St. Maarten & St. Barths

After running through another semester in another school, I packed up my bags again and went to NY and the Carribean with my family. Our family of 10 went to St. Maarten, and ran around from beach to beach with two babies less than 8 months old. Needless to say, it was pretty hectic feeding, changing and playing with the babies. But damn, they are so ridiculously cute that there's no way I could be annoyed.

At 8 weeks old, Dahlia has started to do things other than stick her tongue out at me. I'm keeping this photo on the best of the best pile.



At 65, my father still hasn't given up on scuba diving. After an hour high speed ferry ride from hell, we went from St. Maarten to the island of Saba to dive. We had no time to actually explore the island of Saba, which was a shame. But the diving was pretty good. (Apparently it's supposed to be very good there, but I tend to base my dives on the photos I take, Belieze has still been the best.)



A cute photo of my younger sister Lisa.


an almost x-rated photo of my nephew Eli. He's starting to talk now and I spent my winter break looking after the baby and our dog. I have to say, near the end they were on similar levels in my mind and would call them by each other's names.

St. Maarten, is a strange, expensive island. Half of it looks extremely developed and the other half is barely developed. Of the half that is developed, half of it is run-down or in construction. As its a French/Dutch island, the prices were in Euros in the french side. This caused the color to disappear from our faces as a family of ten tried to eat and we ate most of our meals in. The good thing to this was that the grocery stores were actually very reasonable in price and you could get a slew of european products along with carribean indian, carribean and american goods. We ate very well in the long run and had a ball shopping for groceries.



My nephew and his father. My nephew has definitely taken after his father in the personality area as he loves to talk, make sounds and faces.In the guide books, they mention you can take a high speed ferry ride from St. Maarten to St. Barths and Saba. From our experience, we've learned that St. Maarten is a transfer sport for most Uber Rich people who are on our way to St. Barths. Determined to step foot on the land of the uber rich and celebrities, our family books two ferry rides. The first ferry ride took half of us Scuba diving in Saba and while the ride there was acceptable, the ride back was an hour long rollercoaster ride. With 40 other people in the boat, the first 5 minutes of the ride we all cried out woohoo, wow, yeah. After 15 minutes, everybody was quiet and the boat threw us up, down, sideways, WHACKED against the water and we all grabbed onto the handrails not to fall off our seats. After 20 minutes, the first group of people started to throw up. The boat attendants casually put on rubber gloves and started to wipe up, and empty out barf buckets that were conveniently located at our feet. This ride proceeded to last for an hour, with about 20 people throwing up at various moments of the ride. When we finally got back to St. Marten from Saba, most of our family surrendered the idea of riding the boat again to St. Barths.

Fortunately, when I get sea sick, I fall asleep as opposed to throwing up. When we found out that we would not receive a refund for our tickets, half of our family went to brave the ferry once again. In the morning four of us skipped breakfast and climbed aboard the S.S. Throwup. Once again, for an hour and a half 20 people threw up as we were thrown against the waves. We wondered as we grabbed onto the handrails again, how do they rich get there?

The answer was lined up in the hundreds as yachts the size of office buildings with bronze statues on the decks adorned the port of St. Barths. Damn, there are an awful lot of rich people in the world. My two sisters and brother and law wandered around the island, scared away by the already high prices, jacked further up by the weak dollar. With 50 dollar long sleeve t-shirts for sale, I couldn't even bring myself to buy anything.

But I've been there! and yes, that's how lame I am. Day trip in St. Barths, gawking at multi-million dollar yachts and taking the Barf Ferry there and back. I guess its pretty appropriate for what I can afford.