St. Martin Trip

There is something I have been meaning to put in my live jornal for a LOOONG time but haven’t had a chance. It is an accounting of a strange thing that happened tp me and the wife on our honeymoon… our honey moon that almost wasn’t.

July 14-19 of 2003 was our planned honeymoon to St Martin. We got the place to stay through her mom’s time share and bought the plane tickets online ($2000). We lined all this up a year in advance and were VERY excited as the day we left drew near.

Now, everything exciting that happens to me always seems to have some strange twist to it and this was no different. Everything fell into place all the way until we were waiting to board the plane on Sunday July 13. With butteflies in our stomachs, we listened as the attnedant told us the horrible news that a volcano had erupted in the Caribean and was spewing ash over the islands. Our hearts sank. We waited for several hours only to have our flight cancelled.

But not all was lost. All we had to do was get in line and get a new flight. We thought we had lost only a day and would be basking in the Caribean sun Monday. However, Monday was booked. We could only get a flight out on Tuesday and we were lucky because it wasn’t long after us that THAT flight was booked. We were also fortunate enough to get First Class seats.

Our original plans were to come back the following Saturday with Sunday to recover but we decided to move our flight over one day so we only ended up losing one day.

However, there was no telling what the volcano was going to do over the next 24 hours. We scowered the web sote sites and found one monitoring the volcano. We watched it every hour. That Monday was the most depressing Monday I have ever experienced. We sat in our yard in pawn chairs wishing we were on the beaches of St Martin.

As we got up the next morning, we saw on the volcano site that it had erupted again, but winds were pushing the ashed more westerly than before. We were scared but hopeful. So we went on to the airport and hoped. Fortunately, it did not deter the flight this time andw e did get off without a hitch… First Class and everything.

From then on, the trip was like what I would expect a honeymoon to be, with many things I can’t even mention here. I’ll just say it was A LOT OF fun and we did many things I never thought I would do. It’s a beautiful island and I want to see more of the Caribean in the future.