The "Gate Episode" Story

Gated entrance to Les Jardins D'Orient Bay

It was an ordinary day.  Just got through the gate of Les Jardins D'Orient Bay on the French side of the island of St. Martin.  Rented a villa at the top of the hill that overlooks Orient Bay in the gated community of Les Jardins.  Neat place with beautiful homes with most of them having a view of Orient Bay and the small islands of Pinel, Green Cay and Tintamarre off in the distance.  The view from our villa used to be fantastic, but with all the vegetation increasing in size from year to year, we can see less of the bay beyond.  When we arrived a couple of days ago we were ushered to our villa by a young Frenchman by the name of Gael who made sure we knew how to use everything before he left.  One of the items he showed us was the new code to get through the gates at the bottom of the hill.  Special code to enter, another to exit and a third that was used for both, but between 8:00 PM and 6:00 AM.  Wrote them on a piece of paper and placed them in the rental car to make sure we could navigate the gate on our travels to and from our condo.  All went well until last evening when we visited with friends of Carol's who have a place in Grand Case, a nearby beach town.  

Continuous trying didn't work!

After sharing an evening meal at a restaurant located between our places, we headed home about 9:00 PM.  Roads were empty and we were able to pull into the gate quickly.  Pulled the slip of paper from the cup holder and punched in the code for after 8:00 PM and waited.  Waited some more.  Realizing I did something wrong, I tried the code again.  Waited again.  Geez, now what.  Tried the daytime code and still nothing.  So I backed up enough to pull into the other lane where the exit gate stood.  Told Carol to get behind the wheel, since I was going to jump the gate and punch in the code on the exit side.  Tried the night-time code and nothing.  Tried the daytime code and still nothing.  Geez!!  All this took probably 10-15 minutes and still no one else wanted to enter or exit so we could get through after them.  Across the main highway stands another security gate into the community known as Orient Bay.  Their gate is manned by security guards, so I backed up again and headed across the deserted highway to the other gate.  Now you have to remember that St. Martin is a French speaking island and neither Carol or I know French and quite a few of the people live on this side of the island don't understand English.  We drove over the first speed bump and the guard walked to our car.  

Finally, it opened!

My wife tried to explain to the young man our problem, but he was having a hard time under- standing the sheet of paper with the codes on it.  Then, appearing out of no where, a car pulled in line behind us to get through the gate.   The guard signaled us to pass through and park across the street, which we did.  We could see him on the phone and then he signaled us back towards the gate.  We pulled up in the exit side and he told me what the number should be.  1 letter off from what I copied from our Welcome Book at the villa.  Pulled back over to our gate and tried one more time.  "It's opening!" I said to Carol.  Then she looked above us and saw the myriad of security cameras that were pointed our way.  "I'll bet they had a good laugh tonight," I said to her.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  PS - Gael returned in a few days to change the book that I had copied the number from and he said, "The number was incorrect.  I hope you had no trouble because of it!"  If he only knew!!