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Photo by: Jen Judge

"Hi, my name is Baz, and I am a St. Martin addict."I all but blurted this out while boarding a crowded flight full of people probably like me: folks who simply can't get enough of one utterly unique Caribbean island. This would, after all, be my third lengthy visit to St. Martin in a year. The first trip I took with my partner, Ian, who'd lived in St. Martin for nearly a decade and filled my ears with tales of this beach or that late-night haunt. Ours was a heavenly stay: For 11 days during the winter we indulged in cheese and chardonnay on countless beaches, filling rum-fueled nights with reggae dancing. We returned again in the summertime as a welcoming committee of sorts, bringing four friends along, piling into a time share and having more sunstroked laughs than we'd ever imagined could fit into a 37-square-mile island. St. Martin is one of the most revisited destinations in the Caribbean – people who love it love it – and its singularity is surely one reason why. The island is the smallest landmass shared between two nations, creating a culturally rich retreat that's 20.5 square miles French and 16.5 square miles Dutch – and 100 percent Caribbean. Its 100,000 residents count among them some 140 nationalities, a jumble of natives, Europeans, expat Americans and West Indians hailing from Jamaica and Haiti and Guyana, all drawn by the island's vitality. It's like you're sampling the whole Caribbean in one island. Of course, St. Martin's dynamic and diverse night life is a major draw too, along with its 32 beaches and cosmopolitan location: British Anguilla, French St. Barts, and Dutch Saba and Statia are just day-trips away. All this I knew, but this time I vowed I'd gaze upon the Dutch and French sides with fresh eyes, exploring beyond what I already knew and loved. Never mind its size; this tiny island, we devotees know, is vast indeed. Many St. Martins are there for the taking.

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First, however, I needed to feed my craving for the familiar. I'd grown used to staying on the Dutch side, so for my first week I settled in at one of the many hotels in Simpson Bay, a bustling lagoon area near the international airport, short on charm but heavy on good times. By day, it's a congested strip of shops, kitschy restaurants and strip malls; by night, it's party central: a neon-lit den of decadence fueled by obscenely cheap liquor. Whatever your preferred genre of bacchanal – American-style sports bar? Euro-friendly techno club? Live reggae party? Outré strip club? – you can indulge in it somewhere in Simpson Bay.

On my first night I ended up at Bliss, a trendy club that has the nerve to enforce a dress code (no sneakers, collared shirt required) but makes up for it in dramatic waterfront ambience. The beachside venue features an open-air dance deck and VIP tables that hang over foaming waves. I walked into the after-party for a Wyclef Jean concert, and the place was crammed with a mostly Dutch, mostly blond crowd. Wyclef himself, wearing flip-flops and silk pajamas, arrived sometime around 2 a.m., greeted with cheers and a procession of champagne bottles. The thumping techno music felt about as Caribbean as the champagne, but perched at the VIP table I'd smiled my way to, I could not have cared less.

The next morning I made my way to the capital of the Dutch side to indulge in another St. Martin pastime: shopping. Philipsburg is a flawless blend of tourist-driven tackiness (hair braiding, anyone?) and living history; signs of the 18th-century city that once was are everywhere, from the narrow steegs, or alleys, to the imposing white wooden courthouse, built in 1793. The city essentially consists of two long, parallel streets – Front Street and, yes, Back Street – that are chockablock with duty-free goodies: electronics, shoes, beachwear, bottles of Grey Goose and, at the quaint Guavaberry Emporium, which is housed in an 18th-century synagogue, St. Martin's own guavaberry rum. After sampling the tangy liqueur and making my purchases (sundress, new purse, camera) I feasted on ackee and saltfish with rice and peas at one of several Jamaican storefronts in the area, and then washed it down with espresso and a croissant at a European coffee shop next door. That's St. Martin for you: the Caribbean in a nutshell.

My next order of business (sunning and swimming) was around the corner. Great Bay Beach, bordering Philipsburg, is about as good as any "city beach" can get. It's so vast that its many chairs and umbrellas, hawked by local merchants and usually accompanied by a bucket of beer, can't begin to blanket the space. There's still plenty of room to spread a towel on a deserted tract and absorb the rays. Colossal cruise ships, docked in the distance, look like beached whales, spitting their Jonahs out by the dozen. That night I dined at a rootsy, no-frills favorite nearby, the Freedom Fighters Ital Shack, known to locals as Bushman's, after the Rastafarian who owns it. It's a slice of Jamaica, a treehouse built into the cliffs off a main road, painted in Rastafarian red, gold and green and serving an organic vegetarian cuisine called Ital.

"Just in time," Bushman's son told me as I walked in. "The drumming starts just now."

Perched on a stool beside a poster of Marcus Garvey, I ate my brown rice, soya stew and boiled plantains to the reverberation of African drumming emerging from the small music studio next door. It was a world away from cruise ships and colonial architecture – which was just the point.I spent days luxuriating in the Philipsburg area. In the water I dodged the Jet Skis, along Front Street I steered clear of tourists on rented Segways. But even amid the hustle of Great Bay there was tranquility to be found, especially under an umbrella at Captain Jack's, my preferred Front Street beach bar, for two reasons: the top-notch reggae music blasting over its speakers, and its welcoming bartender. 

"Back again, girl?" she said, greeting me with a hug. Josephine was from Dominica but had been living in St. Martin for more than 10 years. We chatted volubly as she poured my drink – it had been months, but she remembered my poison – and she chided me for staying on the Dutch side.

"I'm telling you, you've got to get to the French side, girl. That's my home."

Some days later, I followed her command. Crossing an unassuming, unguarded border into the French side, the landscape changes so dramatically, it's hard to believe you're on the same island; no wonder plenty of French-side locals rarely make it to the Dutch side, and vice versa. Exit strip malls, high-rises and frozen daiquiris; enter farms, stunning vistas of lush hills, sapphire sea and wide-open space. The drive north from Philipsburg is a pure pleasure, especially with the local radio soundtrack; an hour of channel surfing offers a musical tour of the Caribbean, including multiple languages (English, French, Spanish, a smattering of Jamaican patois), and featuring reggae, soca, and French-Caribbean zouk music.

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