Phillipsburg, Sint Maarten

Alaska cousin and Zeb the Duck head for the PeliDeli with our humans.

We love the Peli Deli

We love the Peli Deli

We climb on the bus toward Phillipsburg, St. Maarten.  This bus is provided by Ama Jewelers.  Ama has several stores in St. Maarten.  The have really cute pendant necklaces with jeweled flip-flop sandals.  That is so like the beach!  Ama jewelers also specialize in colored diamonds.  I think all human females love colored diamonds.

We stop for breakfast at an outside café.

Breakfast being cooked

Breakfast being cooked

With full stomachs, the humans wander through many shops.  The streets are lined with stores, and this clock caught the duck eyes.

Shopping street

Shopping street.  Need to reset clock

Phillipsburg, St. Maarten is one of the busiest shopping areas in the Caribbean.  In additional to traditional stores, we enjoyed this market.

We love these markets

We love these markets

Many cruise ships stop here, for shopping, for beautiful beaches and of course, the many great spots for lunch.

We don’t want you to think that shopping is all there is.  We saw this church, St, Maarten of Tours Roman Catholic Church

St. Maarten of Tours Roman Catholic Church

St. Maarten of Tours Roman Catholic Church

and other historical and government buildings.  The street near the beach has so many human opportunities.  Segways are for rent, as are many beach accessories.

Beach is on a shopping street

Beach is on a shopping street

We saw shoppers, swimmers, boaters and people lounging on the beach and many humans in the cafes.

This Pirate Sports Bar was interesting and had great figures to cause humans to notice the establishment.

Great for Pirate Sports Bar

Great for Pirate Sports Bar

At this café, we could see the gentleman grilling this chicken.

Watching our food cooking

Watching our food cooking

It smelled wonderful.  We did have another snack here.  Very tasty!

St. Maarten has guavaberries.  This store specializes in guavaberry products.  This sign promotes guavaberry liqeur.

Famous in St. Maarten

Famous in St. Maarten

This is best enjoyed on St. Maarten as it is difficult to transport liquids on the airplane.   Tomorrow we leave St. Maarten and fly to St. Thomas so we did not purchase additional liquids today.

Phillipsburg is a busy port with great shopping.  We ducks loved it, but were ready to get back to our beach and pool.  The humans got a taxi and we headed back to our resort.

Feet on the sand

Feet on the sand

We loved the shopping and activities of Phillipsburg and we think you would enjoy some time here also.  Maybe some blue or canary diamonds??

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Salt Pickers of Sint Maarten

My Alaska cousin and I, Zeb the Duck, viewed this monument near Phillipsburg, St. Maarten.   

Tribute to Salt Pickers

Tribute to Salt Pickers

 We did not know what a salt picker was.  Now we do and we want to refresh your memory of history also.

From 1624, when the Dutch found the Great Salt Pond until the 1960s, salt production defined the history and economy of St. Maartin.  Free people and slaves from the Dutch and the French side of the island completed the hard work of harvesting salt.

Salt has always been important to the island.  The Arawaks called the island Soualugia.  Soualugia means land of salt.

The Dutch side of the island farmed and exported as much as 400 boatloads of salt per year.  Wow!  That is more than one boatload every day.

Monument to Salt Pickers in St. Maarten

Monument to Salt Pickers in St. Maarten


Salt is collected as the sun causes the seawater to evaporate, leaving salt crystals.  One method involved shoveling and scraping the salt crystals from the ground.  Another process involved putting stakes in the salt ponds.  As the water evaporated, salt crystals remained on the stakes.  The clumps of salt crystals were removed by hand (called reaping) and used or exported.

The salt pickers are honored in St. Maartin by this monument near the Great Salt Pond.  St. Maartin and the world owe much to these salt pickers of years gone by.  I, Zeb the Duck, and my Alaska cousin

Zeb the Duck with Alaska cousin.

Zeb the Duck with Alaska cousin.

 are in awe of all they accomplished through hard work and sincerely appreciate their efforts.