ST. Martin

After 9 years of marriage, and 3 kids, Brian and I finally got to go on our honeymoon.  Well our first honeymoon was a disaster, so we are counting this.  We drove down to Tennessee, left the kids with my Mother in Law and flew out to Saint. Martin.  We chose this island, mainly because Brian wanted to go somewhere that spoke French, and we googled islands in the Caribbean that speak French and this one came up.

The island is half French and half Dutch.  The Dutch half is very touristy, think casino's night clubs, ect.  We spent almost all of our time on the French side, which also caters to tourists, but more for enjoying the island. We stayed in a little bungalow that over looked "Oyster Pond".  It had an outlet to the ocean, and held a lot of yachts.

The first full day we were there we sailing and snorkeling. 

I get motion sick easily, so I took some medicine before hand.  I was able to enjoy myself, even if I didn't really eat much of the prepared lunch.  Brian usually doesn't get sick, so he didn't take anything, but it kind of windy and rocky, so he ended up quite sick by the end.  He was able to enjoy the beginning though.

It was quite pretty sailing around and seeing the island.

We had kind of a funny story.  The boat stopped once and we went snorkeling and swimming. And then it stopped again later and got out this swing that people could swing into the water.  Well it was getting pretty rocky at this point, and Brian was starting to really feel sick and I didn't feel great, so we swam to shore while the other people swung and jumped into the water.  Well this girl kept going and going over and over again.  Then all of the sudden she stopped, so I told Brian we should go back.  We started swimming and they started pulling up the anchor!  They forgot to do a head count and were about to sail off without us.  Fortunately we were close enough to holler at them, before they actually started moving.  They felt really bad.  I was worried there for a minute we were going to be stuck, they had our shoes and our wallet on the boat.  But it all worked out.

The next day we went to the open air market in Marigold.  We got some stuff for the kids, and we bought some fresh food (I will do a post just about the food later).  We also went in a few stores nearby and found Brian some French books, and me a couple of dresses.

We had fun looking at all the creatures on the island. There were 5 foot iguanas wandering around.  There were lots of feral cats and dogs.  There were sheep and goats that just wandered around the island. And there was this awesome hermit crab, that managed to reach all the way up and get Brian while Brian was holding him. 

One day we went to a zip line obstacle course. 

This one ended up being harder than it looked, fortunately some were easier than they looked too.

And here I am ziplining. 

Then we went on their hiking trails.  We hiked to the top of the mountain for this view.

A couple parts were crazy steep on the way up the mountain like this one. 

One day we went parasailing.

We were up really high.

 One of our last days we went kayaked to an little island that was very nearby (20 minutes by kayaking), and went snorkeling there.  There is a little reef there, so there were some fish.  I saw more fish, because Brian couldn't wear his glasses, but he was in charge of the camera because he is the better swimmer.

We also spent lots of time laying on the beach and swimming in the ocean, and walking along the shoreline.  We once walked a mile or so down the shoreline and went exploring on the rocks.  I missed the kids the first couple of days and worried how they would adjust to us being gone. Brian didn't worry about that, but he missed the kids whenever we went to the beach.  As he said you need kids to really have fun in the beach.  Once while I was napping on the sand, he used his hands and feet to dig a huge hole, with a fort around it, I guess so he could feel like he was making a sand castle with the kids.

Well that was our main activities, I will do another post about the food there, and probably some interesting things that we noticed there.