St Maarten/St Martin 25 January 2015 Newsletter Other newsletters Contests | Restaurants | Bargains and Happenings ISLAND NEWS Weather: It rained last Sunday night for a while, but otherwise Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday have been fine, if a bit hot and muggy with very little breeze. On the right is an early morning shot of Saba with its crown of clouds keeping the rain forest moist. Below is a shot of a cruise ship sailing past the twin peaks of Statia. Wednesday was a lovely day with clear views out to Saba and the lovely sunset below center. Thursday got a bit hazy and on Friday Saba was lost in the haze. It was the same on Saturday but cleared a bit toward evening. The last two days have had little breeze rendering them sticky and muggy. The far right photo below was taken this morning as the sun was lighting up the clouds above Saba. It is rather still, with no whitecaps on the Caribbean or on the lagoon, ie more of the same hot and muggy, but with less marine haze. The next ten days are showing highs of 82-84 and lows of 74-75 with four clear days, two partly cloudy days and four days with a chance of rain. As the rain is listed as zero inches, it's just widely scattered, short showers. As I recall, it sprinkled as I drove from Cupecoy to Pizza Galley last night, but it wasn't raining when we walked out of Sapphire, nor was it raining at Pizza Galley. All in all, great weather, with just a touch of rain to keep the hills green. The box shows the current local conditions and here's the detailed forecast from Weather Underground and here's one from the Weather Channel. Sunset tonight will be at 6:02 PM providing eleven hours and 16 minutes of sunshine, five minutes more than last Sunday. The pano below was also taken shortly after sunrise on Tuesday morning. You can see three cruise ships heading into Pburg from our Caribbean balcony. The pano shows them crossing between us and Statia. The tall mountain on the left is The Quill. Monday was the first day that we saw Statia. We were here two weeks before we got a good view of Saba. I'm not sure that St Kitts is still with us. For 2015, the full moons will be 3 Feb, 5 Mar, 4 Apr, 3 May, 2 Jun, 1 Jul, 31 Jul (a blue moon), 29 Aug, 27 Sep, 27 Oct, 25 Nov, and 25 Dec. This sunset pano was taken from the Caribbean balcony of our condo on Wednesday, 21 January. SXM-Beaches: In theory, there is a public parking lot between Ocean Club and the private property further to the west. That property has the baby beach, a small cove that sometimes has dry sand in high season, the monolith and dock, both of which are falling apart and generally have no sand, and the beach at Shorepointe, which is your best bet for sand on Cupecoy. On the right is the gentleman who collects money from vehicles driving onto the private property next door next door to the public lot, although there were reports on TTOL that he was trying to get money to park in the public lot. Dany, of Dany's Beach Bar, has made a deal with the owner of the private property above the cliffs. So, in a roundabout way, he may be authorized to collect the $5. It does make the transportation of chairs, coolers, umbrellas, etc much easier. Generally there is parking on the street, some of it much closer to Shorepointe.

Beach reading: The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen - (about $17 paperback, $12 Kindle) - From The NYTimes: All fifteen-year-old Marco Jameson wants is to become a Danish citizen and go to school like a normal teenager. But his uncle Zola rules his former gypsy clan with an iron fist. Revered as a god and feared as a devil, Zola forces the children of the clan to beg and steal for his personal gain. When Marco discovers a dead body proving the true extent of Zola's criminal activities, he goes on the run. But his family members aren't the only ones who'll go to any lengths to keep Marco silent forever. Meanwhile, the last thing Detective Carl Mørck needs is for his assistants, Assad and Rose, to pick up a missing persons case on a whim: Carl's nemesis is his new boss, and he's saddled Department Q with an unwelcome addition. But when they learn that a mysterious teen named Marco may have as much insight into the case as he has fear of the police, Carl is determined to solve the mystery and save the boy. Carl's actions propel the trio into a case that extends from Denmark to Africa, from embezzlers to child soldiers, from seemingly petty crime rings to the very darkest of cover-ups. Martha is listening to the audio book borrowed from our library system in NY.

