TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Orient on Wed 1/24

From Jeepers. Lots of people on the beach.

Perch Lite

Wow good pictures, but no people?? There were supposedly 3 ships in yesterday!!

I love the umbrella photo of Orient!

I can tell from the metadata that she took the pictures at 10am....so would it be 9am there? Hmm, I wonder if her phone accounts for the time zone.

OK, well that makes more sense, being early in the morning.

This was early, later it was BUSY, three cruise ships and many made there way to Club O and most sans clothing.

The top picture is from the ocean side and you can see the parking area behind and to the right, you can pretty much see your car from the chairs, just to the right of the Perch are the washrooms and the new boutique shop, to the left is the massage hut about 50 ft.

The picture of the chairs show about half of what they had set up, they were scrambling to find as many chairs and umbrellas as they could.

Ooooh I like the blue umbrella.

This does my heart good

It makes me so happy to see this. Can't wait to be back.

Funny, I thought that Club O had posted at one point after Irma that they had like 200 umbrellas, which I thought at the time was an awful lot! Those other umbrellas obviously used to belong to other restaurants down the beach, but having different colors actually is kind of pretty to me.

we peeked inside of their storage container when we were there. It looked like they had some new umbrellas tucked in the back.

Love it!
Thanks for posting.

Didn't want to freak people out with photos later. Lol. All the chairs were used on Wednesday.the umbrellas all looked nice..

Will we be able to rent and reserve chairs/umbrella for a week at a time (like the good ole days - with a reservation tag good for the duration)?

At Club O this morning...very windy with rain so maybe only 30 people? For those interested, there are no former Club O employees on property that I can tell. All service providers are third parties. No security, no maintenence, nothing. No one has so much as moved a single piece of wreakage. Sewers exposed near Papagayo. It may feel good to see some people there but there is none of the old Club O vibe. BTW, with no security there are cameras and I believe there will be worse as the wild west mentality takes hold. Its not even close to “over” down there folks.

It has likely been reported that the only place to rent chairs is Club O and the only places for Lunch are Perch Lite and Chez Leandra operating out of a shipping container. It had been reported that they were being shut down tomorrow which was true when reported. Allthe operators were told to stay on their pads but Sun Beach started planting trees which is what set off the authorities.

Much more to report and almost none of it is good.

Thanks for the report. So, is Chez Leandra going to be shut down tomorrow or not? Not sure I understand the comment about operators being told to stay on their pads? Can you elaborate?

MarkKhoury, at this time you rent per day $18/ day parking is free. No tags on chairs yet either.

Too bad about the rain, we just got home after three weeks, we had very few showers and did not miss a day. As for Club O staff Cedric is managing the chair rentals, Rocio is still the massage therapist and the young lady that managed the boutique before is running the new smaller boutique, as for the rest I don't know if they are new or not and not sure why that matters. We had the best time ever, while it not like before and may never be it was everything we needed or wanted, beach is great, Perch has food and there are basic washrooms. It is quieter than before and far more relaxing, never been so welcomed by the staff. Yes there is a lot of devastation and they have a lot to do, perhaps your expectation were unrealistic. It may not be for everyone but there are other places you can go. For us the glass was more than half full.

When we were there in December, Club O employees were running the Perch Lite. The guy on the grill was one of the managers. The young lady running the bar (my wife would remember her name) was one of the waitresses at Papagayo

Pads in this case meant the concrete floors that the buildings were on which are still there for the most part. As others have said it seemed wrong that they followed the rules and were still tared with the same brush... Will likely be there tomorrow and will clarify. Interestingly, scavengers are in the process of dismantling the roofs of the other buildings for materials. I wont call them looters because they are doing it in broad sight. Also, many wreaked cars on the roads with red x’s which seems to mean yours for the taking as they are being striped for parts.

Not surprised about the low turnout at Orient yesterday as it was very windy and rainy. We went to Baie Rouge, hoping for a little more shelter from the wind, but it wasn't much better. We had stopped at Cupecoy, but there was no sand. Today looks not much better, as it is very cloudy, windy, and rainy. Fortunately, the rest of the week looks very nice.
Jim