This is important information to all cruise ship passengers going to St. Martin!
Seems that St. Martin (at least the Dutch side) is having a problem with car break-ins. There were 14 people on our ship recently that had to be escorted through immigration due to their identification being stolen via a car break-in. This is becoming a much more common thing than anyone realizes. Ours certainly was not reported to the local police and therefore went undocumented. A woman at the purser’s desk at the same time we were there had everything stolen from her car at popular Maho Beach – except the towel she had wrapped around her.
Here you can see our car and the road leading to the beautiful Guana Bay Beach not too far from Phillipsburg.
And here is the car window smashed. We were on the beach for no more than 30 minutes with another couple whose car was not broken into. We believe that they may have startled the thieves when they came up the path to their car because we were right behind them too.
Ours happened in Guana Bay, a gorgeous and secluded beach on the Dutch side of the island. They smashed the small rear window quickly and grabbed a backpack that was sitting on the rear seat – fortunately it didn’t have much in it other than a birth certificate of my partner.
As you can see it is an incredibly beautiful beach and the water was crystal clear. No services and very few people on the beach made it pretty attractive to thieves too.
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