I got up wanting Waffle House, so I had bacon and eggs instead of a fruit plate for breakfast. It was good, but it just wasn't Waffle House. No grits.
We headed into Marigot for market day. We picked our way though the traffic and found a place to park, then headed for the stalls. A car pulled up and a guy spoke to us in German. Blank looks. Then: "Oh, you are American! Did you listen to the radio today?" We just walked off.
The first part of the market that we came to was authentic Caribbean market...fresh fish, fruits and vegetables, spices, and all sort of other foodstuffs were for sale. There were little pickups piled high with bananas, plantains, and sugarcane everywhere. But the larger part of the market was strictly tourist stuff, t-shirts, cheap jewelry, trinkets, and the like. Business was brisk and the place was crowded and hot, so Lana bought a tank-top and we headed out for Jean's shop, hoping to see some of our pictures from yesterday. He had told us where the shop was in general terms, but we wandered around without much luck. Finally we gave up and headed for the car, only to find his shop! He had most of the pictures developed and the album started, but he teased us by only letting us see a few.
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Back to the car, we headed for Cupecoy to make some pictures of the area we had been married in. It was about noon when we got there, and there were only 3 cars there. The beach-vendor-guy tried to get us to rent a chair or buy a drink or SOMETHING...business was slow. Lana finally bought a juice from him, but only after asking him to take $2 instead of the $3 he was asking. It was still about $1.50 too much, but at least it was cold and wet.
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From there we went to the airport to buy our tickets for our trip to Saba the next day. The ticket counter was closed, and had a sign saying where the new ticket counter was (no longer at the airport), but the directions were so vague that you would have to be a local to make sense of them. So we waited in a line for a while to ask somebody, and it turns out that we could SEE the new ticket building from where we were standing! Tickets were $82 per person for the 10 minute flight, but we learned later that the prices ranged from $50 to $150, depending on the season and advance purchase. We had considered going over on The Edge, a wave-piercing catamaran, but it was $60, a 1.5 hour trip, and the seas were usually rough. A few extra bucks for a fast trip seemed worth it.
From there we headed to Phillipsburg, the Dutch capital and the largest city on the island. Looking back, we don't know WHY we went there, but we did. There were four cruise ships in, so the streets were packed with pedestrians, the traffic was heavy, parking was terrible, and it was HOT. Lana shopped for a new watch in a few places, we had lunch, and we watched the cruise-shippers swim right off of Front Street, which is probably the nastiest, most polluted beach on the island. We felt sorry for the cruise-shippers...they only got a few hours on the island, and those hours were in the dirtiest, most crowded part of the island. They didn't get to see the wonderful beaches, eat at the varied restaurants, immerse themselves in the culture, or meet the friendly locals. I have always maintained that cruising is fine, but it is not a good way to see the islands...this experience just reinforced that belief.
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After we escaped the confines of Phillipsburg, we continued on around the island, hugging the coast, taking in the sites that we had not seen yet. As we passed through one residential area, some idiot came around a blind corner, on a motorcycle, riding a wheelie, drifting into my lane, with a passenger on the back! We also passed a Rasta-Man selling fish by the road. He would just hold out a whole fish as you drove by.
There was a HUGE fruit basket waiting for us back at the room when we returned, another gift from Lana's co-workers. It must have weighed 10 pounds. We were kind of tired, so we napped and ate fruit and some pizza left over from Lana's lunch. Around sundown we joined Dave and Sue at the cafe for drinks. They had dinner, but we were not hungry after our late lunch and snacks, so we split an escargot appetizer and had desserts and drinks. It was their last evening on the island, and we felt sad to see them go. We had only known them a few days, but we really enjoyed their company and felt like old friends. Dave introduced us to another couple in the cafe, he had just won a Senate seat from Georgia. We chatted for a few hours, then said our goodbyes and headed off to bed.
