This morning was the first overcast day and I found myself shivering in the morning hours; plus the occasional sneeze and I’m not sure if I’ve somehow managed to catch a cold or just feel an allergy on this side of the island and have acclimated adequately to the local temperatures. I ran the generator and used all that excess power to run the dishwasher, do my sheets in washing machine and make another quarter-tank of water using the watermaker. By the time noon rolled around (which is right now, as I write this) the battery bank is 100% full despite the cloud cover. The internet connection is very sporadic here, I’m using my USB-Stick with a SIM card from the Dutch side and it switched to a local French tower which doesn’t have adequate coverage in this anchorage. I leave for shore in a bit, to rent a car for the day and go to the airport to greet my friends from Germany who are staying ashore in St. Martin for a week.
At 13:00 I walked to the car rental agency and picked up a car for the day so that I could have an easy time getting to the airport. I wasn’t sure if Sascha had rented a vehicle or not, but figured that in a pinch the Getz rental could fit all 5 of us plus luggage. I had seen that the Air France flight was delayed 15 minutes so there was no great hurry getting to the airport. I dropped by Ace Hardware to get the socket for my water heater, but they didn’t carry anything that large and I tried Napa Auto Parts and found what might have been an appropriate socket but it was huge, massive and carried a $40 price tag, so I opted to see if I could solve my problem some other way. Traffic to the airport was the usual mess but I made it there around 14:00 but no Air France was in sight so I continued past the airport to Sunset Beach and parked the car to await the arrival of my friends. The beach was full of people and I got to watch a bunch of hardy souls hang on to the border fence while big jets took off. At 14:30 the flight from France arrived and after they’d successfully landed and taxied to the terminal building I headed to the airport parking lot to await them deplaning, clearing customs & immigration and picking up their luggage. In true island fashion it took a long time but they finally arrived. While they’d brought the first cloudy day and rain with them, the weather was still better than the freezing temperatures that they’d left behind them in Germany.
Although they were visibly beat from the harrowing last-minute race in Paris to catch the flight and then the long transatlantic journey, they were happy to be in the Caribbean. We actually managed to fit all 5 of us plus the luggage into the car and the Getz performed admirably. We went across the Causeway bridge but traffic was very, very heavy so I did a U-turn and we drove through the French lowlands and into Grand Case. They checked into their apartment on the Grand Case beach and we then proceeded to Calmos Café for a happy-hour drink and subsequently took a walk along the beach.
After doing a bit of shopping for necessities they retired for the evening and I spent about 40 minutes looking for a parking space in Grand Case before ending up parking right in front of the locked gate to their accommodations and returned to Zanshin.
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