One island, two countries — the French side for the table, the Dutch side for the harbour, and the gateway to half the eastern Caribbean.
One island, two countries — the French side for the table, the Dutch side for the harbour, and the gateway to half the eastern Caribbean. Here is St Martin, arranged privately — browse it by the occasion you're marking, by what moves you, or by the season that suits you best.
What an advisor can open that an algorithm cannot. Each of these is staged on your terms — the access, the timing, the people.
Twenty-odd minutes of water separates the French side from some of the finest sand in the Caribbean. Going privately means arriving before the ferries and leaving after the last of them — a beach lunch in between with the boat waiting.
Tintamarre and the small uninhabited islands offshore, reached by tender at the hour when the day charters have turned back — a swim, a lunch on deck, and nothing else moving.
Grand Case on the French side is a single street of restaurants and one of the densest concentrations of good cooking in the region. Twenty minutes away the Dutch side keeps different hours entirely. Most people only ever find one.
Not a package — a starting point. Each is a journey we have designed and refined; your advisor reshapes it for the version only you would recognise.
The French side treated as what it is — the eating capital of this part of the Caribbean. A week of tables along Grand Case, a market morning in Marigot, and a chef who cooks in the villa on the night nobody wants to go out.
A staffed house above Baie Longue or Baie Rouge, where the beaches are long, undeveloped and almost entirely empty on a weekday — the quiet half of an island that also knows how to be loud.
The island as a base rather than a destination: a crewed day to Anguilla's beaches, another to the uninhabited cays offshore, and a lagoon behind you that shelters more yachts than anywhere else in the region.
Short enough to be spontaneous, on the one island where a twenty-minute drive changes the country, the language and the menu. The French side to sleep, the Dutch side for the evening that runs late.
Each a starting point — our advisors weave them into a single, seamless journey.
They are genuinely two countries on one island, with different languages, currencies, hours and cooking. The French side — Marigot, Grand Case, the long beaches at Baie Longue and Baie Rouge — is quieter and is where the eating is. The Dutch side holds the airport, the cruise harbour and the late evenings. Most travellers sleep on one and visit the other.
The French side, for almost every kind of trip that is not built around the harbour. The villas above Baie Longue, Baie Rouge and Terres Basses are the quietest addresses on the island and are within twenty minutes of both the airport and the Dutch side's evening.
Both, and the island suffers slightly for it. Its airport is the gateway to St Barth and Anguilla, so a great many travellers only see the terminal. Given three or four nights it stands on its own — largely because of the French side's restaurants and the water access from the lagoon.
Anguilla is roughly twenty minutes of water away and has some of the best beaches in the Caribbean. St Barth is a ten-minute light-aircraft hop or a boat transfer. The uninhabited cays offshore are a tender ride. No other island in the eastern Caribbean opens onto as much.
December through April is the dry, breezy high season, and the December holidays are the tightest fortnight of the year. Late spring is the quiet sweet spot. The island sits inside the hurricane belt, so summer and early autumn travel wants flexibility built in.
On St Martin, Princess Juliana airport on the Dutch side is where you connect for St Barth and Anguilla, so your inbound flight time is not a detail. The ten-minute light-aircraft hop to St Barth can only be flown in daylight, and Anguilla is roughly twenty-five minutes away by ferry. Land too late and the connection you came for is gone until morning.
Princess Juliana airport on St Martin is nearly finished after the Hurricane Irma reconstruction. The rebuilt departure terminal opened first, and the new arrival hall reopened in late 2024 with proper baggage handling and much faster immigration and customs. Work started in August 2026 on a curbside check-in facility that could be finished before the end of the year, so expect building work on the departures side; arrivals are done.
The ferry from St Martin to Anguilla carries three separate per-person charges: the fare, the passenger head fee and Anguilla's own port tax, and not all of them take the same payment. On the island itself, the euro is the working currency on the French side and the US dollar in practice on the Dutch side. Forest Travel hands clients a single sheet covering this rather than leaving it to a kiosk.
Tintamarre and the small uninhabited islands off St Martin are reached by tender at the hour when the day charters have turned back. The day is deliberately simple: a swim, a lunch on deck, and nothing else moving. It pairs naturally with a crewed day to Anguilla's beaches, with the lagoon behind you sheltering more yachts than anywhere else in the region.
A private charter from St Martin's French side crosses twenty-odd minutes of water to some of the finest sand in the Caribbean on Anguilla. Going privately means arriving before the ferries and leaving after the last of them, with a beach lunch in between and the boat waiting. It turns St Martin into a base rather than a destination.
Every journey here is a starting point a private advisor reshapes entirely around you — your pace, your people, the St Martin only you would recognise.
