Without Warning: Not the Toilet Paper Guy

We made arrangements to travel to St. Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles once school ended. But our arrangements didn't include a massive sinus infection. A week before departure, my wife started coughing and sneezing and nursing serious sinus headaches.

Our flight was scheduled for Saturday, but we rescheduled my wife's departure for Monday to give her time to recover. That cost an extra $200. And there's no guarantee she'll feel well enough to travel.

So my daughter and I left the house at 3:30am on Saturday morning. We drove exactly six tenths of a mile and were pulled over by the police. The officer walked up to the car, looked at me and my daughter, and said, "Obviously you're not the toilet paper guy." She explained that someone had TP'ed a house in my neighborhood that night, and she was lurking, waiting for the perps to drive by.

Eventually, we made it to the airport, flew to Philadelphia, changed planes, and flew to St. Maarten. It was a ridiculous distance to fly, considering that we live in Florida, but it was the cheapest route we could find.

We took a cab to the resort, and the cabbie was listening to loud American country music. My daughter plugged her MP3 player into her ears as a defensive move, and turned it up all the way.

The resort is perched on the knob of a hill overlooking the entrance to Simpson Bay. There's a nice view from our balcony.

Those canister things on the unit below us are solar water heaters, and they work really well. I asked the cabbie on the way over when is the rainy season in St. Maarten, and she said, "September." That's it, one month. So they get plenty of sun here.

But this view comes at a price. We're on the second floor. There's an elevator, but in typical island fashion, it's broken, and there's no concept of when it might be fixed. My ancient knees aren't used to climbing stairs in ranch-house Florida. Worse, getting to the beach is easy. Getting back is brutal.

Here are a couple of pictures of the beach:

I snorkled along that little breakwater and saw lots of Blue Tang and Sergeant Major fish, as well as sea urchins the size of soccer balls.

Everywhere around the resort are unobtrusive security cameras swivelling inside little glass housings, watching people come and go.