The eighth day of our stay in Sint Maarten, we started off with a visit to Fort Amsterdam, its ruins are a bit unusual, a part of it was apparently used as a radio station at one time. The attractions at the fort are things like the cistern or reservoir, long unused, the old buildings or what’s left of them, the canons of course, the views from the different parts of the fort, and while we were there one attraction was wildlife, specifically a young bird who let me get close enough for a few nice photographs.
The fort, although something that would be considered a national heritage site, is located on private land behind a Hotel/Resort, so I had to take at least one photo in the compounds 🙂
We then went off to the beach near Maho where the beach curves around behind the airport, and the aircraft head straight down the sea, over the beach and onto the runway for landing, there was a photograph by Jesse Diamond that my brother had forwarded to me prior to this trip, and both he and Nikhil insisted that I try to take an inspired photograph like it, so that was the main purpose of going there, getting Coronas at more than twice the normal price was just incidental 🙂
Before heading home, we took a stop at a Nature Reserve where they have horseback riding among other activities, got a few photos, but only managed to really like these:
Back home I waited for the evening to arrive so that I could play with the setting sun, seated on the veranda, camera at my side and a cold Heineken to my lips, life is good.
As usual, on this trip, I can’t put all the photos in the blog, so click on the ones here and go straight to the site for all 42 new additions to the Sint Maarten 2010 album.

I think you are packing a month’s worth of vacation time into that 10 days (and 2 months worth of photos 🙂
Good one.
I Iove that little bird and the calming, blue tone…nice shot!
I have two favorites of these photos. The B&W walk on the beach and the framed sunset. Gorgeous! I hope to see St. Maarten in person some day.
Thanks, those on the page are just a sampling of the day, my site has the whole set (just selected ones as all would be terrible).
The “walk on the beach” is a photo of my wife as she walked towards me, the slowly setting sun gave a nice backlight.