St. Maarten - Diving and Dining

Ready to Dive

While we were in the Virgin Islands we spoke with a couple friends on other boats who have their own scuba gear on board. After spending over $200 to dive the Rhone with a dive shop we realized we'd have a pretty quick ROI if we bought our own equipment. So here in duty-free St. Maarten we've been investigating prices and brands, trying to figure out what we should buy. We headed to the scuba shop and bought everything we'll need except the tanks. We figure somewhere down the road we'll be able to find some used tanks for sale, and the next two islands we want to go to (Saba & St. Eustatius) require you to dive with a guide anyhow so we can just rent the tanks when we get there. Having bought all the gear we rented a couple of tanks and decided to try it out on a very shallow wreck in Simpson Bay. With all our gear set up and loaded into the dinghy, we set off into the bay looking for the buoy marking the wreck of Tugboat Annie. I was up in the bow scanning the water and not seeing any kind of buoy marking; we were worried we wouldn't be able to find it (the clerk at the store gave us a blank look -- she'd never heard of the site). I pointed out a piece of garbage floating in the water, one of those one liter water bottles, and Kevin realized it was tied to something. Sure enough we could see a big dark shadow under the water so it had to be the wreck. It turned out to be a pretty decent dive -- the wreck was resting right side up and there was a swim-through passage through the pilot house. A huge stingray swam around the wreck, keeping an eye on us while we dove, and we saw a little eel peeking out of his home in a piece of pipe. So even though it was a pretty shallow dive (only 20 feet) we had a good time, and it was nice to know that all the equipment worked properly.

In the evening we decided to give the French side another try. We got to Marigot and decided to take a jitney bus over to Grand Case, which Lonely Planet bills as "the gourmet capital of the Caribbean". How could we pass that up? Walking down the main street in Grand Case we could see how the place had earned its nickname. Almost every restaurant was right on the beach with a great view of the ocean and there were places serving everything from West Indian cuisine (barbecue with peas and rice) to fine Italian and French dining. We decided to splurge on one of the really well-reviewed pricier French places: L'Hibiscus. We were one of three American couples there and it was funny to watch the other two couples arrive. Both of them threw our French waitress for a loop: the first couple brought their two year old and were disappointed that the restaurant didn't have a high chair or kids' menu and the wife of the second couple announced that she was lactose intolerant and did the restaurant serve anything without a cream sauce. The waitress got confused and thought the lady specifically requested to eat something with dairy and started listing all the dishes that had cream and butter in them. Meanwhile our appetizer arrived and only in a fancy French restaurant can you order a $10 shrimp appetizer and get only two shrimp. But what an appetizer! First of all, it looked amazing -- the chef had wrapped the shrimp in vermicelli and flash-fried it so that it stuck straight up in the air like a delicate sculpture of pasta (I'll post a photo when we have internet access). And more importantly, it tasted fantastic. As did everything we ordered; Kevin had the roast duck with mango sauce and I had the beef filet with gorgonzola. It was a heavenly meal and a nice dining experience for us considering that the other night I made grilled cheese and baked beans, or as I call it "frommage grillee avec legumes de Boston".