Sapphire Beach Club: We are in our condo (Unit 255) at this time. The pool is clean and full, although a section of the bottom is failing, allowing some water loss. The alternative is to drain it in high season and fix it at all deliberate Caribbean speed. Building 2 has only one working elevator. Other than that, we have A/C, hot and cold water, beach towels, and maid service. The pool bar/restaurant is open. The condo will be available in early April at $1000 per week or less until 15 December 2015 when the rate rises to $1500 per week. You'll get a 10% discount from Unity Car Rental, one of the longest running and most trusted agencies on the island, and several more coupons as well. Check the calendar on our website for available dates. Below is a shot of the sunset taken from our balcony on 22 January.

A visitor in early April said:

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 several 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.

SXM-Activities: Pineapple Pete has music every night. It is regularly voted the best spot on the island for live music by the discerning readers of the Daily Herald. Last Sunday we watched the NFL conference championships at Pete's Sports Bar, the SPN Café. Having arrived after the early game started, we were relegated to the stools at the bar. We had a fine view of a large screen TV, but it's not the most comfortable way to spend the six hours we anticipated. We got some drinks and ordered a very tasty chicken satay. The game was pretty boring until the last two minutes and nine seconds when Seattle went on a tear, only to be tied by the Packers 48 yard field goal with 14 seconds left. Seattle continued on a tear in OT, despite losing the toss, and won the game, stunning all the Packers fans in the room. We are a long way from Seattle, so there were not many Seahawks fans. As it was OT, the Patriots fans started arriving before all the Packers fans recovered and headed home. This led to a difficult scramble for vacant tables, but we got a table and a pizza for the Pats game ...

... which turned out to be a snoozefest as the guys with the soft balls proceeded to dominate on offense and defense. Whoda thunk? By halftime the Pats were were ahead by ten. At one point during the game somebody yelled out, "Are there any Colts fans here?" He got no reply. We were all having a great time, but when the Pats scored a another TD with ten minutes left in the third quarter to put up a 17 point lead, we stuck a fork in the Colts and declared them done. Time to go home. Satay, pizza, and about four drinks each came to $66. Not bad for about five hours of fun. If you want more action in your activity, consider a day sail on Random Wind. It's a real sailing ship that actually uses its sails, if the wind is right. Here she is anchored off our balcony for lunch and a snork on one of the reefs at Cupecoy. She usually makes a couple other stops on the day trip.

	Groceries: Where do French-Canadian women buy their bread on the island. On the left is one of them with three finettes in Sarafina on the Marigot waterfront (at least on the road that used to be on the waterfront before they paved paradise and put up a parking lot). Nearby Sucriere sells banettes, a trademarked bread with a specific flour and process. I think Finette is Sarafina's approach to the trademarked banette, in that it uses a special flour and there's probably something special about the yeast and rising time. Both of them have more pointed ends and are darker and tastier than a standard baguette. We invited Elisa Cohen, late of Bikini Beach and now the manager at Bajatzu, over for lunch on Wednesday. We started with a soup made from sweet potato, onion, habanero, V-8 juice, and milk with a topping of creme fraiche and yogurt with cilantro and scallions. Our Salade Cupecoise featured tuna on a bed of romaine with potatoes, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, and as we could not find any green beans, sticks of zucchini. You can get all these ingredients at Grand Marché, Simply, and Super U. We think Super U has a great selection of frozen fish and fish frozen at sea is pretty good, quite possibly better than fish arriving "fresh" from a two week trip to the Grand Banks.

