The "Discovering Something Truly Magical In The Caribbean! Part II" Story

The Traveling Island Girl

It was an ordinary day.  Reading another post on the blog known as "The Traveling Island Girl."  This post is titled "The Do's and Don'ts when vacationing on St. Maarten." but was originally published as "6 Do's and Don'ts when visiting the Caribbean."  Doesn't matter how it is titled, it still makes one think about how islanders all over the Caribbean must think about we who visit from afar.  Read and maybe you will see yourself in one of the sentences.  I certainly did and will try a bit harder to be more friendly while visiting in the Caribbean.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Aaaaah the high season is here. The time when St. Maarteners start practicing their smiles and hellos in front of the mirror. Be ready y’all, the tourists are here!

Every winter season St. Maarten and other islands in the Caribbean get a mass influx of visitors arriving from Europe, North and South America and all other continents of the world. Winter season is high season, and we call it high season for a reason: higher tips = higher pays, for some of us in the hospitality industry at least. When you think Caribbean, you think beaches, sun, sand, sea and friendly people and we islanders have perfected the art of friendliness. After all, we have a rep to protect since St. Maarten is generally known as the Friendly Island.

However, it has come to my attention in recent years that although we value the arrival of our dear friends from all over the world, our friends don’t seem to know much about us at all. They don’t know what makes us tick, so to speak. So I’ve decided to put together a list of do’s and don’ts when vacationing in St. Maarten.

DON’T try to speak like us
You can imagine how many times I've heard tourists trying to speak like local.  "Yeah Mon".......uhmmm, No....don't, just don't. First of all "Yeah Mon is commonly used in Jamaica and Jamaica as far as I know does not represent the whole Caribbean.  Secondly, you sound silly.

DO cover yourself when walking on our streets
I get it.  I totally do.  It's hot and our down town area is located near beaches.  But seriously, I don't go to New York City and parade around in an itty bitty tiny bikini on a hot day in Central Park, so why do it here?  It's not only a form of disrespect, but honestly some people can do with a little covering up, if. you know what I mean.  There are various little stores and markets about that sell really cute beachwear and pares or salons.  Not to mention that there are many fun and fashionable ways of wearing pares nowadays.  For all of our sakes, just say yes to the beach dress.

DO say good morning, good afternoon and good evening
I cannot express how important this is. I remember one time I came into the kitchen after school an asked my mom what’s for lunch. I got a slap so hard, I swear I saw stars. Why? Because I did not wish her Good Afternoon first. No, this is not child abuse but a common practice in the Caribbean called “educating your child”.  Before asking a local a question or when entering a store or restaurant start with a hello. It is considered extremely rude not to do so. I know it is not part of some cultures and I can count on one hand how many responses I have received when I said good “whatever time of day it is” in a crowded elevator in the US. We local St. Maarteners also say random hellos to people we pass on the street whether we know them or not. If we pass you on the beach during a morning stroll it is common to say Good Morning.  St. Maarteners are incredibly helpful people but also very proud. You will see that starting off a conversation or question with a greeting makes a world of difference and you might get a complete different reaction than if you had gone the other way. Bonus point: don’t forget to conclude with a “Thank You”.

DON’T complain about our way of life
We complain enough about it ourselves. Our produce, meats and other random things surely are more expensive than where you’re from. But remember that we live on a rock where everything aside from fish and coconuts are imported. Our internet is also very very slow compared to the luxury you all seem to have of 50+ MB’s (serioulsy, I’m jealous) but here you can drink an ice cold Heineken while sitting in the crystal blue waters of our beaches. It’s all a matter of perception.

DO avoid asking silly questions
Yes, we do have cows here.
No, we don’t have a bridge connecting us to Puerto Rico.
Yes, there are white islanders (my husband is one of those and calls himself a Coconut Honky) and no, not all black people are local.
Yes, we too get hot sometimes and at no time became used to the heat and finally yes, we do have schools here. Duh!
Before visiting read up a little on our island. We have very interesting and fascinating (hi)stories. In this day and age of Google and other search engines it is a shame not to do some minor research on St. Maarten before your arrival.

DON’T ask us to predict the weather
We have a meteorological department for that. In my event planner days I used to get asked a lot if it is going to rain later or if tomorrow will be sunny (St. Maarten has overall the same forecast depending of course of the time of year: Sunny with a chance of rain) I came up with the only logical answer I could think of: Let me send GOD a Whatsapp and I’ll get back to you. Really, what else can I say? There are however some great weather sites and phone apps that can give you quite accurate forecasts. If I can give you one piece of advise though, it’s this: Don’t stress about the weather. You do that at home already. Rain or shine, you’re in paradise. Enjoy it while you’re here.

