Donkeys, hardcore hiking and pizza

One would think that you would get used to waking up early every day after a month, but when I woke up this Saturday, it was harder than ever. Especially because we had to wake up half an hour earlier than usual because of an open-ship event that our crew on Gunilla would host for the Caribbean sailing association and we had to stay out of the ship the whole day

. I managed to drag myself out of bed only to find out that we were out of cornflakes. For the last month, one of my biggest motivations in the morning has been the fact that I’ll get to eat a bowl of cornflakes with cinnamon and sugar. One could only imagine my sorrow and grief of the loss of my most beloved meal of the day.

Moving on from my morning tiredness, we were picked up by the bus and headed to the dutch side of the island where we started our first activity of the day, hiking. We were dropped off next to a paddock and met a lady that would be our guide on the hike. As we threw our backbacks on we started the hike and the challenge of not stepping in donkey poo. As some of us chose to wear flip-flops and sandals the group was moving at a sloth-like pace. After thirty minutes of walking we came across a group of donkeys. The donkeys caused a great commotion in the class and everyone got starstruck by the fuzzy baby donkeys. After staying with the donkeys for twenty minutes, Anne-Li had to practically scream at us to get moving because of our busy schedule for the day. After finishing our photoshoot with the donkeys, we returned to where the bus had dropped us off and expected that to be the end of the hike, but we were wrong.

The guide gave us a five minute break for water and energy replenishing and then we were on our way again. This time we walked for a solid forty minutes before stopping by a beach with big waves. Sweaty, warm and tired, everyone ran for the beach and enjoyed the lunch that our chefs had cooked for us. I didn’t hesitate when going into the water and spent almost the entire hour in the water, trying to bodysurf in the unpredictable waves. To that point, the hike had been relatively easy with few parts of the hike going uphill, but that was about to change. Going at a 45 degree angle we started the real climb. An hour later we were back on the bus, tired, warm and sweaty, but we had made it. There were some periods of time where I thought we would never get to the bus but finally it happened.

Our next stop was Philipsburg, a city in the southeastern part of St Maarten crowded with cruising ships and tourists. Completely drained from the exercise, we settled for eating ice cream, drinking a can of coke at a wifi cafe and browsing the different stores.

To finish the day, we went to an Italian restaurant and ate pizza. I ordered a Ruccola e Pomodori pizza and it was really good. After that, we went back to Marigot and the dock where Gunilla was situated and called it a day. It was overall a great day thanks to Anne-Li and my fantastic classmates, but I doubt that I won’t feel sore from the challenging hike in the morning. We’ll be leaving St Martin tomorrow morning and I’m really excited to go to the Dominican Republic.

Thea Enander

Portside