Day 14. It doesn’t seem that long but at the same time it feels like we’ve been on the road for a long time.

We’ve been to Sint Maarten a number of times before, so we were just being ad hoc today. The one thing that Mae wanted to do was revisit a fabric store (key the surprise music) that we had gone to a few years back.

I pinpointed it on Google Maps because there wasn’t a street address listed. Because there were 3 other very large ships that had arrived about the same time we did, we intentionally delayed our departure. But not enough. There were over 15,000 people that were disgorging from those monster ships.

There were about 50 people in each of two unlabeled lines. Each line was being serviced by a parade of 10-12 person passenger vans. Not what we wanted. Mae stood in the first line and I went scouting for small cabs. Not finding one, I headed to the second line to see if I could find a cab. After a few minutes of trying to get someone’s attention, Mae called to say that she was at the head of the line. I hustled over to find that her line was just for a specific beach (who knew?).

Back we went to the second line and asked for a cab to the store. The dispatcher laughed at me and said, “Look around mon. Not today.”

After a little more “conversation” they finally found a lady who was driving her brother’s cab to help us. The flat rate to go to the other side of the island, wait for Mae to shop, and return was $60. With no other option, we hopped in.

The lady was super nice and gave us a lot of information about the island, but more important, she knew a bunch of back roads that evaded the traffic. But it did involve a bunch of steep switchbacks at relatively high speed. Mae was turning slightly green.

We finally got to the store to find out that it was locked up with bars across the whole front. I asked a neighboring vendor about the place and he said, “Sometimes she’s there and sometimes she’s not.” Very helpful.

We captured the moment with our driver, hopped back in the cab and duplicated the exciting drive back down the mountain.

The rest of the day was lounging, dinner on the aft deck in preparation for a private Caribbean concert on the shore. It was a mixture of a teenage drum line, dancers on stilts, a steel band set an then a Calypso set.

We made it about halfway through and headed back to the ship.

Tomorrow we visit Tortola and then 2 days of sailing to Miami.