Today we visited an old restored plantation where they used to grow cotton, coffee and plants to make indigo dye. They also had a lot of exotic fruits and old machinery. It was interesting to see how the coffee was hulled and ground, and how the indigo made. After the indigo was processed, it was made into cakes that were shipped around the world. You see it today used to dye fabrics (levis). The treatment of the slaves had been deplorable. Slave trade was really big on the island. It is interesting that an East Indian population would decide to enslave a Black population (prejudice has no reasonable explanation, I have found).
We then caught a bus going to Grande Case, and told the driver we wanted to go to Pinell Island on the north shore, so he took us out of his way to the ferry. The ferry took us over to this very small island where no one lived. It had a snack bar and was just for tourists and snorkeling. We snorkeled some, but the water was really churning from the wind, so we mostly just played in the beautiful water and on the beach. We met a really nice man from Canada who told us all about the places he had snorkeled on the islands. At 3:00, we caught the ferry back and went to Orient Beach. The waves were huge along the shore, bigger than we had ever seen them. We snorkeled out to the floating raft and met a man from Germany who owned a bakery outside of Marigot. He was very nice and very informed about the island. From Orient beach, we caught a bus back home. Michael had left his hat on a bus two days before, and while on this bus, it mysteriously appeared next to the driver. I took a little convincing, but he finely got it back.
We found a very modern pharmacy right by our hotel and bought some Dramamine for the boat ride the next day (after the glass bottom boat we decided it was a good idea!) We bought some bottled water at the store next door (we only drank bottled water because the regular water wasn’t not safe to drink). The zoning on St. Martin doesn’t exist. You will find very nice stores and buildings right next to alleys and shacks, and there is no rhyme or reason to the placement of buildings or the width of roads. We stayed on Grande Case Boulevard, which sounds fancy, but it is really only the width of one car (one way street) and very small.
The island has lots of hills, and when they need a road to the top, it pretty much goes straight up the side, right up over the top of the hills (no switchbacks like we have). Some of them are as steep as 45 degrees! Most of the really fancy, million dollar homes are at the top of teeny tiny, poorly maintained roads that go straight up to heaven and you’re not sure your car can make it! We were always glad the brakes of the buses held out! We got home and made spaghetti, then played RummiCub and Uno. (You can see we were really big into the night life!)