Sint Maarten: Day 7

It seems that at some point I started to misspell Sint Maarten and have since had trouble keeping straight which vowel it is that I am to double. Amazingly, no one mentioned my very noticeable misspelling of the name in the titles of these posts (as nice as that would have been). Hopefully now that I am aware of the problem I will be more vigilant and eliminate any such problems before I post them.

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Not surprisingly, several things about Sint Maarten are a little different than they are in North America. One of the most noticeable changes is that while doors do have door knobs most function only as handles as there is no catch for them to pull in. The problem with this design, at least as far as I can see, is that it means that doors always have to be locked or they will be pushed open by moving air (such as wind or a draft). Fortunately, some bathroom and bedroom doors are equipped with more traditional mechanisms.

Toilets also tend to have less powerful flushes. This is likely to conserve water. As much of the drinking water is produced through various desalinization processes this makes sense. As water is expensive and difficult and expensive to produce its use should be minimized. Strangely, this seems to be just about the only gesture towards reduced consumption and environmental abuse that I have yet seen.

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Unlike the previous days this week my father had to be on campus before 7:30. This change in schedule meant that he did not wake me up for breakfast before he left for the morning, allowing me to get another hour and a half of sleep.

Upon waking I again proceeded to blow a substantial portion of the morning with various internet based activities (a few of which were actually useful and related trip). Eventually, I did manage to get ready for the day and make it outside.

I walked to Mullet Beach and made my way out on the rocky outcropping above the snorkeling grounds. While sitting alone on the rocks I was able to watch the rocks and the waves. One impression I had was that the water seemed particularly clear. Many of the rocks were clearly visible from high above the water.

Soon enough I received a call from my father indicating that he would be heading home for lunch. I climbed back down to the beach and then walked across the golf course and home. We ended up having sandwiches and odds and ends for lunch,

After lunch we made our way back to the university building. The main justification for the trip was so that I could stop by the library and get a tour. As I had previously met the librarian and suggested this, it wasn’t too much of a problem to arrange this once we arrived.

Wendy showed me the physical components of the library and also discussed many of the administrative decisions that she had made since arriving. As my library experience hasn’t been all that varied, this was a nice experience. I was particularly glad that she showed me her catalogue and associated system as it differed from the system with which I am most familiar but seemed quite functional and affordable.

While sitting in her office talking to me, Wendy received a call from her husband. It seemed that someone had chained a dinghy to their dinghy instead of the piece of cement, forcing Bob to tow it to their boat. When the person returned to the site they would find that their dinghy was missing. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have any means of identifying the dinghy to let the owners know what had happened. Presumably they were able to work this matter out within the next few hours.

After departing from the library, and then the university, we returned to the apartment where, based my assessment of the conditions earlier in the day, we decided to go snorkeling at Mullet Beach. Almost as soon as we arrived we saw that the water wasn’t as clear as our previous visit. The water was so cloudy that we were prevented from seeing most of the fish in the area. I also wonder if the slightly altered conditions either changed the behaviour patterns of the fish, or caused them to relocated as I know that I should have been able to make out many of the bigger fish, had they been there.

Though we were not satisfied with the conditions we did stick it out for a while. Eventually, when it became clear that things weren’t about to improve and when it also became clear that we were both fogging up more than normal we decided to head in. As we were making our way back to the beach I looked down and saw a stingray type fish. While the animal was partly obscured by sand it was quite easy to make see the outline of the fish, including the stinging tail. When I came up to tell my father about my sighting he had to re-adjust his equipment before he was able to go back down. By the time that he was able to make it back in the water the stingray type thing had vanished, though not without alerting me to the dangers of the seemingly tame sandy beaches of Sint Maarten.

We both decided to spend a little more time on the beach after our snorkeling adventure. For the most part this meant sitting near the shore and allowing the waves to push or pull us. The result was that, once again, I ended up with sand all over my body, including my ears and my hair.

After cleaning up we made our way to Simpson Bay to look for the local post office and scooter rental locations. While we were able to find both, neither were open and neither included hours or operations or any indications of when they would be open again.

As we made our way back to the Cupecoy/university area we started to look for restaurants. After an unsuccessful scanning we decided to head to the Thai place in the casino. Once in the restaurant one of the first things we noticed was that many of the dishes weren’t really all that Thai, but just generally from Asia. While both of our meals were tolerable, neither of us was particularly impressed with our dining experience. The general consensus was that Cheri’s Café was a much better experience in terms of both food and service.

The casino itself was the next item on the evening’s agenda. While we didn’t have any plans to play, I had wanted to see what the inside of a Sint Maarten casino looked like. Not surprisingly, slot machines and various video terminals predominated. The 1 cent play machines were particularly popular with the patrons that were there while we were. Sadly, the various table games were not in operation during our exploration. From the tables that were present it was clear that this was a much smaller part of their business than the slots and related machines. Another surprise was the number of poker tables that they had. If I recall correctly they seemed to have at least six of these tables, which seemed large considering they only had about 10 other tables.

We then returned home and spoke to my mother and sister via Skype. After the call we started another game of rummy. Part way through the game we decided to have the previously purchased coconut as a snack.

We went on the balcony to smash it open. I was filming while my father was in charge of smashing. When my father first threw it down, the coconut bounced so high it almost went over the rail and off of the balcony. A second throw had similar results.

It then became clear that we should probably remove the outer husk of the fruit before we tried to smash it. With a large kitchen knife my father was able to cut into the husk to create openings that allowed him to tear it open, and eventually remove the soft protective elements.

Once the protective coating had been removed the coconut cracked on the first attempt. Both of us then tried some of the meat. I was somewhat disappointed in the eating experience. The meat was not particularly tasty, nor was it even easy to remove from the hard shell. This caused me to wonder if coconuts that they serve as beverages are slightly different in terms of maturity than those they serve as fruit, but I haven’t really been able to answer that question.

Eventually, we were able to get back to our rummy game. After only a hand or two we noticed that we had a call on Skype. It was my mother and sister. Though I have no idea what they were calling about, we did manage to talk about names of places on the island.

After the call we were able to return to the rummy game, this time to see it to its end. Unfortunately, I gave my father the victory in the dying moments of the final hand.

We then called it a night and went to bed, in an attempt to keep to our daily schedule (which resembles Newfoundland time).