It’s taken a while to get into swing of things on
the island . But now, I feel as if we’ve taken off and flying high. We met up
with our guitar playing Ronnie and Muguette at Rancho’s (an Argentinian Steak
House) after he finished playing his gig at Pineapple Petes last Saturday night
to dance to another Latin American band. While there and dancing met up with
Monica & Marsha (Canadian Twins) and now we’re going to visit them when in
Canada.

More exciting news. If we drive from where we’re
living into Phillipsburg, the Capital on the Dutch side, we have to go up a
long and winding road. (sounds like a song from the Beetles doesn’t it). And
then down the other side into the town proper. All in all it’s about a mile or
so long and we’ve renamed whatever it used to be called to......... “CRASH
HILL”. It’s a curvy swervy sort of road and the camber is all wrong when you go
round the corners and combine that with potholes that have to be dodged. Makes
driving very interesting to say the least. The views from the road are quite
breathtaking . Something to feast your eyes upon if you’re not driving that is. Twice
now we’ve been caught up in a huge traffic jam because someone wasn’t paying
attention; and in one case the car actually turned over. Now, think back to a
film I think it was called Police Squad with Leslie Nielsen the comedian. There
was scene in it where the body had to have white lines drawn all round it to
show the actual position on the floor. Can you remember it now? They also did
it in all the old cartoons as well. Guess what! They do this here! Right on the
road as well! White lines all round the vehicles. Lines showing the direction
of travel...... Where it ended up..... Upside down...... probably facing the
wrong way. So in order to join the traffic section of the police force here,
you have to have an art degree and be artistic into the bargain. You have to be
able to draw round stuff that’s strewn all over the road (things such as upside
down cars.... Motor bikes.... broken off wing mirrors.....) with a can of white
spray paint. I would imagine that after this they go to New York and become
really good graffiti artists judging by all the lines and stuff on the roads.
Banksy look out!

The food in restaurants on the Dutch side is really
nothing to write home about. You can’t really mess up a hamburger, or can you?
So we went off to the French side looking for some culinary delights. (We have
to have good food every so often). The gastronomic place to go here is called
Grand Case, but pronounced completely differently in French. There are so many
good restaurants down the main street it’s difficult to choose one over the
next, but we plumped for one that offered us a gastronomic tasting delight. Not
the usual sort of dinner we would normally go out for, but each of the two
courses had five of a little over a bite sized tasty morsel that the chef must
have taken hours to make. The starters were presented on a marble slab on which
was a raised wooden shelf made from the lid of a wine crate. Brilliantly
presented. At the back were five test tubes of different pureed foods. Most
were vegetables, but my favourite was a
melon and peppermint concoction that was simply out of this world. There were
also balls of sorbet vegetables. The main course included, and served in a
similar fashion a delicious shrimp and coconut soup; duck & orange sauce;
satay prawns and some very interesting thin fried spears of asparagus wrapped
in filo pastry or as the waitress explained in her broken French accent ‘doubt’
really meaning doe. Can’t you just tell how much we’re missing good food.

Something fishy going on now. The fishing
competition. Big big stuff here. Big money, big fish. They call them bill fish
over here, but we probably know them better as blue marlin. The competition
taking place off the French capital of Marigot. A ten minute drive for us,
thankfully not over Crash Hill though. When I think of a fishing boat, I think
of the beautifully painted wooden boats you’d see of any of the small
Mediterranean ports just bobbing about at anchor, or the larger commercial
trawlers that go out into the North Sea. These boats over here for this
competition I have to tell you are completely different. Pristine white
fibreglass boats being crewed by what looks like a shoal of similarly tee
shirted men who would proudly be industriously cleaning their rods and tackle
‘make what you want of that’ as soon as they arrived back at the dock side. Huge
engines, up to and in some cases well over a thousand horse power. The rules
are simple enough to understand though. Rods in the water at a certain time,
and out at 5.00pm. Anything under 300 pounds has to be released or it counts
against you. We stood in the excited crowd as the boats returned to port. Not everyone
caught a fish, but those that did came quite close to where we were standing
and they had to bring in a crane to lift the fish out the boat and weight it.
The one on the video was in fact a small one weighing in at 375 pounds, but we
watched as a bigger one weighing some 490 was hoisted aloft. The biggest one
ever caught weighed 781 pounds and broke the record. So these we saw were
probably tiddlers in comparison. Great celebrations with a local Caribbean band
playing, while the locals danced, the barbeques going like mad, and lots and
lots of beer being drunk. Sponsored unsurprisingly by the Coors Lite beer
company amongst others.

Talking of partying, this is brilliant. Ronnie told
us about a party being held at Boonie Ville beach bar at Simpson Bay. If it’s a
party, we’re definitely going to be there. As Dyana says, “be there, or be
square.” Must have been about two hundred people there. A brilliantly hot sunny
afternoon, white sands, turquoise sea. Get the picture? The ‘One White Chick’
band playing fantastic music. Everybody in good spirits literally and
figuratively speaking. Beach volleyball going on, and then several private
boats arrived with their passengers who just leapt off their boats and swam to
the shore to join in. Dancing in the water while holding your drinks. Well it
just does not get better than this!!!