Dutch Side

How to Find the Guana Bay Hike

American University of the Caribbean, AUC, Caribbean, Expats, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Nature, Saint Martin/ Sint Maarten, Spouses Organization, Uncategorized

The Guana Bay hike is a popular hike on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, but it can be pretty hard to find if you’ve never done it before. To avoid driving endlessly around or scrambling up a frightening hillside of loose rocks, follow these directions and enjoy one of the most beautiful hikes of your life! Here’s how to find the Guana Bay hike in Sint Maarten.

To Find the Guana Bay Hike: 

To get the hike, drive north (counter-clockwise) from Philipsburg. If you’re on Pondfill Road, drive toward the east coast of the island and go north (left) at the freed slave roundabout. Keep driving until you see the sign that says “Guana Bay” on your right. It’s kind of small, so keep your eye out. You’ll turn right at the next right after you spot the sign. The road will take you up a hill, then down and to the coast. You’ll see the beach on your left and the parking lot on your right.

Now, it’s probably good to know that the name “Guana Bay Hike” is a misnomer. The beach on your left is Guana Bay, and the hike does NOT start here. We thought it did the first time we went, because getting lost is apparently just part of hiking for us. It was still fun, but it’s not the trail.

If you’re here, you’re in the wrong place

When you see the beach and the parking lot (aka dirt patch), keep going. You’ll get to the end of the road at a while abandoned house. The trail starts here, going directly toward the coast.


Full-Day Jet Ski Tour in St Martin

The Trail Head: 

Like I said, the trail begins at the end of the road. It goes directly down toward the water, dipping down and passing this weird old garden thing before heading up. This is the path, and you can keep going until the end.

 

This is actually the very first Saint Martin activity that Ben and I did when we first moved here, over a year and a half ago! Our friends Austin and Stephanie took us here to give us a taste of the island life. Here’s a picture of Ben and I way back before we got our Caribbean tans. It’s hard to believe that this island adventure is almost over.

The Path

The Guana Bay path isn’t the kind of thing you want to do in flip-flops or even Chocos, really, although I have done it in Chacos. I also wouldn’t recommend taking little kids past the first couple bays, unless they’re seasoned hikers. I have taken kids to the rocky area and the first bay you reach. That part isn’t too bad.

After the first part, though, you get some narrow trails, steep drops, and straight-up hillsides. The end result, however, is worth it. It takes about an hour to get to the end.

By the way, “X” does not mark the spot when it comes to the Guana Bay Hike in Sint Maarten. Stay away from the old, disintegrated paths marked with a red “X.”

Very steep!


Fly Zone Extreme Adventure at Loterie Farm

Along the Way

Don’t forget to enjoy the treasures you find along the trail! One of my favorite stops is at the boulders. This is fairly early on in the hike. You’ll see all the big, black rocks. Climb down there and explore the tide pools and rocks. This is a great pace for viewing the cays and islands off the coast. The biggest one is St. Barth’s, and the closet cay is Guana Cay.

Another cool place is Geneve Bay, where you can often find pelicans swooping to the waves in search of fish. This is also a great place to hunt for conch shells.

There are also a whole bunch of goats on the path! When I take my dog, Kito, on this hike, she loves to chase them. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I just keep going and she eventually comes back. The first time she went racing after the goats, she was covered in cactus spikes from head to toe when she came limping back. Now she knows about the cactus and stays away.


St-Martin and St Maarten: Sightseeing Tour of the French and Dutch Sides of the Island

The End

The end of the Guana Bay Hike is the very best part! Here, you’ll find a deep natural pool that is protected from the waves. You can swim here, but beware of the urchins! My friend Jay was stung by one pretty badly. Just stay away from the walls and you’ll be fine. This is also a great place for sunbathing.

Beyond the Tide Pool

The Guana Bay Hike is already a pretty long hike if you go all the way to the pools, but if you’re up for more, the path continues. I’ve never been myself, but I believe the trail comes out at Point Blanche.

If you want to find more hikes in Saint Martin, check out my SXM Activities Page or read these posts on the Lovers Beach Hike, the Wilderness Hike, and the Pic Paradis Hike. Subscribe or like the 3rd Culture Wife Facebook Page for more posts on Saint Martin hikes!

Photo creds: Alyssa F. and Austin W

 

Air Show in Sint Maarten

American University of the Caribbean, AUC, Caribbean, Expats, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Saint Martin/ Sint Maarten

Things that go fast never lose their appeal for us. Sure, we may outgrow the toy trucks and die-cast tractors, but real planes? Forever awesome. Every year (starting in 2015), Sint Maarten holds an air show above Great Bay. This year, I took R to the Boardwalk to enjoy the show!