The lunch wines were a 2013 Tavel from Super U (8€, about $9) and the Saint Croix Rosé (about $11) from Sylvain at Select Wine Cellar. We were split as to which was better. Don't tell Sylvain, but I have a soft spot for Tavel having spent a couple days there showing my mother and father around Europe in the 80s. Alcohol: We have been having the occasional bottle from our "cellar" and now after almost three weeks on the island it was time to stock up again. We found Sylvain at Champagne Bistro enjoying lunch just outside his shop. There were two other couples and a waiter from Moulin Fou where where Sylvain works at night. There were also a lot of empty bottles and more to come before we could desist and get on with the arduous task of buying wine. We tried a fabulous Pax Syrah, a few others, and ended with a 2009 Rioja Reserva that I liked the best. I'm beginning to think that a nice soft tempranillo wine rivals a Burgundy. I really like to start the evening with a glass of chilled white and I find Sylvain's 2013 Chablis from Tremblay to be a good balance between taste and price ($18.50). We chose a couple bottles of 2012 Savigny Les Beaune from Girard as our house red ($29) and a bottle of Chantal Lescure's 2010 Pommard premier cru as our celebration bottle ($87). In a fit of frugality we picked out a simple 2013 Borgogne from Fournier ($20). Use the coupon on Sylvain's website to get 10% off on his list prices.

Shopping: on our way back from Orient on Tuesday we found a parking spot in Marigot. Taking it as an omen, we pulled in and went to visit Candy at Octaedre Gems. She had some new green garnet pieces (left). Unlike the red garnet which is mined here, the green garnet must be imported. We usually take a few souvenirs home, as the prices are good (at 1 to 1 on the dollar) and the red garnet is a real island souvenir, unlike most of the trinkets to be found on the island. There are also some new swimsuits at Endless Summer Swimwear this season. On the right is a teaser. Click the link for many more photos.

	Nature: The dove in our palm tree is raising two chicks and they seem to be doing well. On the right is a heron we saw on the inside of the fence that surrounds the airport. Our office is well over 100% solar-powered and our hosting company servers are about 130% wind-powered.
Small Island story: St Martin News Network reported that a woman in Cole Bay traced a foul odor wafting into her house to a dead cow in her back yard. The cow belonged to a neighbor and he refused to do anything about it. She got the run-around from the Simpson Bay police to the Philipsburg police to a butcher (I'd rather not contemplate that) to the fire department. When the owner got the word that he should get a permit and have the fire department supervise a cremation, he skipped the permit and supervision, staging his own private ceremony in his neighbor's back yard. This isn't very funny and it all stems from the fact that the rule of law is very weak here. Either there are no laws that one would expect in a civil society or they are enforced haphazardly at best.

Current Contest: now to 8 February
Caribbean View Condo - half price summer rental (May-October)
Lagoon Pub Crawl - two for one ticket
Skipjack's - $50 off a dinner for two
Marci's Mega Gym - Two for One week with a shake
Random Wind - $40 gift certificate
Select Wine Cellar - Wine tasting and a bottle of wine
Piazza Pascal - $50 off dinner for two
Pizza Galley - $25 off on a dinner for two

Read our rules, visit the websites of these sponsors, find their contest codes, and enter them on our entry form.

One of the rules is that you should enter each contest only once. You can enter five of the drawings on one entry. Thus, you could win a rather nice vacation at a considerable savings by combining accommodations with dinners and activities. I really check and while ago Sulay entered 33 times for one contest, instead of increasing her chance of winning, she decreased it to zero as I deleted all of them. She did account for about a third of the entries for that contest.

Here's some comments from a past winner:

Future Contests:
8 February to 5 April | 5 April to 31 May
31 May to 30 August | 30 August to 6 December
same cast of characters as current contest

SPN Café As mentioned above, we headed out to Pineapple Pete's SPN Café for the conference championships. We got there just a bit late and got a stools at the bar. With 15 flat screens and two giant screens, it's hard to find a seat without a view of the game. We had chicken satay skewers as an appetizer (pretty tasty) during the second half of the first game and got a table for our pizza dinner during the second game. We drank a bit less than usual and only dropped $66 over five hours!