This was our first time in St Maarten. We gathered ideas from the cruise forum and decided we would explore this place on our own by using the taxi service there. We decided to head to Orient Beach in the morning and spend the day. Then we would head to Maho Beach and watch the "famous" planes come in for the second half of the day.

We arrived at St Maarten as scheduled.

The taxi cab station was a short walk from the port where you sat down according to the “signs” they had on it as to where you wanted to go. Taxi’s where there waiting and pulling in and out with not much of a wait. 

Off to Orient Beach we went. Our trip cost us $18 to get there.

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I have to say that the island was ok, but not like I had pictured it (like a piece of paradise). We were dropped off at Pedro’s place and decided to walk to the right toward the ‘nude” part of the beach. We only encountered a handful of nude sunbathers and a nude man walking along the beach. People were right about the “scenery” there…we didn’t encounter any “hot bodies” running around and the closest girl I seen with a decent body had a thong bathing suit on and a top on. Then you have the two 300+ pound ladies baring it all. It was interesting to say the least, but didn’t bother me one bit. My hubby always said "If we didn't have the kids around us all the time, I would walk around nude". Well, this was his chance...and he chickened out. Oh well. We walked all the way to the end where it started to get rocky. The beach itself was ok, but not the paradise beach I had imagined. 

Off in the distance, it looked like the water was pretty rough and crashing over some rocks. I was just glad it wasn't too bad up at the shore.

We walked back down close to where we had came in and just a little further and decided we would put our stuff there. There really wasn’t a need to rent chairs because we had planned on staying in the water most of the time. We encountered a few small fish in the water, but there were no reefs anywhere, so not much to write home about. The beach was not crowded at all. There were some older ladies topless on this side as well walking around and laying in the beach chairs. So you will encounter nudity even in the non-nude areas.

We enjoyed the water and just floating around.

We did see a jelly fish and I tried hard to capture a picture of it. Since the water was very wavy, it really wasn't clear enough to see much

There were 2 dogs running loose everywhere on the beach and my husband LOVES animals so he made friends quickly with them.

About 11am we decided to head over to Maho Beach to watch the planes come in. We wrote Sakari a message in the sand prior to leaving and then caught a cab over to Maho.