On recent islands, we hadn’t necessarily explored everything the islands had to offer. It’s been a long time since we rented a car, and we knew we wanted to explore Satin Martin more.

Our aim for this day was to go and see some parrots in the parrot park, we were prepared to walk the whole way, or maybe get a taxi, bus etc, but as we were walking to get some cash from an ATM we saw some quad bike rental!

For $100 USD for 24 hours, this seemed like a bargain, as it would easily get us to all of the parts of the island that we wanted to see. (Don’t worry parents, yes we had helmets and this is just a posed picture).

We lapped the whole island, but let’s take you through the journey step by step.

On the way to our parrot park, we found a lovely high viewpoint called Bell’s lookout point. Bell’s Lookout Point in Saint Martin is a popular attraction that offers stunning panoramic views of Philipsburg, the harbor, and the Caribbean Sea.

Heading further inland we made our way to Parotte Ville Bird Park, one of the main things we wanted to try and see on the island.

Neither of us has ever experienced something quite like the bird park. It’s kind of similar to a butterfly house, but bigger and for all kinds of parrots and parrot lookalikes.

You get a little cup of birdseed, and within moments of entering through the doors, you’ll have a bird perched on the edge of your cup nibbling away.

We took far too many pictures to show you them all, but here are some of our favorites…

We spent quite some time here and ate our packed lunch of tasty wraps here before continuing on a big loop of the island.

On our way we saw a rather beaten-down marina, we assume all broken due to the recent hurricane.

Looking it up online now, it’s called Oyster Pond Marina. It was severely damaged by Hurricane Irma in September 2017. The marina suffered extensive damage to its docks, facilities, and infrastructure, and many boats and yachts were destroyed or damaged.

Continuing around the island counter-clockwise, there were many other lovely protected and shallow coves with crystal clear waters.

One of the best ways to get a view of an island is often from the highest point. (The lowest points of places are also often great, but the lagoon ticks that box)

As far as we could tell the highest point was called Pic Paradis at 424 meters. We headed straight there and encountered an interesting sign on the way…

Lucky for us we are not in a car! So we continued on our all-terrain quad bike!!!!

It turns out a quad bike was perfect for this little trail and in around 5 minutes we had made it to the top.

Once again, some great views

From the top, you can see many neighboring islands including the Saba, St. Eustatius, and Anguilla.

Also, this very interesting round marina.

We were late for a drinks gathering with Blue Note, Extress, and some other Dutch boats, so sped back down the hill as the sun set meeting them at a bar, then dinghying to a br for some food, moving to another bar, and so on… Wanting to make the most of our quad bike hire we made sure to end our night early enough to get up and do things the following day.

In the morning we got a SubWay (a rare occurrence) and headed to a beach called Maho Beach. This is a popular tourist attraction due to its unique location, as planes taking off and landing at Princess Juliana International Airport fly low over the beach, providing a thrilling experience. (You have probably seen videos of people here)

Fortunately, before needing to return the quad bike, we were able to see a plane landing.

And also taking off…

Now, that’s plenty of adventure for one blog post, so let’s leave it here with us returning the quad bike mid-way through the day!