The Island's Name
It appears that the double-nation status of the island opens the door to very creative ways to spell its name. Occasionally I have to go through the logs of our web server to see which keywords are used to find out www.FreeStMaarten.com website. It is amazing how many variations of St. Martin are possible.

Officially, the name of the Dutch side is "Sint Maarten" and the French side is called "Saint Martin". This can be shortened to St. Maarten and St-Martin.

The most popular miss spelling by our American visitors is "St Maartens", followed closely by "St Maartin". The French on the other hand insist in spelling the Dutch side "St Marteen", even on Air France boarding passes, the island is called "Saint Marteen".

Some politicians on the Dutch side would like to make matters worse, much worse: They contemplate to rename the Dutch side "Soualiga", the original Indian name of pre-Columbian times.
- posted by Jan @ 9:55 AM 0 comments links to this post   

 
Sahara Dust
Friday has been a hot, hazy day with very little visibility - but not really overcast weather. The reason for the haze has been a massive cloud of Sahara dust, pushed across the Atlantic Ocean by a tropical weather system.

This happens quite frequently; the dust has different colors, sometimes we find a red layer of dirt on our cars in the morning, sometimes more yellow colored - but always, these are particles of the great African desert that have traveled all the way to the Caribbean.

White dust - on one occasion so thick that it looked like snow - is caused by the still active volcano on the island of Montserrat. Only a few hundred miles away, this volcano is sometimes coughing up some good amounts of dirt, spreading it all over the North-Eastern Caribbean.
- posted by Jan @ 8:15 AM 0 comments links to this post