This post was not meant to insult anyone in general or in particular. I am merely pointing out our differences and in doing so giving you, our visitor, a better understanding of our culture.

Check back for more posts on island living and my island adventures. Leave a comment, share this post or just like it. Whatever you do, a little feedback always helps.

Don’t forget to love, laugh and travel.

The "There It Was...Bigger Than Life...And Still Scary!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  My wife and I decided to explore Lancaster County by car, seeing if we could find a few places we had never been before so we headed west on SR283.  Before long we saw a sign for Elizabethtown and decided it was time to see parts of the county we had never visited.  Before long we were on Main Street and when we approached the square headed south toward the sign that said Falmouth.  We had read for years about the town that has held annual goat races since 1978, but had never been there.  Town is located in Conoy Township that is famous for lowering a stuffed goat on New Year's Eve.  

Cooling towers from Three Mile Island were to our right.

The last census told the tale about the town which had 420 residents.  As we approached the western end of the town we looked off to the right and there it was.  Two large circular cement towers spewing steam into the noontime sky.  There it was...bigger than life...and still scary.  Wow!  It was back on March 28, 1979 that reactor #2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station released radiation into the air right down the road from Falmouth, PA.  

Along the road in front of TMI stands this plague.

Not only was radiation released but the nuclear core was damaged and thousands of residents evacuated the area.  It was in the news for days in our area.  We were within the limits of evacuation, but most people near the city of Lancaster did not evacuate.   Carol and I drove down the final incline with the Susquehanna River in front of us.  Should we bear right and head toward the island?  

View as we approached the cooling towers.

For as much as we have heard about Three Mile Island, we had never in our lives explored and found the island.  I guess it was time even though it was still a bit scary.  Two of the four towers were spitting steam into the air as we drove about 200 yards away from them as we passed the island.  To our right was the Exelon Generation Training Site as well as a small grove of cherry trees.  We stopped to read the plaque that sat amongst the trees and found that the Yoshino Cherry Trees were presented to the GPU Nuclear Corporation by the Japanese Engineers who were assigned to the TMI-2 research and development program in May of 1988.  We sat in the car for quite some time looking at the massive cooling towers right in front of us and wondering what we would have done had we lived in the houses that lined the road across from the river and power plant.  

The Yoshino Cherry Trees presented by the Japanese.

Would he have grabbed the kids and driven as fast as we could away from the disaster.  Did most of the people who live there do just that?  After a few more photos we turned around and headed back to the sign telling us we were in Falmouth and decided it was time to head back towards Elizabethtown.  I doubt very much if we will ever duplicate our drive exploring this area of Lancaster County again.  Ever!  It might be close to 40 years ago that the catastrophe happened, but getting this close to those scary memories is more than we could take.  As we drove east through Falmouth we vowed never to return again.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Sitting in our car directly across the road from the cooling tower #2.

Training center for Exelon Generation Training Site.

The "Unprecedented Category 5 Hurricane Set To Strike" Story

TV shot of hurricane Luis from 1995.

It was an ordinary day.  Staring at the TV screen in awe of the power of the tropical storm named Irma.  Weather Channel says: POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE IRMA HEADING TOWARD THE LEEWARD ISLANDS...PREPARATIONS SHOULD BE NEARING COMPLETION IN THE EASTERNMOST LEEWARD ISLANDS.  Scary stuff!  Back on September 7, 2015 I wrote a story about Hurricane Luis that struck the island of Sint Maarten/St. Martin in early September of 1995 as well as the islands of  Antigua, Barbuda, St. Barts and Anguilla.  The 1995 Atlantic hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph, classified as a category 4 storm, accounted for 19 deaths, left nearly 70,000 homeless and wrought roughly $3 billion in damages across the affected islands.  Hurricane Luis was the most devastating hurricane to strike the northern Leeward Islands in the 20th century.  When Carol and I began traveling to the Leeward islands in early 2000, we heard many stories about Luis and the havoc it caused.  Well, we may be in the 21st Century now, but having another KILLER storm arrive so soon after Luis is scary; REALLY SCARY.  Across the bottom of the TV screen a trailer tells the story ... LARGEST HURRICANE EVER RECORDED IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN ... UNPRECEDENTED CAT 5 HURRICANE.  

The storm Irma is immense when comparing it to the
size of the little dots on the left which are islands.

