There was a “shopping mall” within a block of the pier, and we walked there first. Although it was called a “mall,” it was actually 4 parallel long buildings with shops in each one. We were able to find t-shirts and trinkets, and most importantly: I found a pharmacy for some non-drowsy decongestant. With the last required souvenir shopping out of the way, we took our purchases back to the ship, grabbed some lunch at Deck 5’s Café Promenade, and headed back out to see the island.
We thought that St. Maarten had some steep roads, but compared to St. Thomas, St. Maarten was more like North Dakota! In addition to the steep ups-and-downs and hairpin turns, they drive on the left here. This was not the day to drive ourselves around. The first place on the agenda was Coral World at Coki Beach. We got a “taxi” to take us there. The vast majority of the taxis in St. Thomas are actually big-engine, 4-wheel-drive pickups that have been renovated to carry passengers in the back. Those trucks had no problem getting up the hills, and we could actually see quite well as we went along. At one intersection, a guy was selling coconuts out the back of his truck.
