St. Maarten Island Facts

St Maarten is comfortably warm all year; room rates are cheaper during the low season (December to February).

Sint Maarten's Carnival usually begins the second week after Easter and lasts for two weeks, with steel band competitions, jump-ups, calypso concerts, beauty contests and costume parades. Sint Maarten Day on 11 November commemorates the peaceful 1817 reconciliation of the Dutch with their French neighbors.

The Heineken Regatta, held the first weekend in March, features competitions for racing yachts, large sailboats and small multihulls.

Public Holidays
1 January - New Year's Day
Easter (early April) - Good Friday, Easter Monday
30 April - Queen's Day
1 May - Labor Day
Early May - day after the last Carnival parade
40th day after Easter - Ascension Thursday
11 November - Sint Maarten Day
25 December - Christmas Day
26 December - Boxing Day

Philipsburg, Sint Maarten's main town, is centred on a long, narrow stretch of land that separates Great Salt Pond from Great Bay. There are some older buildings mixed among the new, but overall the town is far more commercial than quaint. Most of the action is along Frontstreet, the bayfront road, which is lined with boutiques, jewelry shops, restaurants, casinos and duty-free shops selling everything from Danish porcelain to Japanese cameras and electronics. History buffs can visit the Sint Maarten Museum, which has displays on island history with Arawak pottery shards, plantation-era artefacts, period photos and a few items from the HMS Proselyte, the frigate that sank off Fort Amsterdam in 1801. There's also an interesting exhibit on the damage caused by 1995's Hurricane Luis.

Wathey Square, overlooking Great Bay on the south, is the town centre of sorts. It boasts a tourist information booth, a wharf where cruiseship tenders dock and an old courthouse that dates from 1793. On cruise ship days, vendors on the square sell drinking coconuts and souvenirs; more street vendors, selling T-shirts and wood carvings, can be found at the north side of the courthouse.

In 1631 the Dutch built their first Caribbean fort, Fort Amsterdam, on the peninsula separating Great Bay and Little Bay. Invading Spaniards expanded it and added a small church. Despite its historic significance little remains of the fort other than crumbling walls and a few rusting cannons. It does, however, offer a nice view across the bay to Philipsburg.

The tiny Sint Maarten Zoo & Botanical Garden has some 35 reptile, bird and mammal species. It's located on the north side of Great Salt Pond.

If you're looking for a beach that's quiet but not totally secluded, Cupecoy is a good choice. Its white sands are backed by low sandstone cliffs that have been eroded in such a way that they provide a run of small semiprivate coves.

Maho Bay, on the southwestern shore, is Sint Maarten's main resort area. It feels a bit like the Las Vegas Strip: while little more than a block long, it's dense with multistory buildings housing exclusive jewellers, boutiques, art galleries, restaurants and a huge resort and casino. Maho Bay has a nice enough beach except that it's at the very end of the airport runway. The area is even marked with a sign warning beach goers that 'low flying and departing aircraft blast can cause physical injury!'

For a bi-cultural experience, taste the water at Oyster Pond. This bay, unsurprisingly oyster-like in shape, straddles both French and Dutch territory on the east side of the island. The French half of the bay is home to most of the accommodation as well as a marina. The best beach, Dawn Beach, falls on the (easily accessible) Dutch side. For a good vantage of the Pond, take the short path leading up the cactus-studded hill on the northeast (French) side of the bay.

Sint Maarten has beautiful white-sand beaches, ranging from crowded resort strands to long secluded sweeps. Most of the best and least developed beaches are on the French side. Dawn Beach has good snorkeling and swimming. Snorkelers can expect to find waving sea fans, soft corals and small tropical fish. When the swell picks up, Mullet Bay can be good for bodyboarding.

The most popular diving is at Proselyte Reef, a few kilometers south of Philipsburg, where in 1802 the British frigate HMS Proselyte sank in 15m (50ft) of water. There are 10 other dive sites in that area, including coral reefs with caverns.

The island has good bicycling. You can cruise around Simpson Bay Lagoon, or cross to the French side and pump up to the top of 425m (1395ft) Pic Paradis.

Because of its many salt ponds, Amerindians called the island Sint Maarten shares with St Martin 'Soualiga', meaning 'Land of Salt'. According to popular belief, Columbus 'discovered' the island in November 1493 and named it in honor of Bishop St Martin of Tours. However, some historians now think the island Columbus chanced upon that day was the more southerly Nevis and that he never actually sighted St Martin. At any rate, it wasn't until 1631 that the first colonisation attempts were made, with the Dutch settling at Little Bay and the French in the Orleans area.

In 1633 the Spanish (who had claimed but not colonised the island) invaded, deporting all 128 inhabitants. The Spanish reinforced a fort that the Dutch had started and then built a second fort. In 1644 an attempt to retake the island was led by the renowned Dutch coloniser Peter Stuyvesant, who lost a leg to a cannonball in the fighting. Although the Dutch assault was unsuccessful, four years later the Spanish reassessed their interests in the region and simply left on their own.

