Oyster Pond in Saint Martin has transformed into a high-end yacht paradise over the last few years. Much to the chagrin of those who knew the tranquil beauty of Oyster Pond’s former wilderness, the area is now a huge tourist center. Like it or not, that’s the way things are. But what if I told you that there is still a wonderful getaway on the shores of Oyster Pond? This is Babit Point, a lonely peninsula of criss-crossing paths and stunning views. Bring your kids, your sweetheart, or just yourself– anyone can enjoy this easy hike.
Babit Point is to the North of Oyster Pond and the south of Coralita Beach. Actually, there’s a trail of sorts leading from Coralita to Babit Point. To drive to Babit, go toward the St. Barth ferry in Oyster Pond, then keep going until you see a dirt lot and some donkeys behind a wooden fence.
To be honest, this is one of those places you might have to hunt for. We drove into a wrong street or two before we found it.
This whole area reminds me of rural Arizona, where you can always see donkeys browsing among the cactus.
The hike to the top of Babit Point is short, and there are some large boulders to climb on. Wow! What a view. We could see Oyster Pond and Dawn Beach, plus St Barth, Statia, and St. Kitts in the distance.
We went down the path to the water’s edge. Oyster pond is pretty much totally developed today, which made me a little sad. I’ve heard rumors of a beach and mangroves that used to be there, and I would have liked to see that. I guess it’s all the more reason to give some love to the island’s remaining healthy pond ecosystems. It looks like the reef around the area is still really nice, though. Maybe we can snorkel it on a calm day.
I don’t come to this side of the island very often, so visiting is always a treat! I feel like I’m exploring a new island altogether. It’s a nice way to shake the Saint Martin claustrophobia I feel now and then.
If you haven’t been here, you need to go at least once. It’s the less steep and potentially deadly version of Guana Bay, even though its not nearly as long. Boy, I love these trails! They’re a huge part of what makes Saint Martin an amazing place to be.
The Sint Maarten Zoo just keeps getting better. How, you ask? Well, for starters: water features, gardens, and renegade pigs. Although that last part isn’t quite intentional.
Since I moved to the island of Sint Maarten a year ago, I’ve been to the zoo four times. Today’s visit was definitely the best. The zoo has put a lot of effort into improving the grounds and making it look beautiful.
About four months ago, I was part of a volunteer crew through American University of the Caribbean that helped the zoo clean up some weeds and leaves and such. Every time I’ve done a project like that in the past, the place looks just as weedy a month later. Not so with the zoo. In fact, it was even cleaner than the way we left it after our clean-up day. The areas we weeded had become landscaped paths and nice gardens. It’s always looked nice, but today everything looked excellent.
I brought three kids to the zoo today. One of them, Aloha, had never been before. His reaction to the animals was priceless! He really didn’t have very good luck at first, though. As soon as we walked in, one of the parrots in a cage flew at him and scared him half to death! It wasn’t aggressive, just curious, but he’d never seen such a big parrot before. Then, he was so loud and excited that he bothered a crabby monkey, who flung a fistful of food at him. Of course, this only made him more loud and excited.
There’s a little white cockatoo that says “hello” whenever you walk away from it. Aloha walked past the bird, and it called out, “hello!” He returned the greeting, “hello!” and spun around to find the person who shouted at him– but there was no one there! He was surprised to discover that it was a bird talking to him. I couldn’t help but laugh at the confusion on his face!
The littlest one was quite enthralled with the huge shipwreck playground. It’s the biggest playground on the island, and it’s a really good one. No only does it feel like a real ship, there are also a lot of ladders to climb and tunnels to crawl through.
The zoo recently added another play area, too. This one has trikes, hammocks, and tunnels. It was a good place to stop and eat lunch. Aloha said he was going to live right there forever.
The oldest one was most interested in the iguanas. There are a lot of these lizards at the zoo! The green iguanas that run free all over the island are actually not native to the island. They used to be limited to a private pond, but escaped during a hurricane. They managed to eliminate all of the native iguanas and take over the island.
As you can see, they like to hang out at the zoo!
I gave the kids some bread so they could feed the iguanas. The little one just tossed the bread at them and liked watching them eat, but Aloha and the oldest one enjoyed feeding the lizards by hand.
The oldest one ran into his friend who works at the zoo. His friend’s task for the afternoon was to round up all the intrusive iguanas and put them in the iguana exhibit for the time being. The wild iguanas bother the other animals and eat their food.
