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St. Maarten/Martin Bernard's Tours Enthusiastic Recommendation


Chalker

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I saw many other threads recommending Bernard's Tours (https://www.bernardstours.com/) for a day trip around St. Maarten, and thought I'd chime in that I highly recommend them.  Below are some details about our experience, which I haven't seen posted elsewhere and hopefully well help answer other people's questions similar to the ones I had prior to visiting.

 

  • I was with a family group of 8 people in total, ranging from my son (8 years old) to my father-in-law (80 years old).  Everyone is generally mobile and doesn't require anything like a stroller or walker, although I could see the tour easily accommodating those if we had needed them.
  • We were on Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas with a port call in St. Maarten on Thursday Jan 3rd, 2019.  There were 2 other ships in port that day as well.  We were there from 7AM until 5PM.
  • I made the reservation via their website about 45 days in advance.  We decided to do the private customized tour for 8 people, total cost $495, with a deposit of $100 required in advance.  I paid the remaining $395 onsite as we were starting the tour via a credit card.
  • We had decided not to rush off the boat, so asked for a 10AM - 4PM tour time.  This worked well as it allowed us to eat breakfast and walk off the ship at a leisurely pace.  I got a phone call directly from Bernard at about 9:30AM on my cell phone just to confirm we were still planning on coming.
  • It was a little hard to find the tour lot.  You have to walk past all the small vendor kiosks, through a chain link fence gate, and there are some white tent canopies setup in a gravel parking lot.  It's to the left of the main taxi parking lot, just past the big sign that says welcome to St. Maarten. We asked a random vendor on the pier which way to go and they easily pointed it out to us.  There isn't any clear signage at the tent that it's Bernard's Tours, but all the drivers had shirts with the logo on it.
  • After paying, we were assigned a driver, David, and a 10-12 person passenger van (3-4 rows of seats in it).  The van was very clean and modern and Brian had a small step stool to help my inlaws step into an out of the van.  In between the front seats was a cooler with bottle of water, coke, diet coke, beer, and a bottle of rum.  Brian regularly encouraged us to take whatever we wanted from the coolor over the course of the day. 
  • David had a headset microphone he wore the whole time that was hooked up to the speakers in the van.  Whenever he spoke it was broadcast over the speakers and made it easy for anyone in the van to hear him without blasting us out in the front row.
  • The first thing he asked us was what we wanted to do / see.  We had some general desires, such as some beach time, the french-dutch border, and the airplanes at maho beach.  He then provided us with some maps of the island and suggested we do a route around the whole island with certain specific stops detailed below.  He suggested NOT going to Orient Beach due to us having kids and it being clothing optional.  We readily agreed to his suggestions.
  • We then set of, and were pleasantly surprised to find that he was able to narrate the whole time all about the island, the various major buildings, sites, history, and in particular the impact of the recent hurricanes.  He quickly learned all our names and was quick to address us by them and try to gauge what each of us were interested in.
  • The some of the stops we didn't get out of the van, and were for things like the oldest building on the island, the East Dutch/French border monument, and the big new flagpole on the mountainside. Other tops we generally got out for a while and included:
    • An overlook of Oyster Bay, which gave a view of all the boats still sunk in the harbor due to the hurricane
    • Rotary Lookout Point, an elevated platform with an amazing view of some undeveloped beaches and islands.  Normally there is a guy there that brings in sea urchins for tourists to see, but he wasn't there that day.  We were able to find one or two to pick up close to the shore.
    • The Iguana 'farm', which is just a small roadside stall with 2 ladies near some iguana nesting sites.  The ladies threw out some lettuce and gave the kids sticks with lettuce on them to attract the iguanas and feed them, which was pretty cool to see
    • Lunch at Rainbow Cafe Beach bar (http://rainbowcafe.fr/) on Grand Case Beach.  That area was hit hard by the hurricanes and there are only a few beach establishments open still.  We had about 75 minutes here and it was exactly like something out of the movies, with a perfect beach and water (85 degree weather that day!).  It cost $15 for 2 beach chairs with an umbrella and waiter service, only a few feet from the water.  Altogether we spent about $120 for 8 people to have chairs, some drinks and food and just bask in the environment.
    • A stop in 'downtown' at Marigot Market, to visit a bakery and various street market stalls for some shopping.  We had about 30 minutes to walk around and see the sights and wares available.
    • A stop at the West Dutch/French board monument while crossing over the border to find a geocache for my daughter (David mentioned that he once had somebody hire him to just drive around the island looking for geocaches)
    • A stop at Maho Beach at the airport to see the planes land and take off.  We had about 30 minutes here, and were there at the perfect time to see lots of big jets both coming in for a landing and taking off.

 

Altogether, all 8 of us were extremely impressed and happy with the experience, ranging from the myrid of things David told us while driving around about the island and it's people, to the wide range of stops we made and time available to enjoy them.  I'd highly recommend Bernard's tours to anyone going to Sint Maarten / Saint Martin

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Thanks for this review! I don't know when I'll be heading back to St. Maarten next, but if I don't call @Matt's guy Leroy Brown, I think I'll definitely give Bernards Tours the lead slot for a land tour. We went the sea-based route last time, so seeing the land would be good for a return trip.

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Thanks @Chalker for your post!  We may look into Bernards Tours when we visit St. Maarten next month.  Based on my one prior trip to this fantastic island a year ago, taxis were abundant for easy access around the island.   We hired @Matt friend Leroy Brown for the day--he transported my wife and I and we had a great time. 

Our next visit will be with a larger family group, so hiring a van for the day would be the way to go and we may give Bernards tours a shot.  I don't recall vans at the taxi stand from my last trip, but I wasn't looking out for them.  Anyone know if a vans are easy to secure at the taxi stand or whether reserving ahead would be the way to go?  Also I though I heard somewhere that Leroy may have upgraded his vehicle (to a larger van?), but not sure about that.

Thanks again!

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