Both the Dutch and French hastily moved back and agreed to share the island, signing a partition agreement in 1648 that was to be repeatedly violated. During the period from 1670 to 1702 the French controlled the entire island. In 1703 the Dutch invaded from St Eustatius and then deported any French settlers who refused to leave.

In 1713, the Utrecht Peace Treaty returned half of the island to France. Nevertheless, the Dutch and the French continued battling, each having complete control of the island for years at a time. The English also got involved, taking control in 1784 for 10 years and in 1810 for six years. In 1817, the conflict was peacefully resolved and the current boundary was established.

In the meantime, trade thrived on a slavery-based plantation economy. The Dutch harvested huge amounts of salt, most of which was shipped to Holland for the herring industry. After Sint Maarten abolished slavery in 1863, the plantations went into decline and economic activity dropped off sharply.

When the Netherlands fell to the Nazis in 1940, the French took 'protective control' of the Dutch side of the island, but within two weeks France itself was under German control. An Allied occupation of the island followed and in 1943 the USA built a military airfield, now Juliana Airport. After the war the new airport, the region's largest, spurred the island's growth as a regional hub and brought on an early advent of tourism.

In September 1995, Sint Maarten took a direct hit from mighty Hurricane Luis, which swept the island with 210kph (130mph) winds, killed six people and was estimated to have cost upwards of a billion dollars in damages. Three years later, Hurricane George knocked out power and telephone lines for weeks. Hurricane Lenny in 1999 also caused significant damage. The local tourist industry suffered greatly as a result of the storms.

The island culture has its roots largely in African, French and Dutch influences, though scores of more recent immigrants, many of them from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, have added their own elements to this multicultural society. The tourist boom of the past few decades has resulted in such an influx of job-seekers from elsewhere in the Caribbean that only about 20% of all residents were born on the island.

Dutch is the official language, though in practice English is the first language spoken, Dutch the second. Most island-born people are multilingual and can speak English, French and Creole. There's also a sizable Spanish-speaking immigrant community, mainly from the Dominican Republic.

Roman Catholicism is the most popular religion, followed by Anglican, Baptist, Jehovah's Witness, Methodist and Seventh Day Adventist churches. Sint Maarten is a municipality of the Netherlands Antilles, which is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. While regional control of the Netherlands Antilles is based in the southern Caribbean island of Curaçao, Sint Maarten has its own lieutenant governor who, in conjunction with an elected island council and an appointed executive council, is responsible for local affairs.

Sint Maarten is located near the northern end of the Lesser Antilles, 325km (200mi) east of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Its nearest neighbors are Anguilla, 22km (14mi) north, and St Barthélemy (St Barts), 25km (15mi) southeast. Occupying the lower half of a triangular island that it shares with the French St Martin (a sub-prefecture of Guadeloupe), Sint Maarten is just under 15km (9mi) at its widest point and about 5km (3mi) from north to south. The shoreline is indented with bays and coves and the coastal flats are pocketed with salt ponds. The interior is hilly. The west side of the country is more water than land, dominated by the expansive Simpson Bay Lagoon, one of the largest landlocked bodies of water in the Caribbean.

The terrain is largely green but dry, with more palms, hibiscus and cacti than ferns or forests, although there are a few thickly vegetated areas in the interior. Herons, egrets, stilts, pelicans, laughing gulls and other shorebirds are plentiful in the island's brackish ponds. Frigatebirds can be spotted along the coastline, hummingbirds and bright yellow-bellied bananaquits are common in gardens and there are colorful woodland birds in the hills. Lizards are abundant and can be seen scurrying about on walkways and in other sunny areas.

The average daily high temperature is 28°C (83°F) in January, 30°C (86°F) in July. The average low temperature rarely dips below 22°C (72°F).

Travellers from the US have the best air service to Sint Maarten. There are direct flights between Philipsburg and New York and Miami. There are also direct flights from Paris and Amsterdam; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Antigua; Guadeloupe; and St Barts and Martinique, some of which land in Espérance on the French side.

Cruise ships land passengers in Philipsburg. There are numerous daily ferries to and from Anguilla; daily catamarans to and from St Barts; and a ferry several times a week to and from Saba. Yachts can clear immigration at Philipsburg; there are marinas at Philipsburg, Oyster Pond and Simpson Bay Lagoon.

Despite its dual nationality, the border crossings between the French and Dutch sides are marked only with inconspicuous signs and there are no stops or other formalities when crossing over.

There's a departure tax of 20.00 from Juliana Airport.

Renting a car is the best way to get around Sint Maarten. There are scores of agencies and your home driver's license is valid. Driving is on the right. There are also motorcycles (motorcycle license required), scooters and bicycles available.

Taxis are plentiful and are a convenient and inexpensive way to get around during short stays.

There are two kinds of buses available: public buses that run between Philipsburg and Mullet Bay, Simpson Bay and Marigot on the French side; and smaller (and more frequent) private minivans. Service to other destinations on the Dutch side is sketchy, so touring the whole island by bus is not practical. Although there are no airport buses per se, if you're travelling light you can try catching one of the Philipsburg-Mullet Bay buses, which pass right by the airport.

Philipsburg is about a 15-minute drive from Juliana Airport. Taxis are available to and from Philipsburg.