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St. Maarten, N.A.:

• Galion Beach, nicknamed "Baby Beach", is quite kid-friendly, and also quite beautiful. The water stays shallow far out to sea, so the coastline stays calm. The sand is perfect for building castles.
• Oddly enough, a short jaunt over the rocks that line one edge of Galion, there's a beach covered in porous volcanic rocks and weird plants that crop up through the rocks. The water is very rough here, too. It's the exact opposite of its neighbor.
• These strange orange vines grow in many of the wilder areas of the islands. I think they look like shredded carrots on a cactus salad.
• This field, as you can see, contains a big wall from an old plantation house and much of the vegetation is overgrown. Sometimes cows and goats graze here (hence this cow skull posted on the fence) and, believe it or not a local rugby team practices here sometimes!
• In case you hadn't noticed, I like taking pictures of doorways, arches, architecture in general, and flora (see below).
• Some of the fauna at the Zoo, also known as St. Maarten Park: this toucan posed for me; I love the scarlet ibis; there are lots of mccaws; the cappuchin monkey studied us; as did one of the iguanas; the tortoise likes Will; these little monkeys are really really cute.
• We like to snorkel and wanted the kids to see some cool underwater life, too, so we took them on a glass-bottomed boat. To ensure the occupants of the boat maximum exposure to sea life, a diver even feeds sardines to some of the fish hanging around the reef, but we saw jellyfish, sea stars, a million kinds of coral and plants without his help.
• The Sunset Beach Bar is a favorite hangout, and the owner is a native of Pittsburgh! It's all outdoors (in fact, they're very near the airport and post plane arrivals - watch out!), they have decent food, they have live, kid-friendly musical entertainment from 4-9 every day, and some evenings they even host hermit crab races.
• Greg took this one of a rainbow that was right outside of our window.
• Greg, the kids and I went to La Ferme Des Papillions one Sunday afternoon. I couldn't get a good picture of the prettiest breed of butterfly they raise there, the morphose, because it rests with its wings closed. Morphose's wings are irridescent blue on the inner side, but fairly plain on the outside. Anyway, here are several other neat photos of butterflies: on flowers; on leaves; and here's a mating pair of scarlet swallowtails.
• The island on the horizon in these photos is Saba. It's a dormant volcano with about 7000 people living on it. Saba probably formed several of its neighboring islands, including St. Maarten/St. Martin.
• These shots of puffy pink evening clouds were taken just outside the villa.
• Boats anchored near Friar's Bay Beach.
• Flowers, flowers everywhere.
• We've adopted the odd collection of animals that have been living in the sunshaft outside of our breakfast nook. I even named some of the larger hard shelled crabs. Here, Cranky says hello, and Capt. Hook and Cranky duke it out. There's also one named Blondie, some anonymous hermit crabs (well, the largest is Herman, but the rest are nameless), and 2 anoles that Will named Spiffy and Zippy.
• This has been my favorite beach, so far - Mullet Bay. The water is exceptionally clear. I saw several varieties of fish on one swim, and Greg and Will played with a sea star in the surf
• This is what I wake up to in the mornings, here's our living room, and these are the flowers just outside the villa walls.
• Several nice shots of the sunsets in St. Maarten.
• Here's a view of one of the peaks on the island from near the water's edge at Simpson Bay Beach. It's about a 15-minute walk from the villa.
• These were taken on a beautiful beach on the French side of the island (we're staying on the Dutch side). We saw a mule running off up the rugged dirt road that lead to this spot.
• Here are some neighboring villas, both from street-level, and from our deck.
• Day skies and evening skies from our deck.
• More local plants: the tree with the red flowers on it is called a flambouyant tree; closeup of a yellow bloom; a fuscia cluster of flowers.