this video was made for the Caribbean Foundation for Sustainability
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Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
what's wrong with St. Martin?
For a long time now I've been trying to gather my thoughts and succinctly explain what my feelings about St. Martin were and why they tended more towards the negative than the positive. Every time I meet someone who hears for the first time where we lived and that we were not as thrilled about the experience as honeymooners usually are about being in the Caribbean, I realise how little people outside the Caribbean know about its reality. I think that through this blog and through conversations I've head I've managed to astonish quite a few people.
But to astonish them was not the point. I was under the impression that many of these people thought I was just ungrateful for the 'fortune' of an experience in the tropics, or worse, that I am just a difficultly satisfied spoiled snobby westerner - even if I'm not a westerner;) So I hope it is clear to all, I did not complain about St. Martin because I'm thankless or because it sounds cool to say a desired and unreachable for many place sucks.
I would love to have triggered a thought provoking process with all the negative SXM aspects I drew attention to. This is probably not the last post on the topic. I still feel there's so much more I can say about the reality of the island and that somehow this will at one point translate to someone's positive doing and 'fixing' of the 'wrong'. I just don't know how to link the 2 yet. I feel I have to spread the word about what I learned there, what I saw, what I experienced. SXM is not a paradise. It is a ruined paradise; ruined by people, people who wanted to exploit the paradise without any consideration for it's fragility, for its limits, for the irreversibility of certain actions or for the costs of trying to restore balance, or for the natural, social and economic side effects of certain activities. To use a popular term, there was never an impact assessment done, or if there was, it was ignored.
SXM is a place out of control in many aspects. The best illustration to this statement is a video uploaded to the following link of a local SXM ngo, (Caribbean Foundation for Sustainability) with which I was involved while living there. First 40 seconds show you the paradise you expect to see, later you see the reality the island is made to endure. The second half of the video is what shocked me at arrival and what kept impacting me all along my stay.
Notwithstanding the state of affairs, there are plenty of great civil society actions under way in St. Martin. It is not a forgotten by God place, but the ones who care and want to fix or restore seem to be outnumbered by the ones who keep not caring. It was really a difficult place to live and to accept it all, especially the not caring.
But to astonish them was not the point. I was under the impression that many of these people thought I was just ungrateful for the 'fortune' of an experience in the tropics, or worse, that I am just a difficultly satisfied spoiled snobby westerner - even if I'm not a westerner;) So I hope it is clear to all, I did not complain about St. Martin because I'm thankless or because it sounds cool to say a desired and unreachable for many place sucks.
I would love to have triggered a thought provoking process with all the negative SXM aspects I drew attention to. This is probably not the last post on the topic. I still feel there's so much more I can say about the reality of the island and that somehow this will at one point translate to someone's positive doing and 'fixing' of the 'wrong'. I just don't know how to link the 2 yet. I feel I have to spread the word about what I learned there, what I saw, what I experienced. SXM is not a paradise. It is a ruined paradise; ruined by people, people who wanted to exploit the paradise without any consideration for it's fragility, for its limits, for the irreversibility of certain actions or for the costs of trying to restore balance, or for the natural, social and economic side effects of certain activities. To use a popular term, there was never an impact assessment done, or if there was, it was ignored.
SXM is a place out of control in many aspects. The best illustration to this statement is a video uploaded to the following link of a local SXM ngo, (Caribbean Foundation for Sustainability) with which I was involved while living there. First 40 seconds show you the paradise you expect to see, later you see the reality the island is made to endure. The second half of the video is what shocked me at arrival and what kept impacting me all along my stay.
Notwithstanding the state of affairs, there are plenty of great civil society actions under way in St. Martin. It is not a forgotten by God place, but the ones who care and want to fix or restore seem to be outnumbered by the ones who keep not caring. It was really a difficult place to live and to accept it all, especially the not caring.
some sunrise now, since the sunset was so popular:D
These pictures were taken from the lookout at the hill of Orient Bay at 6.30 am about 3 weeks ago. We had an early flight to catch and one of the few good things about getting up so early was witnessing this great sunrise:) If you click on the picture to see it larger you'll notice how nicely St.Barths is lit with the morning rays:) hotel I loved
I feel I need to clarify, as perhaps my previous post lead to a misunderstanding. I have unfortunately put together my appreciation for St. Barth and disappointment for region's hotels in one post, possibly leading readers to a conclusion that I disliked our hotel in St. Barth. I loved it! I would recommend it to anyone. Picturesque, quiet, tidy, orderly with manicured gardens. The kindest service I can remember, just the right balance of politeness and non formality; I usually find people who are either excessive in their hotel service manner, reminding servitude times or people who give the sensation of just hating their job and taking it out on me haha). Our St. Barth hotel also gave no sensation of an overwhelming large construction or mass tourism ambience. It was a perfect place to stay, relax, sun bathe, eat and just enjoy the beautiful surroundings. I hope we go back. Le Guanahani & Spa Hotel deserves some propaganda:
[all pictures via leguanahani com]
great things about St. Martin
One of the greatest things about St. Martin is being so close to St. Barth. I don't mean this with any irony, I sincerely am glad living here has allowed me to do some travel in this region, which living in Europe allows much less. Of course Europeans travel to the Caribbean, but it's always so far and takes so long to get to, people most often find valid reasons for a vacation closer to the Old Continent, or at least a destination better connected, where arrival to does not mean loosing a whole day of our precious holiday. Lastly the flight cost has an impact, making vacationing to the Caribbean an idea easy to substitute by equally beautiful regions somewhere closer.
