St Barths By Scooter

Sarah Michell

Although BACK IN TOWN is Cape Town based and we specialise in luxury accommodation and tailor-made travel experiences here, we thought you might like to hear a few of our travel stories from other beautiful parts of the world too. We are passionate about travelling and have done so extensively. We hope that by reading some of our stories, we will inspire you to travel more and hopefully we can be a part of assisting you on your next trip, to South Africa!

St Barths is an infamous, French island in the Caribbean ocean where the rich and famous come to shop, eat and party. Their luxurious super yachts are anchored in the cozy, bustling bay. Tenders wait on the dock for their owner’s return from the captivating nightlife and gourmet restaurants.  It feels a lot like St Tropez due to the language, fashion, restaurants, tourists and the never-ending beach parties.

Lewis and I decided that the best way for us to get a true feel for the island would be by scooter. It only took us a few minutes to stumble across a small scooter hire shop down one of the narrow town alleyways, and we were set.

We spent two hours riding around the island, stopping here and there to take in the breathtaking views.  We stopped for lunch at an ordinary small café on the side of the road where we ordered a delicious, fresh baguette stuffed with mozzarella, tomato and basil, drizzled with olive oil and a dash of balsamic vinegar. It might have been simple, but was so delicious.

Although it was now around midday, we could hear loud music and shouting coming from the direction of the beach, so we decided to follow the noise. We soon realized that we were far over dressed and had landed up on the island’s most popular beach, Nikki Beach. Just like in St Tropez, it was packed with beautiful, half naked models, tables covered in empty shot glasses and DJs playing the latest, popular tunes. We bypassed the madness and took off our shoes and enjoyed a walk along the beautiful white sandy beach, took a dip in the warm Caribbean turquoise ocean before continuing on our little island adventure.

Our afternoon was spent scuba diving in the clear, warm ocean. We encountered large sea turtles, white tip reef shark, spotted eagle ray and thousands of small colourful fish. Lewis is an experienced diver; me on the other hand, am not. So when I came face to face with one of my most feared creatures for the first time, a shark (this one was only a small white tip reef shark) I instinctively grabbed our dive instructor and pushed him in front of me. This made for quite some judgment and luckily laughter too once we returned to the safety of open air and had our feet back on land.

That evening we joined the rest of our group at a popular beach bar and restaurant called Do Brazil which is right on Shell Beach (the entire beach is covered in tiny golden/orange shells) where we enjoyed fresh seafood and frozen cocktails with our feet in the sand. Followed by a spectacular sunset accompanied by a live band was the perfect closure to a fabulous day.

Let us know what you think of this post and if you would like to read more about us and our travels by commenting below or send us a direct mail on sarah@backintown.co.za or lewis@backintown.co.za we'd love to hear from you.