Zublog

Sometimes waiting until the last minute to book a hotel can leave you sleeping on the beach. It’s true that we like to leave things to chance, but there are varying degrees of that practice. Case in point; we’re traveling to the island of St Maarten / St. Martin in the Caribbean, thanks to a kind offer from a friend to use his timeshare there.

Le Reve in Baie Rouge through luxuryretreats.com

However, the accommodation doesn’t cover the full stay – so we were still in need of a place to stay. As hotels can get pretty expensive on the island and, although the $7000 a night villas look lovely, we wanted to make sure we grabbed a reasonably priced place before they were all gone. But, we weren’t prepared to completely give up on our favorite pastime – Zufall. So, we pulled up a Google Maps shot of the island and imagined we were right in the middle. We set our base value at 1km as the crow flies. We rolled an E/4 … so directly east from the centre (Dutch Cul de Sac) we ended up at Oyster Pond.

Pool side with a view at Les Balcons in St. Martin

We found a great little place on line that is right up our alley (not a big hotel resort) It’s called Les Balcons and it’s a small, family run establishment with bungalow style rooms equipped with a kitchen. The interesting thing about Oyster Pond is that half of it is on the Dutch side of the island and the other half is on the French side. It’s a less touristy destination and I doubt we would have bothered to look there for accommodation if we hadn’t rolled our way there.

Our reservations are set, and we’ve got our fingers crossed that the dice are leading us to yet another great adventure by chance.

I should know better than to chastise Tim for missing an exit while Zufalling. We had rolled a NW 3 with a base value of 10 minutes driving. By the map it looked like we would end up in Horseshoe Bay.

Horseshoe Bay, BC Photo credit: sfu.ca

Horseshoe Bay is always a great place to go for a stroll on a sunny Saturday afternoon – so I was looking forward to it. But, Tim missed the exit.

Here’s the thing – you can’t make a wrong turn when you Zufall because you don’t really know where the roll is leading you until you get there. Tim took the next exit, and we ended up driving through the neighbourhood of Horseshoe Bay instead of visiting the village – where all the tourists go. Of course, I knew there was more to Horseshoe Bay than the village, but I had never seen it.

We drove up and along Marine, checking out the million-dollar homes that cling impossibly to the cliff-side to deliver the spectacular view of Howe Sound to its inhabitants. It was inspirational, breathtaking, and completely unexpected. As we descended down toward the yacht club we saw some local kids playing soccer – it seemed like the entire community had come out to support the young superstars. We carried on along Marine, having gotten a little turned around by the zigzag of the road.

The Lighthouse of Lighthouse Park, BC

Suddenly, on our right was a sign for Lighthouse Park and we pulled into the crowded parking lot. I don’t know where those car’s owners were because it felt like we had the park to ourselves. The smell of pine and dirt, the glint of sun off the rolling ocean and the majesty of one of the province’s first light houses – it demanded a long walk in the forest and some scampering up the rock faces. We even ran into an old friend as we were leaving and got caught up.

Tim enjoying the view (and some gloating) at Lighthouse Park

It was another spontaneous afternoon that could have been very different if Tim hadn’t missed the turn. It was also a great reminder for me to not try to plan the unplanned adventure.