I checked my emails and just found one that read: As of now, it appears that we are in the direct path of Hurricane Irma, and our staff is busily battening down the hatches and preparing the resort to weather the storm. Due to its size, intensity and current trajectory, we expect to experience some level of impact, including potentially the loss of utilities, phones and Internet for anywhere between a few days to a few weeks. For that reason, we have set up a special U.S.-based email address, in case regular communications are temporarily interrupted.  We will keep you updated the best we can over the next several days, and greatly appreciate all your thoughts and prayers!  During the past fifteen years we have made friends on many of the islands in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.  On the island of Sint Maarten, Barbara and Deidrick Cannegieter have become good friends that we communicate with on an ongoing basis and visit every year when we head to Sint Maarten.  We hope that they will make it through this historic storm safely.  Irma's sustained winds have intensified over the last few hours to 185 mph.  Hopefully all island residents have had the chance to prepare for this storm.   As of Tuesday afternoon the Princess Juliana International Airport on Sint Maarten has closed until the storm passes.  So where will the storm head?  Too many different scenarios on different TV stations to predict.  Carol and I are scheduled to head to our local travel agency on Friday to pick up our information and paperwork for an upcoming trip to Nassau in the Bahamas.  I guess the best thing I can report about that trip is that we purchased travel insurance when we originally scheduled the trip a few months ago.  Possible that an airplane could get us to the island by October, but will the resort where we are scheduled to visit still be able to accommodate us.  Another UPDATE has flashed across the bottom of the TV screen.  STORM SURGE: The combination of a life-threatening storm surge and large breaking waves will raise water levels by as much as 7 to 11 feet above normal tide levels along the coasts of the extreme northern Leeward Islands within the hurricane warning area near and to the north of the center of Irma.  I'm sure I will be glued to the TV screen for the next day or two, checking on my friends on Facebook and praying for the best outcome for all concerned.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary day.

PS - As I finished this story I had a few posts added to my Facebook page from friends in Sint Maarten/St. Martin.  All were magically eerie!!  Purely, the calm before the storm.  

From Barbara

Taken from a camera in Philipsburg, Sint Maarten

Another from Barbara and Dee's back yard.

Beach time before the storm.

The "The Turks & Caicos Islands: Part I - The Land" Story

It was an ordinary day.  That's if you consider sitting on a lounge chair under an orange umbrella on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world ordinary.  The azure waters drift slowly toward the strikingly white beach known as Grace Bay Beach.  This is the third trip for Carol and me with our friends Jerry and Just Sue to the Turks & Caicos Islands which are a British overseas territory comprised of 40 islands and cays (pronounced "key") which lie at the southeastern end of the Bahamas chain, 575 miles southeast of Miami and 90 miles north of the island of Hispaniola.  

The highest elevation on any of the islands is 250 feet at Blue Mountain on Providen- ciales (Provo) which is the island on which Grace Bay Beach is located. Those who live on Provo, known as Belongers, will tell you that the islands were named after the scarlet dome of the barrel-shaped Turks Head cactus, which reminds you of a Turkish fez or hat, and the Spanish word "cayos" for small islands.  The Turks and the Caicos are divided by a 22 mile wide, 7,000 foot deep passage known as the "Turks Island Passage."  

Christopher Columbus discovered the islands on his first voyage to the new world when he stepped on Grand Turk in 1492 and was greeted by the peaceful Lucayan Indians.  I can't imagine what he must have thought when he saw all these beautiful islands which are referred to as "Beautiful by Nature." After leaving Grand Turk he sailed along the coasts of South, East, Middle and North Caicos, stopping at Pine Cay to refresh his water supply, before continuing on to Providenciales to possibly sit on Grace Bay Beach on the chair next to me which happens to have CC scratched into the metal frame.  

He happened to leave for Cuba before my plane landed on the island.  Tourism provides the livelihood of just about every resident on this island. Only weather and health threats can slow the tourists from coming to the T&C islands, but over the years of travel to the island, I have noticed that they have grown tremendously from our first trip in 2009 when the main highway, that essentially travels from one end of the island to the other, was partially sand and stone to all blacktop this year.  More and more gorgeous houses have found a location along the shores and beaches of the island since our first trip.  The official language of the island is English with an island dialect that I have trouble with, but then I have trouble at times with regular English, especially if I forget to wear my hearing aides.  

Well, I must tell you that my lounge chair is so relaxing that the only reason I ever leave it is to walk across the pure white sand, which is so cool and feels like baby powder, to the alluring water which is perhaps the most beautiful I have ever seen.  Water today is 85 degrees, the exact same temperature as the air, and water visibility is said to be up to 200 feet down.  Remarkable!!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.