St Maarten Euros Winair

Two items about St Maarten from The Daily Herald.

1) Quite a few merchants on the Dutch side now accept euros, but not at a
very attractive rate "since they have to go to a bank on the French side to
convert them to dollars". More confirmation that the de facto currency of
the Dutch side is the US dollar.

2) Winair, which connects St Maarten with Saba, Statia, St Barths, etc., is
having its usual financial problems. One of their Twin Otters is nearing
end-of-life and will not be replaced. That will leave them with two Twin
Otters and two small Islanders as their total fleet.

As of last October, I found that dollars were welcome everywhere, both on
the French and Dutch side. Prices on the Dutch side were usually given in
both dollars and euros, while on the French side they usually gave prices in
euros, only but readily made reasonable conversion. I never ran into any
problem.

One thing that struck me was the following: I am of Scandinavian extraction
and have a lot of relatives back in the old country. Everyone there younger
than about 50 speaks English fluently, because Norway made a decision that
teaching their students English was a good educational investment, and it
has really paid off for them economically. So there I was in St. Maarten. I
never passed up giving hitchhikers a ride. It was amazing to me that every
young person I picked up on the French side was genuinely helpless regarding
speaking what is the international language of business and politics, i.e.:
English. Fortunately I speak French, and so it was not a problem. But the
situation was very, very French.....


"R J Carpenter" <rcarpen@erols.com> wrote in message
news:40401b98$0$3093$61fed72c@news.rcn.com...
> Two items about St Maarten from The Daily Herald.
>
> 1) Quite a few merchants on the Dutch side now accept euros, but not at a
> very attractive rate "since they have to go to a bank on the French side
to
> convert them to dollars". More confirmation that the de facto currency of
> the Dutch side is the US dollar.
>
> 2) Winair, which connects St Maarten with Saba, Statia, St Barths, etc.,
is
> having its usual financial problems. One of their Twin Otters is nearing
> end-of-life and will not be replaced. That will leave them with two Twin
> Otters and two small Islanders as their total fleet.
>
>
>
>

> Did you pick up any black people? If not,
>you may have been dealing with tourists.

This was kinda my point - that virtually any tourist you run into in the
Caribbean - German, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, etc. - will speak
comprehensible English, because English is now the lingua franca (pardon the
irony) of international business & politics - every tourist, that is, except
the French, because they do it to spite themselves.

>My guess is that many black families on
>the French side speak English at home.

I've never run into this except in actual British territories and colonies
like Montserrat. Elsewhere, my experience is that the blacks often speak a
patois which has a strong French influence.