Of course, that was way back in November, but who cares? Better late than never. I couldn’t resist sharing the photos.

The first thing we did was explore the festival on the Boardwalk. Unfortunately, most of the activities were either for adults or younger kids, so R found it kind of boring until the show started. Still, there were some pretty sweet motorcycles because of the biker event that was also happening on the island, and he thought those were cool. So did I, if only for the sheer number of them, even though I seriously could not care less about motorcycles.

The air show started (after much waiting under some palm trees) with parachuters jumping from the planes. They landed not too far from us on the beach, one at a time.

Soon, the planes began to show their stuff. They seemed to fly dangerously close to each other! I think that might have been an illusion of distance and depth, but it’s hard to tell.

 

 

The planes did corkscrews in the air, falling through the air at heart-stopping speeds before leveling out above the bay and flying upward once again.

 

You know, I never thought I was much of an airplane person, but I’m learning how awesome they are! Between Princess Juliana Airport down the street and the airshow in Philipsburg, I just may be addicted to flight.

Stargazing

American University of the Caribbean, AUC, Caribbean, Expats, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Nature, Saint Martin/ Sint Maarten

Island-wide power outages, folks. That’s the way we do life here on Sint Maarten. The power to serve, GEBE? How about “the power to not serve.” “The power to darken an entire island all at once.”

eyes in the dark

It’s become trendy to complain about GEBE and the power problems here on the island, but I actually don’t mind them too much. I guess it’s easy for me to say that since I live in Maho, where we don’t get most of the outages. We’re on the airport grid, and they can’t shut the airport down too often. On Saturday, though, the whole island was down. Black. darkness. No light, except for the occasional building with a generator and one random man rolling down the street on his hooverboard. Despite the darkness, I found a lot to be thankful for.

There wasn’t any point in hanging out inside, and I couldn’t go to bed early since had to go pick up R from his school dance in a couple hours, so I decided to take my dog,  Kito, outside and stargaze for a while. Dang, people, you can see a lot of stars out there when the lights are off! I put down a towel on the grass, lay down on it, and let Kito run around. For all her lack of social graces, Kito is the best fetcher I’ve ever seen. She just drops the ball in my lap, I throw it, and repeat until she drops from exhaustion.

stars in the night sky

Kito and I spent an hour like that. I have an app called SkyView on my phone, which is pretty cool. You hold it up to the sky and it shows you the names of all the celestial bodies and constellations. I really do need to brush up on my Greek mythology, so it was nice to finally take a break from all the usual distractions and just stare at the stars for a while. I could find Cassiopeia and Orion pretty quickly, but I had to re-learn Cygnus, Perseus, and Pisces.

cygnus

After a while, Kito flopped down in the grass beside me. It was so quiet and so dark, just like the rural neighborhood where I lived as a kid. We used to lay out on the trampoline at night, searching out the ancient stories in the sky above. The stars were so bright, just like they were those years ago. It struck me how so much in life changes in such  a few short years, but the stars never change. The sparkling patterns above me were the same ones that the ancient Greeks saw, and even Father Abraham himself tried to count the same glittering specks. Can you imagine how magnificent the stars must look when there is absolutely no artificial light anywhere around? That’s something most of us have never seen that the ancients took for granted. A fiery streak silently sparked through the velvety expanse above. I haven’t seen too many of those in my lifetime, and I felt a sense of being robbed by the ever-present electricity that drowns out the gleam of the night skies.

My musings were cut short by a sudden burst of light. Someone at GEBE had flipped the switch, and the lamp above me suddenly flooded the yard with a warm glow. The magic of the darkness gone, Kito and I packed up and headed upstairs. On the way, I saw TWO centipedes and swore to myself that I’d never lay on the grass at night again. I’m glad I didn’t see those until afterwards, or I would have been sitting on the roof of my car for the whole hour.

tarus

Power outages are no fun, but they really do help you reset your technologically-programmed brain. We’ve only had electric lights for a mere snippet of human history, and people did just fine without them before! I bet they spent a whole lot of time stargazing back then. Like I explained to R later, stargazing was basically antiquity’s version of Netflix. It was the way people used to tell stories, the way we do on a screen now. Sometimes, it’s nice to get back to that. Turn off the modern conveniences and experience entertainment the way our ancestors did.

Here’s a challenge for you: This week, choose a night and stargaze. Download the SkyView app (not a sponsored post, I just think it’s cool) or do your research ahead of time. Learn the stories in the stars, and let your imagination carry you to the top of Mount Olympus. There are so many interesting things to appreciate about the universe– things that even power outages can’t take away.

stargazing

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When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:3-4