Of course, the oldest one thought that iguana wrangling sounded like fun, so he joined the hunt. I took Aloha and the little one to check out the new splash pad. It’s pretty cool! They have a bunch of kiddie pools and some big sprinklers. There weren’t too many kids there, so they had plenty of space to play.
I hadn’t thought to bring dry clothes, so we decided to walk around the zoo again to dry off. Aloha liked the caiman. I liked the rabbits. The little one liked the mules, even though you can’t tell from this photo!
Actually, the little one was more interested in the swing than the animals at this point. Although he was still pretty enthralled with the talking cockatoo.
The most exciting part of the day came just before we left. Somehow, a pig wandered out of the farm animals exhibit. I saw him walk past me, and I wondered if he was supposed to be running free. He didn’t seem to be bothering anyone, so I just watched him root around in the dirt. Before long, I saw the zookeeper searching for something. I asked him if he was looking for a pig and pointed where the pig had gone. He went jogging after the pig, and a minute or two later I saw the pig fly past me the other direction with the zookeeper and his son hot on its heels! Aloha and the little one decided that this was great fun, of course, and so did every other kid in the zoo. Before long, there were seven kids, a zookeeper, and me all chasing down Houdini Pig. Aloha ended up cornering the pig so the zoo keeper could catch it. He was very pleased with the whole episode. After all, it’s not every day that an animal escapes at the zoo and you get to help catch it.
The oldest one was having so much fun that he decided to hang around the zoo after I left with the little kids. He stayed for a few more hours to volunteer, which was pretty cool of him. He’d been very helpful with taking care of the kids during the trip, too.
We were all pretty happy with our afternoon at the zoo! It’s nice that the Sint Maarten Zoo is always making the zoo better and more fun. At $10 for adults and $5 for kids, it’s a pretty affordable treat that includes animals and play time. Both of the younger kids begged to go back again the next day! Perhaps another zoo day will be in our future.
Maho’s a nice part of Saint Martin, and one I’ve never really appreciated. Shopping centers, the casino, sky bars– not a lot to love, in my opinion, especially when it’s pretty much a fake little tourist village that looks nothing like the rest of the island. Actually, though, it’s a pretty nice to place to spend an afternoon. I took a trip through Maho with my dog today, and I enjoyed the simple pleasures I found.
Maho Village
Other than the huge resort Sonesta, Maho is mostly residential. I’m not sure why you’d call it a village when it’s really a lot of condos, but it’s a pretty nice place to live. Very safe and secure, with a lot of guards and a lot of gates. The one thing that I don’t love is all the big, barking dogs behind those gates. Kito and I decided to leave the resident dogs to their own business and check out the rest of Maho.
Maho Shopping
There’s one main road in Saint Martin, and it runs through Maho. Both sides of the street are lined with spacious sidewalks and places to shop or eat. The boutiques are fun to browse through. There are some nice little souvenir shops with low-priced t-shirts, so it’s a good place to look around if you’re not up for Philipsburg. The clothing stores are beyond my budget, but it doesn’t hurt to window shop.
Maho Eating
There are a lot of places to eat in Maho. A local fave is the pizza shop behind the casino, but I have to admit that I’ve never been there. Three Amigos isn’t bad, but you’ll have better luck at Maho’s best kept secret, Taco Macho. You can find it in the Alegria complex past Sunset Beach. We’ve enjoyed Moomba on a special occasion, although it’s a little pricey. Fig & Bananas is very popular with the wine and tapas crowd, so if that’s your jam, you really can’t go wrong. We’ve also had pizza at Rialto, which is good for a quick lunch. The most popular spot in the area is definitely Sunset Beach Bar, a top tourist destination where you can watch the sun set over the ocean and see planes fly just above your head. Our number one favorite is Gio’s, the gelato place on the corner. Try the cheesecake. It’s delicious.
Maho Beach
To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s called Maho Beach or Sunset Beach, but either way it’s a great place to go. During tourist season from October to May, artificial sand expands the beach to accommodate the hundreds of people who wait for airplanes to blow them away. Yes, Maho Beach is that beach– the one where you can get blasted by a 747 jet or stand a few hundred feet below and landing plane.
