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Day five – Thursday We got up early in the morning for a 7:30am pickup that didn’t arrive until 8am, which gave us enough time to grab some coffee from the coffee shop located in the resort’s mini mall. The taxi bus took us (along with 6 others) to Pelican marina in Simpson Bay to catch our day-long snorkelling excursion to Prickly Pear Cay, about a 1½ hour boat ride from St. Maarten. Our transportation was a sailing catamaran with about 30-40 passengers, there was an open bar on the boat and lunch was served on the island. We spent the beginning of the afternoon on the island exploring the beautiful beach and the coral reef just off shore. The waves were quite strong again, and that along with the numerous visitors made the water murky. We found much of the coral reef had been damaged, with broken coral stems lying about on the ocean floor everywhere we looked. People don’t seem to realize that just by touching the coral they injure it or kill it, that coral is a living organism, not dead rock. It was a very sad sight to see, as compared to the beautiful coral we had seen years before in the Bahamas. |
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The Lambada catamaran |
 Nothing like a Carib at 10:30am |
 Drinks anyone? |
A perfect day at the beach |
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The rum punch was free flowing on the boat as we sailed back to St. Maarten and Katherine enjoyed several of them, while Hank had an opportunity to drive the boat as we journeyed home. It was great to have the taxi take us back to the resort, especially after all of those rum punches! We refreshed ourselves and headed out to Philipsburg for a casual dinner at Taloula Mango’s Caribbean café. We had calamari to start, Hank had pizza and Kath had grilled shrimp and scallop skewers, all very tasty. Unfortunately, there was something wrong with Kath’s supper, as it came up again a few hours later! Thankfully, the effects were minimal and our vacation was not interrupted in any way. |
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Day six – Friday Katherine woke up suffering from a shopping itch, so we decided to head to Marigot to get her some relief. We attempted to find the local museum only to learn it had been closed to be relocated at a future date to a larger facility. We wandered along the marina before settling on the Italian restaurant ‘O Sole Mio for lunch. We enjoyed an amazing lunch (Hank had lasagna with homemade pasta, Kath had a tender steak), had great service, with the appetizer, lunch and dessert all included in one price. Delicious!
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 Time for lunch |
 Lasagna |
 Grilled steak and salad |
 A view of Marigot from the restaurant |
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| We walked off our meal browsing through the various shops in the small but elegant West Indies shopping mall, and then continued on with the boutiques lining the streets of Marigot near the marina. We decided to take the long way back to the resort, driving through Long bay, Mullet bay, Maho bay and Simpson bay before heading back to Little Bay. | |||||||||
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One of the marinas in Marigot |
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| Day five pics | |||||||||
