As you all know by now, we sailed around the Carrabbean starting from St. Barts to beautiful Antigua & Barbuda to St. Kitts and my favorite place Nevis, as well as Montserrat and Saba. On our way back I begged Shane for us to also see St. Martin. At first we weren’t planning to go there, but than he said lets go and explore [Shane – turns out we had the time to do it].
We arrived on the French side of the island (it is divided between France and the Netherlands) in the evening and waited for the next day to check in!The original plan was to rent a car and drive around the island. The next day we went to check in and it was the first place which allowed only one person inside the customs and immigration building. I waited for a while and then Shane came out and said they are not allowing me in the country!
I asked why? They said I did not have the necessary visa, even though I had a Schengen visa which allows you to enter any country in Europe. In fact I actually got the visa from France, so with that visa I am allowed to go to France but not allowed to go to a small island down in the Carrabean which belongs to France?!? 🙂 They require something called Antilles Schengen visa!
And the funniest thing is that as the island is divided in between France and the Netehrlands, I can enter the island from the Dutch side and visit everywhere as there is no border control in between the two sides! Another shocking thing they wanted to charge us for checking in, which we didnt accept as they did not allow us in anyway!
We could go and see the Dutch part of the island….actually the whole island but in my terms “we couldnt be bothered to do that”.
So we decided to go to Anguilla, which is a British island, and I didnt have a visa to go there! They had every right to say no, but they allowed me in with my U.S visa!
I have to say sometimes an obsctacle can cause better things, because we loved Anguilla. I think they had the best beaches in the whole Caribbean! We enjoyed driving around the island and seeing all the nice bays around! So this island was not part of our original plan, but we ended up there and just loved it! I could say this is my second favorite island after Nevis!
