maarten a little further by visiting the capital, Philipsburg. After our usual morning expresso we headed off in the dingy to the Sint Maarten Yacht Club dingy dock where we could catch a bus opposite. Like the other islands we have visited in the Caribbean, Sint Maarten has a local minibus service and for the grand fee of 1.50$USD each we could travel across the island to Philipsburg. Although the currency is nominally I think Dutch Gilders in Sint Maarten everything is labelled in USD$ and Gilders and you can even withdraw $USD at the cashpoints.

 

The anchorage / docks at Philipsburg

The journey to Philisburg is quite pleasant turning along the coast at the border to Saint Martin, the French side of the island and climbing up hill to skirt the coast all the way until turning inland along the large lagoon behind Philipsburg. It was not a particularly pretty looking town the most interesting landmark was a bar made from an old passenger airplane on the outskirts. We were dropped at the end of the bus route and got directions to the main promenade along the coast – Front Street, accompanied by Back Street running parallel behind it, a common naming convention in the islands.

The promenade/Beach at Philipsburg

The promenade is bordered by wide white sand beach and a lovely anchorage with very clear water. The promenade is wide and restaurants line the shore, overshaddowed by the ever present cruise liners in dock which tower over the building of the town. Walking down a side road we were confronted by the lovely wooden old courthouse building recently restored. Unfortunately that was where the charm of Philipsburg also ended. We were amused first of all by the number of jewellery shops nearby including a Tiffany’s. Then we realised that literally 90% of the shops on both Front and Back Street were jewellery shops. Obviously the duty free shopping for the cruise ships have dominated trade, but even so it is hard to see how there could possibly be enough trade to support all those shops.

The courthouse at Philipsburg

We had come to buy a new kettle (ours was unsuccessful in it’s dive off the hob in a swell and the handle was now attached only at one end) and a new hard drive possibly for the laptop (electronic stores were also supposed to be plentiful here) which died crossing the Atlantic. We were not successful on either mission in the town centre and were directed to a shop called Blue Point on the edge of town. Luckily here we found a really helpful guy who replace RAM and processor in turn to find that the motherboard itself was gone and the laptop was definitely unsalvageable. We decided to get a 1TB external hard drive to replace it, this laptop being mainly used as a backup anyway. Further walking we found our kettle and a supermarket, the best we have seen in months and fully ladened we returned back to the boat. Pleased to have seen a little more of the island albeit a bit disappointing.