We got up early, and got our on deck just after we left the port. The port was now lonely since all the cruise liners had left. We cold see some mega yachts in the distance parked in more sheltered bays. We were on our way to St Barth - wohooo! The wind was quite high which in turn generated quite a swell. Some of the smaller boats and yachts that were making the trek to St Barth were bouncing around madly in the waves.
As St Barth got closer and closer... the evidence was clear that there was money there, and I mean a LOT! we moored quite far offshore, and had breakfast and then took the tender to Gustavia. Going in - we went in in between the mega yachts. This was humbling cos some were similar to the ones we saw in St Marteen (since I reckon some of them live there), and otheres were BIGGER! Hundreds of millions of dollars in one small bay! We reckon a few billion dollars just parking off while the owners and guests lounge around on the boats or on shore.
We found out on shore that there was a regatta on from the 29th to the 31st of March which was probably why there were so many boats there. We walked along the quayside in the Marina, and we counted one of the racing yachts called Bliss had about 24crew on it - the boat was HUGE. And this one only one of the many that were parked, about to go out for the races. Now since there were so many boats there parked off shore, they obviously needed tenders to get ashore (just lke us). There was a mass of the tenders on the one side, looking a lot like a taxi rank, just parked on top of each other. And these ranged from little rubber ducks with 5's or 15''s on the back to fully state-of-the-art jet engines - which probably cost more than our idea of a NICE boat!
We walked round and saw more and more and more of these awesome boats, and went looking for the wifi internet. We stopped at the Baz Jazz bar, and logged on. We got 2 cokes for around 5euros. We thought of eating there as well, but it was a sushi bar, and 6 pieces of sashimi was about 29euros - so we humbly paid for our drinks and declined to go and look else where for food.
We cruised around to the other side of the marina and YES - there were more boats and yachts and cruisers, but as we were getting hungry - and low on cash - we went looking for a bank. BUt as luck would have it - in St Barth - banks are closed on Saturdays, so we lucked out on that. But in doing so - looking for the bank - we went passed some shops ranging from Dior to Bvlgari to Louis Vouton to Hip to everything and it all looked rather exclusive. Then we got to the jewellery stores. Now - we've heard that items there are cheaper than in Paris / New York, but this was like OMF! there was a watch at US$10500, which we thought was steep, then I happened to eye out a price tag of 31500EUROS! Thats more than I paid for my car! AND what was better was that that particular watch had diamonds, but others which didnt have tags and had more diamonds. The sales lady looked at us funny through the window and we moved on. But - since I had my dads credit card to be used for emergency's and the SAA Voyager lounge in JHB - I thought I'd offer to buy him a watch as a souvenir on his card. In no uncertain terms I was told exactly where I should go with that idea!
Oh well...
We went looking for beaches, and came across Shell beach, which - again - had some mega cruisers parked off shore with the jetskis zooming around. There were a few people on the beach, but didnt seem too popular. The food at the restaurant was rather steep too with the average meal being around 35-30 Euros. We elected to rather head back to the boat to eat since it was firstly cheap and secondly we could put it on our tab with some drinks.
We headed back to the tender. While waiting the YELLOW SUBMARINE - a real yellow submarine - was about to head out with some tourists to do a tour. That could have been cool, but we were hungry since it was about 3pm. We got back to the boat, and sat next to the jacuzzi and had pizza and a few rum punches while looking out over the bay.
We spoke with some of the US tourists on board. The one guys wife was actually from Natal and moved to the states with her folks when she was about 8yrs old.
After the sun had gone down - we were in for a suprise. Now we are used to seeing the fast and the furious rides with the blue lights under them. This is the coolest thing... If you have a mega yacht - you have to have fairy lights at night surrounding the boat. Just about every boat had them. And seeing all of this at night was awesome - and again a humbling experience - being surrounded by BILLIONS of dollars. I don't know if anyone who hasnt seen this can possibly imagine what it looked like and watching the boats move around finding "parking bays.
We crashed fairly earlyish after that - around 10:30 i think since there wasnt too much of a party on board...
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