(At the end nearest the car park is also, FYI, a public bathroom. The restaurants and bars are huddled at opposite ends of Maho Beach, although the entire thing is so small that it only takes about ten minutes to walk from one end to the other. Especially considering all the cheese shops we’d passed en route in the taxi. I’d really been expecting a Dutch island. This is clearly a popular holiday destination, whether for people travelling only to Sint Maarten, or cruise passengers and crew like me and my pal Rachel but I was still surprised by how Americanised the whole place felt.
#PHILIPSBURG ST MAARTEN CRUISE PORT MAP FULL#
There are several options for eating and drinking at Maho Beach, and when we arrived the bars and restaurants were packed full of mostly American tourists who had been sheltering from the rain. Or walk into Philipsburg and catch a local bus heading to Maho Beach. Having sat in many a hot sticky vehicle on other Caribbean islands like the Dominican Republic or Antigua, I was expecting an uncomfortable journey, but considering the length of time we spent sat inside a vehicle that morning, it was surprisingly ok.Īlternatively you can catch a water taxi from inside the cruise port, which is slightly more expensive. The journey should only take about 20 minutes, but we spent almost double that crawling along in a long line of cars. This is your ticket to the beach and back the taxi will drop you in the car park close to Maho Beach, and taxi vans regularly take passengers back from the exact same spot.Īlthough the distance between St Maarten cruise port and the Airplane Beach isn’t particularly far, there is almost always traffic to contend with. Unlike the not-so-long-ago days of haggling a price with your taxi driver, prices are set, and after paying for your return taxi, you’ll be given a wrist band in the style of a package holiday. These taxis are more like minivans, and it’s likely that you’ll share a ride with other passengers or crew in order to fill up the vehicle. Leave the piers and head to the right, where there’s a row of taxis waiting to leave.
The journey is way too long to walk it, and costs around $15-20 per person depending on how many are in the car. To get from St Maarten cruise port to Maho Beach, you’ll need to take a taxi. Rainclouds rarely stick around for long, and we were confident that by the time we reached the airplane beach it would have passed. When we left the ship that morning the sky was overcast and there was drizzle all around but the weather in the Caribbean can change in a matter of minutes. This island is an extremely popular stopping point for cruise ships, and whenever we ported here there were at least three other ships parked up at the same time, although none of them were anywhere near full capacity. St Maarten’s cruise port is in the capital city- Philipsburg– which has space for a whole load of cruise ships to dock at once.
#PHILIPSBURG ST MAARTEN CRUISE PORT MAP HOW TO#
(But it’s still pretty fun to be in the sea when a plane comes in to land.) How to get from St Maarten cruise port to Maho Beach You might have already sensed from my description that this beach is not my kind of place. It is narrow, generally extremely crowded (especially when there are lots of cruise ships in port), and there are plenty of tacky bars offering neon-coloured cocktails, beers, and baskets of fries and chicken wings. There was indeed white sand and crystal clear water, but Maho Beach is also one of the most-visited beaches in St Maarten, mainly due to the fact that it’s built directly next to the runway of Princess Juliana International Airport. I had previously had an image of a fairly peaceful wide open white sandy paradise with crystal clear water, palm trees, and every now and again, an airplane zooming low overhead. The Airplane Beach in St Maarten is not what I was expecting. How to get from St Maarten cruise port to Maho Beach in one day.
0 kommentar(er)