Today, Kito and I walked to Maho Beach. I’m not really into the whole jet blast thing, but I do love seeing the planes come in for landing at Princess Juliana Airport. Plus, it was a dry day today, so Saba stood out sharply against a clear blue sky in the distance. I love that view. Kito just loves getting attention from all the tourists. Maho Beach is actually an incredibly friendly place to go. I just walked down and sat on the retaining wall with my dog, and lots of people stopped to talk. A few people gave me a quick smile and paused to pet the dog, and one little Dutch girl who was selling watermelon at her lemonade stand gave me a slice for free, just because. Or maybe because I looked homeless. Hopefully not. A tourist from the Netherlands sat down beside me and we talked about our dogs for a while. She’s an agility trainer and her dogs compete in Belgium all the time. We watched the planes for a while before Kito started getting hot and wanted to go home.
If you have time to walk around Maho, why not take an hour or two to do it? There’s a lot of other great things to see on the island, but Maho’s not half bad.
Across the sea from Saint Martin, a thin green line is visible on the horizon. This is Anguilla, Saint Martin’s closest neighbor. Today, I spent some time on the beach near Blowing Point Terminal on Anguilla enjoying the clear blue waters of the British West Indies. Here’s a bit about Anguilla and how to travel there from Saint Martin.
About Angiulla
Anguilla is a very flat, very dry (for the tropics) island that is about the same size at Saint Martin. It’s a lot longer and narrower than Saint Martin, and it has only a fraction of its population. At 35 square miles, it only has about 15,000 residents.
How to get there
To get to Anguilla from St. Martin, you have to take the ferry from Marigot, the capital of the French side. The first ferry leaves at 8:15 AM. It costs $5 at the gate for port tax and another $20 on the boat. I have often wondered what they do to you in you don’t have the $20. Throw you to the sharks? I’d rather not find out.
Getting around
As soon as you step off the ferry, you’ll be bombarded by taxi drivers and rental agents. There is no public bus system on the island, so you’ll have to rent a car or take the taxi. A taxi to Shoal Bay Beach at the other end of Anguilla is about $18 per person. I believe a car rental is somewhere around $50-$100 per day. Taxi drivers really take care of their customers, by the way.
What to do
To be honest, I’m not the expert on Anguilla. Here’s what I know, though. The best beach is Shoal Bay Beach. It’s a mile-long strip of white, powdery sand near a beautiful reef. There are other beaches, too, but it you have to pick one then stick with Shoal Bay. You can also charter a boat to Sandy Island or Prickly Pear Cay, a couple of Cays on the back side of Anguilla. If you decide to go to the capital, The Valley, you’ll find a few points of interest, like the museum and some local food.
The cheapest trip ever
Sometimes, it’s just nice to get off Saint Martin and do something different. If you want a super cheap day in Anguilla, walk a few hundred yards from the ferry to the beach right beside the Blowing Point terminal. There’s a thin but beautiful strip of sand right there, and you can relax while the crystal-clear water laps at your feet. The view of Saint Martin is something I could look at all day. After all this time on SXM, seeing it from Anguilla is like looking at the earth from the moon. Your total cost will be $53, and you can even get a snack– there’s a sea grape tree at the edge of the beach. The fruit is ripe at the end of wet season. If your SXM visa is expiring and you need to get a new stamp, this is the way to go.
As much as I enjoy Anguilla, I’m always happy to go back to my home sweet home. Looking at Saint Martin from afar reminds me how beautiful the island is and how much I love it. From Anguilla, all you can see of Saint Martin is how “the chains of mountains green variously in sunlight sheen.” It’s an alluring sight that calls me home. O! I love thy paradise, nature’s beauty very nice.
I’ve been in the ocean with sharks, and I don’t exactly love it, but I do love walking through an aquarium tunnel and seeing them above me! Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto is a fantastic place to do just that. I got to chaperone a big group of kids from my home island, Sint Maarten, on their trip to Canada and Ripley’s Aquarium. Puppy, our littlest in the group at six years old, had a wonderful time at the aquarium.
Of course, the first thing Puppy wanted to do when he saw the inside of the aquarium was take off into the crowd and find something loud, shiny, and colorful. There’s plenty of loud, shiny, and colorful in the aquarium building, but Stacey and I made sure to keep a tight grip on Puppy! Fortunately, all the kids were dressed in matching bright yellow shirts, so we adults had a fairly easy time keeping track of them all.
There was so much to see! And everyone seemed to want to see it. We squeezed through the crowd to press up against glass tanks full of colorful fish. Puppy liked anything that moved quickly and stayed within his field of vision. I liked the jellyfish, particularly the upside-down jellies that we have on our own island in Simpson Bay Lagoon. The pink ones were also pretty cool.
