Morning came soon enough and we had to be at the airport by 6.45 for check in and the inevitable Immigration!
All went smoothly and we were in St Maarten before 8am to a mostly deserted airports and a connection at 9.45 (in place of the original 11.00)
Again the flight was about 10 or 12 minutes over blue water and passing many small islands. I think the pilot climbed to 2500 ft. On this occasion there were 4 passengers and I managed to get the front center seat that placed my view out of the windshield between the two pilots.
Saba is said to be one of the most challenging airports, but frankly from a passenger perspective unless you KNEW this you might be unlikely to notice. This cannot be said of St Barths which I rate as among THE most exciting landings I have observed to date.
The runway ends with a public beach and then a bay, and at the approach end there is a hill about 300 ft (90m) tall that terminates where the runway begins. The good news is that the runway is over twice as long as Saba. I estimate that the pilot approaches at about 8-10 degrees. To put it in perspective a normal jet approach is 3 degrees. He basically dives at the runway and flares at the last moment lands and crams on the brakes and reverse thrust. It is all quite controlled and normal for them, they may do it several times a day, but it was a fantastic experience for me. I went back the next day for a couple of hours to watch them from the ground and gained a different perspective.
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| A Cessna Caravan over the traffic island |
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| Looking down the runway from the hillside |
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| A Winair Twin Otter shows the descent angle |
Occasionally someone does not make it in style, and the results can be seen in the image below. I think it is the same aircraft featured in the video link
St Barths botched landing
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| Aircraft with blue tail and collapsed left main gear |
Once again Immigration, this time French, and now we are in the Eurozone, and it shows. We grabbed a cab to the hotel, which like most things here was not very far, except for the traffic and ongoing street reconstruction that basically routed half of the island traffic past our hotel on what would normally be a quiet side street. We decided to go down to the beach a couple of hundred yards away, and also just look around and had lunch at a very nice French bakery that opens way early for breakfast and closes at 1.30 for the day. We swam in the bay and our initial location was ill advised (by us) as there was coral only a few yards out and we were in to it before we knew it. We retreated and moved down the beach for a while and later in the afternoon made our way back to the hotel,passing the local cemetery (a sight to behold) and relaxed by the pool and removed coral splinters from our feet (or at least most of them!) A good lesson early on.
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| Graves all decorated with (plastic) flowers |
We discovered that not having a car on St Barths is a distinct limitation, so we booked one for the following morning. A combination of that and the traffic limited our dinner options. We discussed this with Melane who had welcomed us to the Hotel Normandie when we arrived and seemed to serve breakfast, run the front desk and clean the rooms all with excellent humor!
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| Melane. She seemed to do it all |
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| Petit dejuneur a l'hotel |
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| Outside the hotel |
She mentioned several places and briefly mentioned "Le Portugal" literally just around the corner and a hang out for the Portuguese workers who do seasonal work on construction sites on the island. So kinda basic but once they figured out that Candid was Portuguese speaking everything changed. I do not think the lady who is part owner saw many women in the place anyway and was delighted to talk and eventually made us some dinner in spite of the fact that they do not serve food other than at lunch time!!. Food was basic but very good and reasonable (for St Barths) and a way better experience than some fancy place in my mind.
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| Le Portugal. Good food!! |
We spent the next day with the car. Candida indulged me once again and we watched airplanes for a while and then just wandered around the island for the rest of the day.
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| St Barths coastline |
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| Nice location for homes |
We found the sister shop from the bakery at the other end of the island and had lunch there and found some good vantage points for views and saw a couple of oddball vehicles including a couple of different vintage Land Rovers, and I was able to explain the history and significance of these vehicles both from the 60s is my guess. We also saw an all electric vehicle complete with baby seat!!, and a Mini Moke a variant of the original Mini. My guess is somewhere mid 60s for a vintage.
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| 60s vintage Land Rover |
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| Late 50s or very early 60s version (narrow headlights) Also had a plate from Jersey Channel Islands |
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| A Mini Moke. VERY basic transportation |
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| Small all electric vehicle with child seat!! |
It is a beautiful island but so much more the "tourist destination" and place of island homes for the wealthy, and not so much "our style" like Saba!!
