Entertainment at Maho Beach Resort, St. Marteen

The Maho Beach Resort was an unlikely end to a gorgeous Caribbean vacation on Anguilla, but that’s where it ended in a massive hotel with over five hundred rooms, a casino, a vast pool with a bar in it, people sipping cocktails, playing bingo, smoking cigarettes, relaxing.  On the beach next to the hotel, a beautiful white sand crescent, jumbo jets roared in from Paris and Amsterdam, 747s, 767s, 757s to touch down just on the other side of a barbed wire fence, one after the next, glinting in the sun on the horizon, growing bigger and bigger until they were right above, so close it seemed you could jump up and touch their bellies.  When they weren’t landing they were taking off, blasting several hundred tons of thrust from both engines, blowing sand ferociously like thousands of small needles piercing the skin, making waves in the sea, causing people to hang onto the fence.  Planes have never seemed possible to me somehow, like extraordinary, potent magic.  Here the show was free; you watch it from your beach towel.

Check out Josef Hoflehner’s photos.