When someone who rarely takes pictures on his phone brings his trusted advanced-level camera to a place that is not exactly known for sightseeing, the obvious outcome is very limited photographic material.
St-Martin is a lovely island that offers a broad range of beach and water-based activities. Plenty of amazing food options, as well. Away from the beaches and the restaurants, minor points of interest marked on the map as “tourist attractions” do exist here and there, but if someone like me, who can barely stand staying beach-bound for any prolonged period of time, doesn’t carve out time to go and see them, I doubt many other people would.
Our stay on St-Martin in December was by far the laziest vacation in a decade, and I only carried the camera with me on three distinct occasions. One of those was a day sail along the southern coast, so here are a few coastal pictures of Philipsburg and other parts of Sint-Maarten, the Dutch half of the island.
Fort Amsterdam, a 17th-century defensive outpost, is one of the minor points of interest.
In the distance, you can see St-Barts.
The colorful beach of Grande Case, with buildings standing directly at the edge of the sandy shore, deserved to be photographed, even as I did not have my trusted camera with me. On a gorgeous sunny day, phone-taken snapshots come out well enough to pass my quality controls.
There are quite a few fun-to-look-at buildings in different states of upkeep along the Grande Case Beach.
A tour around the western part of the island in a UTV afforded me another, if rather sparse, opportunity for sightseeing photography. The itinerary included only three stops, the last of which was for drinks on the beach. Before that, we went to a place colloquially known as “Moses Walk”, where a shallow – below the knee – channel separates the main island from a tiny islet.
We also stopped at a prime spot for observing iguanas along an inner bay called Étang aux Poissons (literally “Fish Pond”).
A couple of perspectives of the edge of the village of Quartier d’Orleans across the pond.
The last time that I carried the camera with me while on St-Martin was for a sunset cruise, which more or less followed the same route off the southern coast of Sint-Maarten as the previously mentioned day sail. The lens was pointed in the direction of the setting sun much more than in the direction of the coast.
The volume and nature of these photographic glimpses may not clearly reflect that, but we absolutely loved our time on St-Martin.