All ready to board the next plane out, I was quickly brought back down to earth with a list of “documents” I needed prior to departing.  I needed: a birth certificate, marriage certificate (or non-marriage certificate, whatever that is), divorce decree (if applicable - as it was for me), police report, and a letter from a physician stating that I was in good health. Seemed like a time consuming task, yet do-able.  But wait.  The first three of these documents also needed something called the Apostil Seal. For me this meant two states, seven government agencies and 500 miles. I wasn’t even going to wait for FedEx!  But none of this ordeal dampened my spirits, especially when I announced loudly enough for the waiting line behind me to hear, that the purpose for my request was a JOB in the Caribbean! 

Fast forward through selling 80% of my possessions, home, business, car etc., and assuring my kids (grown and on their own) that they could always get me through email.  As fate would have it there was a firm blanket of snow on Boston, Massachusetts, when I boarded the plane for my journey.  Arriving in St. Maarten on the 1st of February (I had by then learned there is BOTH a French St. Martin and a Dutch St. Maarten on this island) I was greeted with a bone thawing 84F degrees. The sea was turquoise, the sunshine yellow and I was in paradise.  I knew no one.  I had never been here before.  But I was home.
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The biggest industry on this island, not surprisingly, is tourism, and the resort I was employed by was to provide me with my first months lodging until I got settled into a place of my own.  After seeing the resort itself, and staying there the first night of my arrival, I was feeling on top of the world.  The next day I was more on the top of a hill, and my expectations had a rude awakening.  Through no fault of my employing company, I found myself in a 300 sq. ft. studio apartment with no hot water, a door that didn’t lock and screens that didn’t begin to keep out dive bombing mosquitoes!  The apartment was so small that the toilet was in a “closet” on one side of the bed while the sink and shower were on the other side.  And the toilet leaked. And the neighborhood didn’t quiet down until 2 am.  But still, I was in paradise.  All of this was remedied within the next couple of weeks when I found a beautiful one bedroom condo on the east side of the island complete with fuschia, bougainvillea and a patio that faced the sea and St. Barts.  The studio apartment with leaky toilet just seemed a distant memory.

Things continued to fall into place with the purchase of a really sweet Suzuki Grand Vitara SUV complete with four wheel drive….lots of chances to hit dirt roads on St. Maarten.  But even the buying process was foreign.  In the US we are pretty used to going to a car dealership and asking to see the used cars.  Well, not so here.  New car dealerships don’t have used car lots.  They don’t even take trade-ins!  But the sales people are obliged, as part of customer service, to help their new car buyers resell their old vehicles in a private sale.  This meant I had to go from dealership to dealership to find a sales person who knew of a past customer still trying to sell their car.  Then, of course, I had to pay cash.  Cash being the operative word here.  It’s not a simple matter to get a bank account.  First of all you need documents (that word again!) including a letter from a former bank, proof of residency and working papers (sight of a passport goes without saying).  So funding for my little 4 x 4 came from two credit card advances, stash I brought with me, and a Western Union transfer initiated by my son in Boston!! 

I have been calling St. Maarten home for over a year now.  Since St. Maarten (the Dutch part of the island) is a duty free port, and since so many US tourists flock to the island, I am spoilt and can buy basically anything I could in the states.  My rent is on par with living on Cape Cod, only I wouldn’t have an ocean view there.  Water and electricity are not included in the rents, but by taking Caribbean showers (don’t let the water keep running – wet, soap, rinse) and by not using AC (I found a place with wonderful breezes) my monthly living expense comes to around $880.  For those with any kind of vice the beer is cheaper than water, cigarettes are $1.15 per pack, and there are a dozen or so casinos;  oh, and brothels are a legal business!  The supermarkets on the Dutch side are all priced in guilders so when they convert the total at the register (.55 guilders = $1) you feel like you’ve saved a bundle!  Gasoline is a bit on the expensive side, with the best prices in French St. Martin where you can get a favourable exchange of one dollar equal to one euro making it $.83 per liter ($3.15 per gallon).  With current gas prices in the US, that actually isn’t too bad.  Plus this is a 36 sq. mile island and my commute is about five miles from one side to the other! 

Besides the beautiful beaches and tropical weather, I have found St. Maarten/St. Martin’s greatest resource to be its people.  The cultural diversity on this tiny spot of land is huge which may very well lend to the fact that there are over 200 restaurants.  There are folks from Holland, France, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and representation from every other Caribbean island, Guyana, Surinam, Venezuela, the UK, Australia, South Africa, the Middle East, China, Canada, and the US.  The predominate languages are English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Papiamento. 

These are people who love life.  Most have come to St. Maarten/St. Martin for reasons they don’t even remember and have just ended up staying.  And everyone accepts each other’s remarkable differences.  I feel both at home and in a whole new adventure every day.  Whoever wrote that New York, New York slogan “a place so nice they named it twice” could certainly say the same about St. Maarten/St. Martin.