Tag Archives: Maho Beach

More final thoughts

Maho Beach landing You know what else was cool about Sint Maarten? Maho Beach – the beach nearest the airport. We never snorkeled there, but it had a really cool vibe. Everyone secretly wants to get blasted by the jet plane exhausts, and everyone took pictures of all the fools doing it!

But you take the picture of the plane coming in, and realize just how close you are to disaster! That guy flying the plane might have had a few Heineken’s too many! Sometimes it seems that they are barely 5 feet above the people on the beach.

Plane Incoming over Maho BeachYou could see the planes out over the ocean, coming around in a loop, as they prepare to land. The restaurant erupts with, “Here he comes, Here he comes – It’s a big one! Must be American Airlines!”

Sunset in St. Maarten There is a surfboard with expected arrival times written on it, so you can see who it should be. The waiters and waitresses are fun and funny. The food was limited, mostly burgers and fries, but the vibe was totally cool.

They had funny t-shirts there too – Hold on to your beer!

And the sunsets are pretty nice there too.

Last Day Blues

Maho Beach landingI woke up Friday and peeked out the curtains at the ocean, and what do I see but a HUGE trumpetfish swimming so close to shore, it was unreal. The ocean was super calm so Pam and I went and jumped in. That was the signal for the ocean to start getting rough! Seems to be the way here at Dawn Beach. Every time we jump in, it gets rough. We both got a little seasick watching the current stir up the sand on the bottom, so out we came…

Octopus Maggie and Pam had some last minute shopping to do, so we headed into Philipsburg for a few minutes to grab a couple of things. Three hours, and twenty bags later, we headed over to Maho Beach for a late, late lunch. We watched a few planes come in, and a few take off. I had to see what it felt like to get blasted by jet exhaust, so I ran over and got nailed by the American Airlines jet taking off. It wasn’t that bad, and I’m probably on a few blogs this morning, holding on to my hat! haha

OctopusWe headed over to Mullet Bay, the place we saw all the octopus the other day. Our waiter at the Maho Beach Sunset Bar had said he had seen turtles there “the other day” so we figured we’d give it a go. No luck with the turtles but Tim did find a lobster, and some weird “creature-thing” near him, but none of the pics turned out. sigh

OctopusAs we were making our way out of the water we saw probably the largest octopus we’ve seen. He was in barely two feet of water, so I managed to get about 20 great shots of him. Very, very cool. He was super active, moving across the rocks, sand and water, giving us lots of chances to take impressive shots. I finally didn’t blow it!

FilefishWe got a major taste of “island gridlock” when it took TWO HOURS to get from the airport to our hotel. Because the roads are so narrow, one minor accident locks the joint up. There were at least two accidents… And of course, a delivery truck parked in front of a store, turned on his four ways and backed traffic up for miles.

Moral eelWe had made reservations for dinner at Captain Oliver’s, the place we had enjoyed so much a couple of days ago. While the food was excellent, and the service impeccable, the mood was ruined by the tragically bad Caribbean singer they had playing. We felt it would have been better to come back and experience the karaoke at the bar! Really really awful.

Our flight has been delayed a couple of hours by the storms in the Northeastern US, but shouldn’t affect our connecting flight out of Chicago. We’ll have only an hour and twenty minutes to catch our connecting flight, which should be fine.