Please reality check my itenerary for St Maarten

[Shep_Proudfoot]

Hello,

 

Anyone who has been to St Maarten before, can you tell me if this sounds like a reasonable Sunday? (Sunday being why we are skipping Marigot).

 

We have from 8 until 4 (conservatively) available to us. We are thinking of leaving for Orient Beach from the cruise pier about 9, staying for a couple of hours somewhere with available chairs and umbrellas (don't mind not being there at prime time) then grabbing an early lunch somewhere over there about 11:30. We would then cab over to Maho and go to the Driftwood for an hour or so (I think that is what it is called) for drinks and plane watching until 2-2:30. If the food is decent there we would consider eating lunch there as well.

 

We would then cab back to Phillipsburg for some shopping before catching a taxi or water taxi back to the ship by 4. There seems to only be one other ship in port our day so I don't anticipate the horrendous traffic from Maho back to port sometimes reported, but if we were running late we would just take the cab straight back to the ship.

 

Does this sound reasonable, time-wise and availability of cabs, to the experienced? Would it make more sense to get one cabbie for the entire day or just grab cabs when needed?

[owensjro]

This pretty much sounds like what we're planning on our next trip, without the stop at Maho. Saving that for another time.

 

I would recommend you make arrangements with your cab driver on the way to Orient. Ours offered to come back and get us at a specific time. We didn't see many cabs just hanging around Orient after lunch so having one already coming for you might be best.

 

Jim

[gtaylor]

<snip>I would recommend you make arrangements with your cab driver on the way to Orient. Ours offered to come back and get us at a specific time. We didn't see many cabs just hanging around Orient after lunch so having one already coming for you might be best.

 

Jim

 

I wouldn't worry at all about getting a cab from Orient back to P'Burg. They seem to always be available outside of Pedro's.

 

A cab from Orient to Maho might be a different question. That's not one of the normal routes, and you might have to ask around to arrange that combination of rides.

 

gary

[Shep_Proudfoot]

Thank you both for your replies. I will be sure to pre-arrange things with the cabbie-does anyone know if they do the negotiated per-hour thing in St Maarten like many other places?

[kaseyoz]

We were at mariot on xmas day and the stalls were open for business, but you could easily miss this area as there are other things to see.

 

Would you want lunch at 11.30 am if you had a big breakfast on the ship before you left.

We were lucky at maho as a plane was just taking off as we arrived and then saw 3 planes come in including a large jet all within 10 minutes.

 

We checked out the shops at the pier which were all open too.

[Orange reader]

I agree with OwensJRO. Your itenerary is possible but a little hectic You'll need to budget some extra time to A. Get off the ship (just because it docks at 8 doesn't mean you will get off at 8

B. Find a cab

C. Take the water taxi back to the ship

 

I would think you would be much happier if you just picked one beach instead of one Dutch beach and one French beach. If you want to see planes, just go to Maho for the day.

 

Mostly, while shopping in Phillipsburg do not neglect the Belgian chocolate shop on Old Street.

[cruzchik]

Last March we did this same itinerary. We departed the ship and took a taxi to Orient Beach. We made arrangements with our taxi driver to pick us up at a certain time and take us to Maho to see the planes. Again, we set a designated time for the taxi driver to return to Maho to take us to P'burg for shopping. At the end of our day, we took the water taxi back to the pier.

 

We did not get an hourly rate, since the driver left and returned at designated times. We did, however, establish the price per person to each of our destinations before departure.

 

While it was a little tedious keeping a time schedule, we had enough time at each stop to really enjoy our day. We had lunch at Sunset Beach Bar. The food was typical beach bar stuff and the service was adequate. It was quite busy the day we were there.:)

[mdrobtx]

Last Sept we did a 3 hour tour with Joyce Prince 9am till noon. Went to Sunset Beach Bar & Grill to watch the planes from noon till 2:30pm. We met friends there who had asked their taxi driver to meet us back at Maho at 2:30. Traffic was hectic and we made it back to the ship with about an hour to spare. Hope this helps.