Once we returned to Sint Maarten from Saba, Doug’s sister Lea met us on February 11th. Unable to find room in a marina there, we anchored in the bay and made many trips back and forth with our dingy as we didn’t all fit! We hadn’t thought of the trouble with small dinghies when we set out with this one, but if we had to do it again we would have gone larger and with a bigger motor for sure.
We rented a car for a couple of days to do the whole tourist thing with Lea. The first day with the car we traveled around the island, first stopping at an amazing bird sanctuary where you can get very close to a variety of different tropical birds. We then went to a nice beach and traveled around a bit more.
On our second day with the car we drove up the island and then took a ferry to Pinel island for the day. Once on the island we left the crowded touristy place and found a nice quiet beach. We spent a good part of the day there snorkeling and napping in the shade. Then we went back to the populated side for drinks and a snack before taking the ferry back.
We spent a few more days hanging out and exploring Sint Maarten, but by this point we were all feeling like we had enough of Sint Maarten. So we decided to stock up on provisions and head out on our next adventure.
We left Sint Maarten on February 16th, and set out for Ille Fourchue which is on the way to St Barths. It was a stunningly beautiful anchorage with a lot of sea turtles.We had a beautiful sunset, but overnight the wind died down and the mooring ball just beat off the boat relentlessly. The next morning we were all exhausted and decided to move along after going ashore to have a quick hike. The hike was spectacular! The views were amazing and the Turks cactus were really beautiful.
