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St Maarten - Explorer Cruise & Grand Island Drive
We Had pre-booked the Explorer Cruise and Grand Island Tour. When we booked this tour on line it was scheduled for 8:15 with the land portion being first followed by the cruise. We did a similar tour back in the 80's and 90's and thoroughly enjoyed them. On the morning of the tour we were notified that the time had been changed to 9:30. The majority of us queued up in line by 9:10. The last 2 people showed up at 9:40 -- there only 43 of us and our tour began at 9:50. Since we were leaving it was decided that we would do the drive over to Marigot first and then the cruise since most of the shops there are closed from noon to 3. Along the road to Marigot we stopped at an overlook to view Orient Beach. Once we got to Marigot we were taken to the double decker catamaran where we could use the facilities and get some rum drinks. Instead a rum punch we chose to have rum and diet coke. Then we had 1 1/4 to tour the streets and shops. We noticed that along the waterway there are a lot more restaurants than when we were here years ago. And the number of sophisticated shops has gone down. As our catamaran left the Marina Royale we were given some information about the area. After that we had a singer and calypso music for the better part of the 1 hour cruise. Some people really took advantage of the free rum drinks. We each had a total of 2 rum and diet coke drinks. The Simpson Bay Lagoon area has really grown - tons of multi-million dollar homs and condo along the water's edge. Tall condo are spinging up everywhere. On our way back to the Dutch side we passed the world famous Mullet Bay Golf Course. Traffic was bad in Marigot and even worse when we left the catamaran on the Dutch side to head back to the ship. We were dropped off at the pier entrance at 2:10 and all aboard was 2:30 - no time to spend looking at anything in any of the shops.
Had this tour began at 8:15 we would have had at least an hour to browse the shops.
Cost of the tour $59 per person -- reasonable.
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St Maarten - Explorer Cruise & Grand Island Drive
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