St Martin/St Maarten / Special Interests / Culture & Heritage

First impressions of St Martin/St Maarten suggest this is an island devoted to hedonism and making money. Everywhere you look visitors are busy enjoying themselves on the beach while the locals are running shops, restaurants and hotels catering to their needs. There are so many different nationalities working here it's hard to believe there is much sense of community or cultural identity. But there is. One reason is that this has been a tourist island for over fifty years now – holidaymakers may come and go but its local residents are a permanent fixture whose numbers are supplemented by foreigners who invest here, retire here, or come regularly to one of the many timeshare resorts.

The cultural life of the island is most obvious in St Martin where French traditions are  zealously maintained. Think baguettes, a long lunch break, Bastille Day, joyful signs declaring that “le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivée”... On the Dutch side this aspect is less apparent but it is nevertheless there in the guilders, streetnames and the St Maarten Carnival in April which incorporates celebrations for the Queen's Birthday.

The heritage of the Caribbean is also evident across the island – in the rice and peas, the Creole patois, the sound of steel pans, the small wooden houses with gingerbread decoration. In addition, there are the pockets of culture created by more recent arrivals – the 2,500 Chinese who mainly run restaurants and small supermarkets, an Indian community that specialises in selling jewellery and electronics goods, North Americans who come for the sea and sun, setting up dive shops and working in the marinas. South African croupiers, Italian chefs, Haitian gardeners, Canadian windsurfers, Jamaican musicians, Russian lap-dancers – the whole world is here enjoying a melting-pot life on “The Friendly Island”.