Speaking of costs, it's not just the travel that is expensive, getting a decent accommodation in the Caribbean is much more expensive then anywhere in Europe. Most densely visited destinations in Europe offer a plethora of lodging options, from B&B and aparthotels, through motels and hostels, chain hotels of all quality standards, to boutique hotels which exceed in satisfying clients' needs. All these solutions come with an adequate and expected price tag. So you know up front what you'll get for what you pay. Hostels and B&B can be very affordable , even to the student on a budget, yet they don't have to be repelling, dirty and smelly just because they cost 10 times less then a good hotel. No one will pamper you there, but you'll spend a comfortable night in warm and decent conditions. Best European hotels will charge far more, but will also offer far beyond what you need to praise them. Most importantly, there's a whole spectrum of solutions in between, which always seem to have a price tag which proportionally decreases or increases with the quality you find within.
From what I've seen so far in the Caribbean things are different. There seem to be 2 polarised ends and very little in between. The extremes are not the same as the European ones though. Here it seems a 6 (on a scale of 1 to 10) in decency hotel requires a 9 price tag. Spoiled by European standards, I'm expecting pampering for a price tag of 9; here I get just plain old OK, with some defects often on the service side.
My biggest disillusion are not the more expensive places which turn out not to exceed my needs, it's the lower end places which, personally I believe, have an approach: since you don't pay a lot you deserve to be punished with bad service haha. Long story short, lodging is much more diversified in Europe, much more adapted to the different budgets and most of all prices allow to create right expectations; stressing the fact that low prices need not mean unpleasant experience; plenty of economy solutions cut your costs without cutting your experience. I have this unsettling feeling that in the Caribbean you have a choice of either being very unhappy in a crappy place or draining your wallet, because that is the only next echelon after crappy:(
Although I only know this now, and these were not obstacles to my travelling here in the past, I believe these may be the obstacles stopping so many Europeans, knowing that value for money, they end up losing travelling so far. I don't want to repeat after everyone else, but what counts more in a time of crisis, than value for money...
Long introduction behind me, I'll move to what I wanted this post to be about. I just needed to get those hotel uneasy feelings off my chest, although the topic has not been exhausted;)
One of the greatest things about living on St. Martin was discovering St. Barth. The island amazed me. Having so much in common with St. Martin in terms of nature (although substantially more differentiated in elevation) it shocked me with how different a feeling it gave me.
The orderliness we were greeted by, the kindness of the taxi driver, the cleanliness of his car. I could not believe my eyes. I once heard that the sophistication and development of a society can be judged by how it deals with prostitution; those first 15 minutes driving through St. Barth made me think, you can judge a society on how clean are their dumpsters. Driving culture and just regular people street politeness impressed us immensely. I was having a dissonance thinking, this could not be the Caribbean and at the same time feeling, but this IS the Caribbean, the paradise on earth I visualised before ever setting foot in the region haha.
We know it can't be perfect. Not all that shines is gold, plus we know the downside of small, orderly and beautiful corners of this world, after all, Monaco was like that as well:) Yet the great impression the island made on us has not worn off yet. I'll gladly travel more in the region and I'll come with an open mind to all places, but something tells me I might not find a second St Barth reality anywhere close. If anyone planning a trip is reading this and is hesitant if to include SBH in the their trip, trust me, there's nothing like it, especially if American style resorts are not your thing and if you like to get out and discover true island living, rather than sipping an invented-for-the-sake-of-tourists-cocktail in a freezing over air-conditioned casino full of people in white sneakers, go to St. Barth!
Living in Europe we'd likely decide to visit St. Barth only maybe after kids were university age;) Without direct flights, or without any big plane landing there at all, I'd probably see getting there too much hassle, especially if I'd know a bit of the Caribbean already and expect all of it to be pretty similar, I just wouldn't put the extra effort. Living in St. Martin, made it an easy and obvious destination. We got to see a different side of the Caribbean, not a cleaned up resort area for the tourist, but a a whole beautiful island, clean for everyone who lives there or comes to visit. aaa...
[all pictures from St. Barth]
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