Cheers to another day of waking up to rain. Ha, ha! It did stop, but the skies remained mostly cloudy for much of the day.
We took a chance and drove to Cul de Sac for the first ferry to Pinel Island at 9:30. The ferry boat was full. After a 5 or so minute ride, we arrived at the pier at Karibuni Restaurant. Most of the people gravitated to the yellow chairs, but we opted to sit in the beige chairs (same price, less crowded). We immediately went into the clear, warm and shallow ocean water, with no seaweed or waves to speak of. The gift shop there is lovely and has some unique items.
We compared menus at the two restaurants on Pinel, and decided to dine at Karibuni versus Yellow Beach. The service started out very slowly as the group next to us, who sat down at the same time as us, was getting a lot of attention. We ordered fish and chips, a Tuna Poke bowl, and 2 cheeseburgers. All of the food was filling and very good.
The weather held out, and we took the ferry back at 2:45. It turned out to be a wonderful day! In hindsight, the four of us should’ve only rented two chairs to put our stuff on as we only spent about 10-15 minutes sitting on them. Beach chair service was excellent.
Being creatures of habit, the rest of the afternoon was spent soaking in the pool.
At 6:30 pm we walked out to Grand Case for dinner. We’ve never dined at Calmos Café, so decided to give them a try. They asked if we had made reservations, and we replied that we didn’t. There were plenty of tables open, so they seated us at a table next to the kitchen. That was fine, especially since the skies opened up and the rain came pouring down and into the restaurant. The entrees we ordered were Grouper, a Caesar salad with chicken, Pasta with Seafood and Braised Beef. I'm sad to say that overall, we were disappointed with our meals. The chicken and grouper were both dry and the braised beef (4 hour cook time) was chewy. We did get an apology from the server, but that was all. Probably would not go back.
Tonight was the night we should’ve driven, instead of walked, into Grand Case, as we got totally drenched on the walk/run back to our rental. Next time we'll bring an umbrella...
That's too bad about Calmos, loved it pre-Irma and it getting wrecked! Weather seems to be pretty crazy recently on the island, did you run into any flooding or issues like that on the French side?
Thanks. This last May and June the dock was pretty treacherous at Yellow Beach. The government actually shut it down for safety then reopened it later. Was still pretty unstable then too.
No major flooding that I can see on the French side. It looks like the Dutch side had more rain. We saw a few cars turning around in Lake Mullet and driving through the golf course.