We are back in lockdown in France and I'm digging through my old photos, looking at some of my past experiences. Am I scraping the bottom of the barrel here, trying too hard to come up with something to write about? I don't think so. This airport beach experience was actually pretty cool and well worth sharing.
When you think of exciting destinations to visit, the airport typically isn't something that comes to mind. If anything, the airport is probably one of the last places I would want to spend time at. However, the Princess Juliana International Airport on the Caribbean Island of St Maarten (or more specifically the beach butting up to it) is super unique and cool and worth checking out if you happen to be visiting the country.
The beach itself is quite small and narrow and the airport runway is located literally just a few feet away from it. The runway itself is also quite small which forces planes to come down quickly and land almost immediately.
The effect of these circumstances is really cool in that the planes flying over head are super close. The sound is loud and the wind coming through their jets is powerful. Its a memorable experience to say the least.
As far as beaches go, this one is pretty standard. Really its nothing special and certainly nothing to write home about. It just your run of the mill - old people in a speedo beach.
But then again, thats not why you go there. You go there to see the private and commercial planes flying just a few meters above your head. They come every 20 minutes or so if I'm remembering correctly.
You can grab a drink at the bar or swim in the water while you wait for the next one to arrive.
You can even build a penis out of sand if you're so inclined.
Planes don't just land at the airport, they take off as well (duh) and when the plane is a large commercial jet it needs the entire runway to build up enough speed to take off. That means that it starts reving up its engines super close to the chain link fence that acts as a barrier between the beach and the airport.
Here comes one of those big planes now!
Some people like to hold onto that fence when the plane takes off, to test their strength against the powerful jet of wind coming from the planes engines. Originally I figured I'd give that a shot, the worst that would happen would be that I'd get blown back into the sand or maybe even the water. But then I saw the actual fence that people were hanging onto. You can kind of make it out in the picture at the beginning of this post.
The planes getting closer!
The runway isn't actually connected to the beach. The beach and the runway are seperated by a two way street that has a continuous stream of busy traffic flowing through it. Then there are a series of large metal and cement dividers and then there is the chain link fence that people hang onto. So if you're not strong enough to withstand the wind coming from the jets you don't get blown back into the water, you get blown into the cement divider and possibly into oncoming traffic. Needless to say, I didn't bother taking the risk. Surprisingly though, plenty of other people did. I watched them get blasted by the wind, sand and small pebbles being shot into their faces as they hung onto the fence with both hands.
It was super cool when the larger planes came in though. As you can see they get really close to the beach, just a few meters above your head. The sound is deafening and it feels like you could almost reach out and touch one of them. One thing I would suggest is walking a little farther down the beach in order to get a photo of the entire plane hovering over the sand. If you search the airport online you can see photos of how dominating the planes are compared to the small strip of sand and the people below. I wish I would have taken a picture of that myself to share. Maybe next time, it is a place that I would go back to.
