St Maarten/St Martin 12 September 2010 Newsletter Other newsletters Contests | Restaurants | Bargains and Happenings ISLAND NEWS

Weather: It's been a slow hurricane season, but Earl finally paid a visit. That's the eye a bit north and west of SXM in the photo. Here's some more photos and videos on Picasa. They are from Rainbow on Cupecoy Beach, ie the west side of the island. Earl, like most hurricanes, approached from the east. We are at the height of hurricane season and it shows in the weekly forecast: highs in the upper 80s with significant humidity, driving the heat index into the mid-90s. All this with lots of clouds and or precipitation. The box shows the current local conditions and here's the detailed forecast from Weather Underground and here's one from the Weather Channel. On the solstice (21 June) the sun rose at 5:43 AM and set at 6:47, for just a bit over 13 hours of sunlight. On the equinox, (23 September), there will be approximately 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness everywhere, hence the name. Thus SXM gets one more hour of sunshine at the height of the summer, but only loses one hour at the nadir of the winter. Sunset today is at 6:14 and the moon is a waxing crescent. The full moons in 2010 will be 23 Sep, 22 Oct, 21 Nov, and 21 Dec.

SXM-Beaches: As I said in the last newsletter, this is a good time top be near a beach. the last letter touted Orient Beach where you can, as Arlo said, "Get anything you want." This letter features Bay Long where you can't get anything. The southern end is owned by La Samanna and they do not encourage outsiders to wander in and use their beach facilities. The rest of the very long beach can be reached via a footpath from a small parking lot. Once there, you will find nothing. For those of you seeking nothing, this beach provides it in abundance. There are no restaurants, beach bars, chairs, watersports, etc. Bring your own drinks, chairs, and snacks and you will largely be by yourself. I have seen naked people here but sometimes the abutting homeowners complain, so I would not advise it.

Beach reading: Wendy K just finished the third of three books by Michael Tucker. He played Stuart Markowitz in L.A. Law, where he co-starred with his wife Jill Eikenberry. The first was I Never Forget a Meal: An Indulgent Reminiscence. She read the second book, Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy, three summers ago and it inspired her to book a rental house, "Rocciaviva" in Umbria. She's going back this fall, but to a village a few kilometers down the mountain, Poreta, so that they can eat at the same wonderful homey restaurants that Tucker describes, without the hair-raising drive up the mountain afterwards. The last is Family Meals: Coming Together to Care for an Aging Parent, a problem that many of us have faced or will soon.

Sapphire Beach Club: Our condo for $900 to $1000 per week until 15 Dec, when high season kicks in. You'll get a 10% discount from Unity Car Rental, one of the longest running and most trusted on the island, and many more coupons as well, including the use of our 2010 SXM Privilege Card that gets you discounts on many restaurants. Check the calendar on our website for available dates. A recent visitor said, "Erich, We had a wonderful time at your condo for the third year in a row. We appreciated the coupons. Hope to be able to do it again next year." For those of you who wish to sell or rent their week or unit, we have opened up the Sapphire Beach Club website for that purpose. We charge $25 per year. If you wish to rent or sell your unit, send us some text (and $25 to esk@sxm-info.com via Paypal). If you wish to rent or buy a unit without high middleman fees, check out the website. At present, there are 20 sales and/or rentals available directly from owners. Given a 25 to 35% standard rental commission, there should be some bargains in eliminating the middleman and dealing direct.

Activities: Diane on Random Wind says: "We are great! New sails are flying and new cushions are keeping up comfy! Our new website will be up soon!" The pub crawl continues. If you want to sample a few restaurants as you sail around the lagoon, you cant beat captain Neil's Lagoon Pub Crawl on Celine. It leaves from Skipjack's and visits a couple other places. Every stop includes snacks and a drink and drinks on-board are included.

Shopping: Royal Caribbean Jewelers has introduced this tri-color semi-bezel ladies Diamond Bracelet. The diamonds are very secure as they are semi-bezeled in this elegant piece. They are Round Brilliant Diamonds (Color White Brilliant - H-I, Clarity - SI) with a total weight of 5.00 Carats. It is being offered at US$ 2995.00 including shipping and insurance. Call (917) 470-9582 for more information or to place your order. Groceries: The recent salmonella outbreak in the US underscores the need to replace large-scale industrial farming in cramped quarters with a cleaner and more sustainable model. Nicolas Kristof in a recent article in the NYTimes noted that the:

