In the United States there is a low tolerance for risk to human safety, so it’s unusual that you find yourself in a situation that feels dangerous. When people from the States then travel to other countries, often they’re surprised at how different things are in those places, and how frequently they come across situations that would never be allowed to exist in America. The examples include things like busy streets without crosswalks, people jumping on moving trains, staircases that aren’t lit, sidewalks that disappear and force people onto the street, enormous unmarked potholes, absence of fencing or warning signs near cliffs, etc. The burden of ensuring your own safety in many places rests with you the individual, not the government, and an American traveler would be well advised to abandon the deeply engrained idea that things everywhere are generally safe because the government has made sure it is so.

We’re now on the island of St. Martin / Sint Maarten – it has two names because the northern half is French territory (St. Martin) while the southern is part of the Netherlands (Sint Maarten). Like most of the visitors here we’ve been attracted to the Dutch part of the island because it’s where all the fun is happening – big beach resorts, trendy beach bars, casinos, etc. It’s also home of Maho Beach, which sits just below the final approach of the Princess Juliana International Airport, meaning big passenger jets come flying by just a few feet overhead in a most bizarre beach scene. When big planes take off, tourists stand in the path of the jet blast and try to stop from getting blown backwards into the big surf crashing on the beach behind. The beach bars on both ends make sure the whole place takes on a party-like environment, and the result is one of the most popular and peculiar scenes in the Caribbean, albeit not free of risk for the more adventurous thrill-seekers. If Maho Beach was located on one of the US’s Caribbean islands, the beach would be enclosed by a barbed wire fence and guarded with 24 hour surveillance – any curious fence jumpers would be arrested. Whether situations like these should be permitted is all a matter of perspective, but one thing that’s for sure is that we’ll take the beach party over the barbed wire fence any day.

The French part of the island, St. Martin, is rather boring by comparison with a lack of good beaches, no nightlife, just good baguettes… and that’s not good enough for a Caribbean island in our opinion. It’s funny how the tourist books will always make every place sound fascinating and unique – if we were writing a tourist book about the French half, we’d just say “skip it” and save everybody some time.

We need an early start tomorrow because we have to make it to Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands by sunset tomorrow night – an 80 mile sail. If we’re late we’ll miss our sundowner Bahama Mama, and that’s something we won’t let happen.