Saint Maarten, aka Sin Maartin, aka Sin City. Cast any pictures of deserted white beaches out of your mind. This tiny island is the red-light district of the Caribbean. It prides itself on having a strip club or casino on every street corner. We had left the crazy nightlife of Fort Lauderdale for a place that only differed in the magnitude of its craziness, and in the fact that such debauchery was no longer limited to the night. I found that Saint Maartin was inhabited by two kinds of people; the kind that lost their mind to the depravity and were forced to run for their lives; and the kind that never made it out and now make up part of that depravity.
We arrived to our lodgings on day one. It was a place that made The Bridge look like a day-spa. Hidden away in the depths of some god-forsaken forrest was Sue’s. Our beds had been vacated, we were told, by tourists who had been rushed out due to a mini-pandemic of the deadly Dengue fever! This highly contagious fever was rife in the hostel, and I still don’t know how we survived those few days. After 72 torturous hours we emerged weak, defeated and riddled with Mozi bites (or Chiggas, as we would call them). We checked into a hotel feeling like we had escaped a combat zone. Fortunately we soon found a place at the legendary Smiley’s Crew House- the only place more fabled in the yachting community than
The Bridge. To put things in perspective it was a tiny building with 2 bunk-beds crammed into each room- and we were eternally grateful. This became our base for the next 6 weeks, where we were joined by fresh new recruits from back home who only fuelled the fire that was the Saint Maartin binge.
To paint the picture of this island; it is the meeting point of just about every yacht in the world. What this means is that hundreds of crew from around the world, who have just completed long seasons in the Mediterranean and travelled for weeks at sea now get a chance to unleash back on solid ground. And the island has become well equipped to deal with what this brings. There is a place to go mad on every night of the week. All drinks on the island are half price while the sun shines so that by the time night falls nobody can really walk, let alone make decent decisions. There is the facility to do just about anything you want to on the island, and people go to extremes. Rock concerts, dance parties, theme parties, dock parites. It is easy to lose your mind (and people do). The vibe is so incestuous at times that the only thing you can do to keep from going insane is to drink. At least that was my excuse.
Where the original crew had broken up somewhat, new blood had replaced them and were keeping us stragglers on our toes. Part time work was easy to come by, but so were the cocktails. The males found a way to drink these feminine delights while at the same time dodging the ridicule that accompanied us ordering them. Instead of ordering a Pina Coloda or Strawberry Daiquiri and looking like a complete poof, we found that if you mixed these two together a completely new drink was created with a kick-ass name. “Yeah, I’ll have a Miami Vice.” Shit, it sounds better than ordering a beer. After weeks on the binge, our funds were still breaking even but our bodies were not. I moved into a place free of rent, thanks to Bronwyn and John Bussie Lewis. Here we slept on the floor, spooning in the lounge of Bronwyn’s aunt Margs. She was a celebrity on the island, a South African that had arrived 12 years earlier and failed to escape. She got by on a bottle of Vodka and a pack of smokes a day. She was a legend and looked after me for 6 weeks. In return I had to keep the 7 dogs warm by spooning with them. If I was lucky I would get the little ones in my sleeping bag. Due to Margs’ and her husband Lindsey’s kindness and rent-free accommodation I was able to save enough cash to break free from the island with most of my mind intact. It was time for some sanity. Sarah and I were off to the West Coast- CALIFORNIA!
NB Fact- They sell alcohol at the McDonalds.