“I shall call him squishy, and he shall be mine and he shall be my squishy.” -Dory
Then, of course, there are the jellyfish’s cousins, the anemones.
The best part of all was the moving sidewalk through the shark tunnel! Puppy was absolutely mesmerized as we glided past the huge sharks, sawfish, groupers, and turtles. He had a thousand questions to ask about everything! Stacey and I tried to convince him to get in a #sharkselfie with us, but he couldn’t pry his eyes away from the sharks right in front of his face.
As much fun as Ripley’s Aquarium was, there was a lot more to this field trip than just letting a bunch of kids see some fish. For some of the boys, this was the first time they got to see what’s beneath the waters surrounding their island.
They are the ones who will make tomorrow’s decisions about how those waters will be protected– or not protected. The marine ecosystem of the Caribbean island is so delicate! It’s under threat from tourism, over-fishing, chemical spills, and people just not caring. It’s vital that the people who live on the islands understand the importance that their reefs hold in many arenas, from tourism to preservation of species.
I hope that a peek at that underwater world, plus follow-up conversations from us, will encourage the kids to take an interest in their world and their responsibility to care for it. And how can you not care about this happy ray?
Puppy actually wasn’t so sure about the rays, but he did love the kid-sized shark tunnel and even convinced some of his friends to squeeze through it with him. There were a lot of cool interactive things like this that encourage little ones to kinetically engage with the ocean life around them and look at it from a different angle.
The aquarium was a blast! There was so much to do, see, and investigate. At the end of the morning, Puppy was worn out!
It’s been a long time since our first days of Pride and Prejudice Balls P.E. class, Friday morning hikes, and drama improv. But even after many years and many miles, these friendships have stayed strong.
My friends Taylor and Bethany came to visit me a few weeks ago! Taylor and Bethany have been my friends for many years. We have a lot of memories under our belts, and the week they spent here created many more. I actually managed to find some new things to do with them, just when I thought I had conquered all the activities on the island. Of course, we also covered some old favorites with a new twist.
For the first time, we saw monkeys on Pic Paradis! These vervets are escaped pets who have moved in to the Columbier area of the island and proliferated. They’re actually quite a pest, but at least they’re cool to look at.
The day we hiked was perfect. Can you see St. Barth’s in the background of the picture below? Usually, that island is like a mysterious phantom rising out of the mist. Even on relatively clear days, it’s hard to see more than its outline. This day, though, you could not only see the entire island, but even little white sails in the harbor! We couldn’t have picked a better day to take a hike to the island’s best viewpoint.
Fort Louis is always top of the list for visitors. As you can see, Taylor and Bethany brought their best acting skills to liven up the dead ruins of the fort.
Bethany noticed this little shack at the bottom of Fort Louis Hill. I had never stopped to look, but she discovered that it houses an old stone oven.
Taylor took every opportunity to enjoy the beautiful clear Caribbean Sea! I hung out with Bethany on the beach while Taylor did some swimming at Indigo Bay.
In case you ever wondered, Philipsburg is right here on Map:
We found this crazy contraption on the beach in Pburg. I’m not entirely sure how you’re supposed to use it, but it was pretty cool anyway!
Fort Amsterdam is a great place to take a deep breath of fresh air and look at the past, present, and future of the island. My favorite thing to do here is bird-watching near the pelican nests.
We did a lot of water sports while the ladies were here. Snorkeling was awesome that week, so we spent a whole day doing that. We also tried out stand-up paddle boards at Orient Bay, and of course enjoyed the water’s edge. The sunset over the water is spectacular. Ben and I even taught Taylor to surf!
No Johnson Tour of Saint Martin is complete without a trip to watch planes at Maho beach, an afternoon with the kids at Player Development Program, a visit to Roland Richarson’s gallery, or ice cream at Carousel.
Bethany and Taylor took me shopping for groceries and we made a delicious meal together! We ended up making and African-style beef sauce for rice with fruit and salad. You can get the recipe here.
Ben’s first day of break was also the last day of Bethany and Taylor’s visit. We celebrated by taking a trip to the abandoned hotel, La Belle Creole Resort. Ben climbed all the way up the highest tower on a rickety old wood ladder!
They say that if you’ve been friends with someone for seven years, you’ll be friends for life. I’m finding that to be true so far. I’ve been friends with Taylor and Bethany for a decade, and we’ve been through a lot of good times, laughter, deep talks, and crazy moments. Here’s to many more years of adventures!