"Pew commission found that industrial production produces hogs that at first sight are cheaper by six cents per pound. Add in pollution and health costs and that industrial pork becomes more expensive by 12 cents per pound." Essentially by externalizing pollution costs (by fouling rivers and lakes lakes with animal wastes) and health care costs (by sickening the public and reducing the effectiveness of antibiotics via perpetually dosing the animals that become our food), they can produce "food" cheaper than I can. I did just take two hogs to the slaughterhouse this week. It's not fun and it doesn't save me any money, but it does produce the best pork I have ever tasted and we live in an area of small sustainable farmers. I do websites for Lewis Waite Farm and Three Corner Field Farm. They are family farms, small in comparison to my forebears 800 acre Iowa hog farm, to say nothing of Con Agra and Archer Daniels Midland. Small Is Beautiful and you can get my neighbor's products at the NY Green Market or via a CSA. On the island, a small farmer produces eggs at the entrance to Concordia that are available at most of the larger supermarkets. One of Roland Richardson's relatives grazes beef cattle further into Concordia and you often see some wandering around the outskirts of Marigot. Fresh local meat is available at the Marigot Market.

Alcohol: It's been pretty warm in the northeast this summer and just like lunches in SXM, we have been enjoying a chilled rosé. We are still drinking Chateau La Moutete that Sylvain at Select Wine Cellar introduced us to a couple years ago. Since then, he has added Chateau La Lieue, an organic rosé that is also quite good. Travel: On Saturday 7 August, immigration at the airport went on strike at 1 PM, leaving hundreds of people and flight crew standing there wondering what to do. Passengers just removed the ropes at each immigration booth and entered. It was described as pandemonium as hundreds of people from about seven planes came through with their passports and immigration cards in hand as they exited the terminal. I read on TTOL that by 3PM things were back to "normal", for St Maarten.

We've been traveling a bit this summer and have made use of the American Airlines dining reward program. They have a searchable database of participating restaurants and if you are an on-line member (they send you emails), you can get three airline miles for every dollar spent in the restaurant including tip and tax. Moreover, they frequently have special programs, such as doubling the award if you dine at a restaurant you have not visited and 500 extra miles for filling out a survey after your visit. We've dined out seven times on various trips to Massachusetts and received 3600 miles from this program. At 2 to 3 cents per mile, that's a $70 to $100 gift for having spent about $400. The program is simple and transparent. Just register your credit card with the program and your dining will be tracked automatically. I registered my Chase Continental One Pass credit card with this program, so I got another 400 miles on Continental. As the restaurants have ratings from diners and frequently have menus on-line, it's pretty easy to find a place you will probably like. We stopped at Lobster Tail in Windham, NH on our way back from a Red Sox game. We were attracted to the place because they had a retail fish outlet, much like Skipjack's on the island. Other similarities are that one can choose bit of seafood (in several preparations) and then add a starch and a veg. A final similarity was a decent wine list that had some reasonably priced bottles. Lobster Tail had KJ Chardonnay for $25 while we dined all winter at Skipjack's with Concannon Pinot Noir for a mere $29.

On our way to another game, we stopped at Lattitude, just off the pike in West Springfield. It's across the street from the entrance to The Big E. The menu looked wonderful and so far this is the best find of the summer. We liked it so much that we dined here again on our journey home. The innovative menu (how about quartered, fried Brussels sprouts with spicy aioli?) brought back memories of Mario's Bistro. Another bonus was Hangtime Pinot Noir for a mere $30 per bottle.

Continental Airlines used to participate in this program, but quit a couple years ago, so those of you who don't need American Airline miles, should check out iDine. It's basically the same program, AA piggybacks off the same database and provides their three levels of participation with their own rewards. At iDine, you work up from 5% cash back to 10% as an on-line member, to 15% as an on-line member spending over $750 per year. At AA you start at 1 mile per dollar spent, and get 3 miles per dollar spent if you become an on-line member. On-line members with 12 dining experiences in a year get 5 miles per dollar spent.

I'm dropping the restaurant exchange rate numbers because I am no longer on the island to check them. Charging your credit card in dollars used to save the 3% currency transaction charge that most cards are now charging for foreign currency transactions. About a year ago my Citibank card said they would charge me 3% just for doing business overseas - even if it was in dollars! I now use a Capital One card and get an excellent exchange rate. The frequent flier benefits can be used on any airline and there are no blackouts. Note that you won't get frequent flier tickets quite as fast. It may be best to use the Cap 1 card out of the country and take the rewards in merchandise. We just picked up an 18 bottle wine refrigerator with half of our points from the previous year, but we couldn't even fly one of us to SXM.