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A Tale Of Three Cultures, Twe Passports And One Island by Mary Jane Kolassa
The isle is St. Maarten, or as others call it, St. Martin, and it rises green from the coral-blue sea. After growing pains in the 1960s and 1970s, when the hotel room inventory shot up on the popular Dutch side alone from 200 to 3,000-plus, the island has been settling in to do what it does best: entertaining the tourists. For instance, enhancements. The Dutch government looks to expanding Princess Juliana International Airport, improving the port's docking and other services for a growing collection of cruise ships, and putting finishing touches on the best freeport shopping in the Caribbean. And perhaps most importantly, among the enhancements is hotel-restaurant training for the people of St. Maarten/St. Martin themselves -- training for the role that Mother Nature and the confrontation of empires conspired over centuries to ordain. "Travel agents find it easy to sell our island because of its cosmopolitan nature," says island Tourism Commissioner Theo Heyliger. "The combination of shopping, cuisine and the number of day-trips people can make to nearby islands from here is quite appealing. Tourism here is covered by five words: service, service, service, service and service. We need to polish what we have and get it out to the people on a silver platter." In the process, St. Maarten/St. Martin may well find new ways of enjoying and exploiting its single most unusual selling point. Its combined 37 square miles of Dutch and French turf make it the only island in the Caribbean shared not by a succession of great powers but by two at the same time. And this arrangement has flourished for over 350 years! One Island, Many Faces
The French side is French-squared, from the "bleu, blanc et rouge" of the flags billowing on every terrace to the gendarmes imported from Paris. Yet for all these differences, there is nary a border between the two -- just a sign on a mountain road that curves above a sun-struck bay. Encountering the Dutch and French cultures side by side, along with a third culture they helped form over the decades -- Afro-Caribbean -- makes both St. Maarten and St. Martin an unmatched destination for drinking in the subtleties of history, conquest and human frailty behind the shimmering vision of tropical paradise. Much Blessed Island
In the years since the 1648 Dutch-French accord that halved the island, it has been the pleasure of succeeding waves of visitors and exploiters to revel in St. Maarten's/St. Martin's beauty. In recent years, the reveling has steadily grown, with the Dutch side to the south growing first, followed by the French to the north. Add to this growth the fact that St. Maarten/St. Martin is also the busy air and sea hub for a host of nearby islands: French St. Bart's, Dutch Saba and St. Eustatius, British Anguilla and St. Kitts/Nevis.
It is worth noting that prices are so alluring here that St. Maarten/St. Martin has become a shopping mall for islanders across the Caribbean. They join the usual array of sun-red cruise passengers and tanned hotel guests hunting for and finally striking a bargain. One additional tribute to the island's pride of place is the growth of classy boutique strips away from the center of island life. Into the night, long after Front Street's Amsterdam-style arcades have shut down, commerce continues on the island's southwest corner in stylish spaces such as Maho, surrounded by what must be the Caribbean's most cosmopolitan melange of hotels, condos, restaurants, cafes, casinos and clubs. Dining on St. Maarten/St. Martin increasingly justifies the island's claim to being the Caribbean's culinary capital. In addition to the explosion of haute and nouvelle French cuisine, there are hotel and free-standing dining rooms to satisfy every taste. Philipsburg serves up the best cuisine from all over the world with a variety of restaurants featuring French, Italian, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian fare. Even American brand-name pizza, burgers and chicken have put in a recent appearance, especially popular among cruise passengers made desperate by day after day of gourmet gorging. In every corner of St. Maarten today, the favorite word is "infrastructure," and the local feeling is cautious optimism. Like operators of any successful business that has experienced rapid growth, the government and all segments of the tourism community are looking to consolidate gains, improve physical plants and upgrade services. Unique Island "St. Maarten is unique," observes Marc van de Bilt, executive director of the island's hotel and tourism association. "There is no other island in the Caribbean about which we can say, "We're like they were five years ago, or 10 years ago." With more than a million visitors each year now -- and plenty of room, at long last, for that number to grow -- St. Maarten/St. Martin hosts visitors from the far-flung corners of the earth. But the island looks with special fondness to its best friend for more than two centuries, the United States. For more information about St. Maarten/St. Martin, visit their web site: http://www.st-maarten.com.
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On this lush Caribbean isle of two passports, three cultures and 77
nationalities, there are casinos (12 of them), bedazzling beaches (37 bedazzling
beaches!), and restaurants (300, believe it or not). So everyone
here seems to agree on one thing: tourism is the precious gold that will
lure a new generation of Columbuses from near and far.
The two sides of the island are as different as north and south, perhaps
as different as night and day. The Dutch side is a tribute to a global
empire few in this hemisphere even recall: the adventurers who left the
Netherlands to tame not only the Caribbean but also lands as distant as
Indonesia. Their trade was among the world's most sophisticated,
a legacy experienced today both in the shops along the capital city of
Philipsburg's Front Street and in the dizzying tangle of cuisines served
in its restaurants.
Dutch St. Maarten and French St. Martin are both, of course, the legacy
of a single piece of much-blessed land. The island was inhabited,
before the eyes of Europe fell upon it, by a succession of Indians from
South America. First came the peaceful Arawaks, then the cruel and
cannibalistic Caribs. According to the island's unusual mix of history,
legend and lore, Columbus spotted its green wonderment on Nov. 11, 1493
-- the feast day of Spain's beloved St. Martin of Tours. And so,
St. Martin (or perhaps San Martino, in the mother tongue of the Genovese
admiral) the island became.
For travelers today, the end result is an excitable, varied and rich
experience of St. Maarten/St. Martin past, present and to come.
Its beaches, led off by glorious Mullet Bay, Cupecoy and Dawn, remain uncrowded
nearly every month of the year. That's an advantage of having so
many exquisite stretches of sand. The island's casinos are unobtrusive
in the European mold, offering gaming fun to those who wish it without
imposing it in any way on those who don't. Shopping, traditionally
concentrated along Front Street, is the envy of the Caribbean. Jewelry,
electronics and fine linens are the big-savings buys, along with a colorful
collection of island arts and crafts.