St. Maarten Part 2 - Orient Beach

We arrived on the French beach after an amusing ride up and down the hills of St. Maarten. Photo regret #5 ish - I didn't take any pictures from the bus ride. Our guide was nice & funny and of course had the standard tour guide jokes. She did a good job watching out for us at the beach.

I think I mentioned Bruce picked out this excursion with the cruise office. It was wonderful. We had a reserved section on this marvelous beach with free chairs & beach umbrellas. You only had to pay these cute French "beach boys" $3 to use the beach umbrella. I real bargin compared to other cruise extras. We got a free punch drink upon arrival and a free lunch.

Here Bruce & the kids toast to the beach with their punch drinks:
Mom (aka camera lady) toasting with my punch. I didn't add rum to mine cause Mom warned me it will knock you out & you'll nap away your beach time. Bruce asked for rum & got a pretty good poor but he did fine.

Megan assumed the position - tanning! She did come play in the waves with us too. These chairs were so cushy I could have slept on them at night.

I just noticed I didn't get any beach ladies in our pictures. These women would swarm you & try to braid your hair or sell you stuff. Carly (our tour guide) warned us about them & she would shoo them away if they got too pesky. I just got used to saying no thank you as soon as they headed my way.

Best part about this beach was big, fun waves. We played in them all day.

This beach was really neat. The pictures don't do it justice but I tried. Some of these are with the water camera so they aren't great.

This beach had another interesting aspect - it was topless, kind of. Some women (middle age ones) were walking around topless. Ryan thought this was very odd - so did the rest of us. The tour guide warned us that part of the beach was nude. Bruce & I walked the beach and did find the icky nudist part. It was at the far end so at least the kids didn't see it. We turned on our heel and headed in the other direction.

St. Maarten beach pictures finish tomorow since there were too many for one post.