Patti drove us to the airport at 9:00 p.m. for our flight at 11:59. We entertained ourselves then and many times during the trip by playing Rummy-kub. Our flight to Atlanta took three hours, and got us there at 5:00 a.m. We watched Premonition on the second flight, and got to St. Martin at 2:00 p.m. We took our first and only taxi ride to the hotel. We were initially surprised at the island because it was not as tropical as we had expected and the housing was very poor.
Our hotel was small (we knew it only had 8 units). It was right across the street from the ocean, and on a very small one way street. The street was called Grande Case Boulevard (we were on the French side) and actually had most of the good restaurants on the island all grouped right there by our hotel. We met our landlady, Aneek, who spoke only French. We got a French / English dictionary from her and were able to communicate with her fairly well during the stay. Our room was good sized and had a kitchen (Aneek upgraded us for no extra cost to the studio apartment). That was really lucky for us, and we ended up doing a lot of our own cooking. We took a little nap (we had been up all night) and then went swimming in the ocean by our hotel. The water was so clear and a bright aquamarine blue. The water was very warm compared to the Pacific Ocean, and stunningly beautiful. Everywhere we went, the beaches were white sand and very clean, and for the most part we were the only people on the beaches wherever we went.
We had read about another beach called Orient Beach, and we walked about a mile to get to it. The traffic there was crazy. There are no lights, and drivers pretty much drive out of turn. They use their horns as a signal to inform the other drivers of their intensions. We decided right then not to rent a car. Orient beach was beautiful, and we walked along the shore for about a half a mile until we came to the end of the beach. It started to get dark (at 7:00!) We didn't know it would get dark so early because of it's location to the time line, and we didn’t want to walk home in the dark. We looked at the map and found that there was a small road that led back to the main road that would get us back to our hotel. The problem was we couldn’t find a way out of the beach. Michael saw a woman in a beach restaurant and went to ask her for directions. She pointed to a small road behind some trees. We started to walk out and were stopped by a couple driving past.
They stopped to ask us were we were going and we said Grande Case. They couldn’t believe that we had walked all the way from our hotel to the beach. They said that it wasn’t safe to be out at night and offered us a ride. They were tourists also and had been coming to the island for several years and were going to Grande Case for dinner. So we rode back with them. They gave us a some great information about the island, and told us where to eat. The said that there were lolo's on our street right by our hotel (open air eateries that had barbeque, good sized servings and the best prices). They were very nice and helped us acclimate to the island quickly.
For dinner, we ate at one of the lolos, our first meal of the day, and then went to our hotel. Michael worked on the air conditioner to make it a little cooler. The temperature of the island was actually much cooler than Salt Lake temperatures (we had left a heat wave of over 100 degrees for a month). It was about 85 degrees on the island, but also very humid, so you noticed the heat more. Our room was very nice but had no insulation in the walls (with it warm all year, they don’t need insulation). In fact, the walls were very simple, with bare studs. This made the room warmer than we were used to sleeping in. The first night it was hard staying asleep because of the heat. The next day, we rearranged the room by moving our bed under the air-conditioned. Sleeping became much better after that.