February 23
With a heavy heart we said our goodbyes and hugged Harald and Melitta two days ago. We had a happy, memorable vacation together. We promised many more.
Before heading out of St. Maartens yesterday, we provisioned for the next few days: I found a fresh fish market (tuna, mahi-mahi, shrimps), and the usual groceries. Just to give you a glimpse of our time perception now: we went to a new grocery store beside a casino resort; the grand casino property we had to cross extended our walk a lot longer than expected; with our full buggy in tow, we were surprised by big grey clouds over the nearby mountains before we reached our dinghy; no problem, we were passing by a bar at the casino; we stopped for a beer to let the rain pass us by; then continued our way to the dinghy. It seems that now, not much bothers us: we get lemons, we make lemonade ... and ceviche, margheritas, etc. LOL!
The sail to St. Barts, only 15 miles, was a nice trip in the morning. After clearing customs, we discovered the town. Wow! St. Barts is the richest island of the Caribbeans. Stores like Hermes, Bulgari, Dior, Cartier, Louis Vuitton line the streets. Multi-million dollars yachts, three times bigger than our house, line the shores. Many beautiful and young people, many women with botox touch-ups, sugar daddies, yummy mommies, they're all here in the winter, in Europe in the summer.
Last night, we treated ourselves to a very nice restaurant called La Petite Plage. Sitting on their patio, overlooking the illuminated yachts, sailboats and houses in the mountains, we tasted some quality olive oil with buns, grilled mahi-mahi, scallops in a jus of watercress, house chocolate mousse and mille-feuilles. Good food is one of my passion. That was a real treat.
To conclude yesterday: It's interesting to look at all this wealth and veneer; but it's not a past-time that attracts us for more than a day. We prefer open and natural spaces, real and authentic people. So today, we ventured outside of this buzzing centre. We put our walking shoes and swung our backpacks.
Since we left Boston, St. Barts is the first place that offers recycling. You imagine: all the places we've been since Boston (along the US coast, Bahamas, Exumas, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, etc.) don't have the facilities for recycling - or it's not important enough to them to make it easily available to transients. Our garbage had therefore increased a lot: all those beer cans, wine bottles, food cans/wraps take a lot of space. I was not very comfortable with so much garbage. At least, we didn't have water bottles as we make our own water through an osmosis system and use our own bottles.
Plane landings are getting very entertaining on the islands. As the islands are small and mountainous, runways are shorter and near water/beaches and mountains. For example, in St-Martin, people love to stand on Maho Beach where planes are just a few hundreds feet over their heads before landing on a short 2,100 metre runway. In St. Barts, it's the mountain that challenges plane pilots. A small mountain pass crossed by a busy road is the landmark that pilots aim at. It takes a precise angle of approach to hug the side of the mountain before landing. Again, the runway is as short as the one at St-Martin before the ocean beach. From our vantage point, on approach, it looks like the planes will crash on the mountain side.
We're leaving St. Barts in a couple of hours (16h00) for Antigua, a 14-hour sail. We're choosing an overnight sail again for a better wind angle. This should allow us to sail without the engine and make good progress. Both Frank and I have never visited this island. It'll be interesting to discover it together.
