The Unexpected Art of Travel (And Why Jet Blast Might Be a Metaphor for Life)

Sometimes you don’t stop the chaos, you learn to embrace it. After all, life—like travel—is a series of beautiful disasters.

After my adventure in Curaçao and Peru, the Brit and I kept in touch—surprisingly, the time difference worked in our favor. While most of the world slept, I would head to the gym, and there he was, three hours ahead in New York, texting me, his day already in full swing.

We connected over the thrill of traveling, of spontaneous plans, and that oh-so-familiar wanderlust that drives you to click "book" on a flight just because the idea of staying still feels... suffocating. But here’s the thing about travel—it doesn’t always go as planned. And sometimes, that’s where the real magic happens.

Items that I packed for my trip to Sint Maarten / St. Martin.

I should have known that my post-Caribbean recovery wasn’t going to be smooth sailing when I returned from my trip with more than just a sunburn—I brought home a ruptured eardrum, courtesy of an undersea aquafari in Curaçao. And in classic fashion, I somehow managed to exacerbate it by heading from ocean depth to 12,000 feet of Andean altitude, because what’s a vacation without a little medical drama? Enter: an ENT visit, a tube in my right ear, and the sobering realization that keeping my ear dry would be the cherry on top of my tropical Caribbean holiday where I would be meeting the Brit.

But three days post-surgery, I was boarding a plane to Sint Maarten to meet the Brit at the iconic Maho Beach—, the one where jets practically graze your head as they land. I had seen it in videos countless times, and the idea of standing under a plane’s final descent was too good of a bucket list item to pass up.

We had talked about this trip for months, plotting and planning between texts, and snagging a Black Friday deal at the Sonesta Maho Beach Resort. The adults-only side looked way nicer, but we went with the family-friendly option to save a few bucks.

Funny now. Was not so funny on February 1st on my way to the airport.

Fast forward to early February. As I’m about to head to the airport, a well-meaning volunteer at my nonprofit—who happened to be a retired travel agent—Googled the resort for me. Her findings? The hotel’s opening had been postponed, thanks to ongoing reconstruction from a hurricane. Fabulous.

I spent the entire four-hour drive to San Francisco's airport calling the resort, but no one picked up. I refused to let a non-answering hotel come between me and Maho Beach. Plan A: Hope we’d stay at the hotel that is supposedly closed. Plan B: Find another hotel. Plan C: Take a boat to another island. Worst case? We’d fly somewhere else. I mean, I wasn’t not going to stand under a landing airplane.

By the time I made it to the airport, it was pouring rain and standstill traffic —naturally—and I missed check-in by ten minutes due to some unwritten Copa Airlines rule, though I somehow sweet-talked my way past a disgruntled airline employee. And so began the first leg of what felt like a travel episode of The Amazing Race.

The Brit and I had agreed to meet in Sint Maarten, me flying in through Panama, him through Miami. And when my plane started its descent, the view out the window was pure postcard material—the Caribbean waters an impossible shade of blue. I arrived first, ready to hit an airport bar. Except... there wasn’t one. Nor was there anywhere to sit after collecting my luggage, so I perched on my oversized suitcase, initially patiently but then not so when there wasn't much in the way of Wi-Fi on the island. I pulled out the copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F#$% that I brought with me and did my best to read while I was surrounded by people coming and going.

As was the case in the past, I stumbled upon an excerpt that resonated with me at that moment, but I couldn't figure out why. I snapped a photo of it.

“We need some sort of existential crisis to take an objective look at how we’ve been deriving meaning in our life, and then consider changing course. You could call it “hitting bottom” or “having an existential crisis.” I prefer to call it “weathering the shitstorm.” Choose what suits you," according to author, Mark Manson.

Eventually, the Brit arrived, and we made our way to the rental car area where there was the first of many surprises: the car they gave us was riddled with golf-ball-sized dents from Hurricane Irma a year and a half earlier, in 2017. It turns out, the entire island still bore the scars of the storm. What was this about weathering a shitstorm?

The Sonesta Maho Beach Resort's entrance. Definitely family friendly.

Driving through Sint Maarten, Waze led us in circles until we finally stumbled upon a small sign directing us to the Sonesta. I illegally parked to go into the office that was still under construction, unsure exactly what to do after the Brit had last his patience with me and criticized me for chewing gum while, in reality, I was trying to decide where to drive us.

I pondered sarcastically asking him if he'd like to drive, but decide against it. Not my style.

Apparently, the family-friendly side—the one we had booked—was still under construction. Great. At least we’d been upgraded to the Sonesta Ocean Point Resort. But it would have been nice if someone have told me that sooner.

The staff in the construction office tells us that our hotel is, indeed, still under construction, but we've been upgraded and that we've been upgraded to the adults-only Sonesta Ocean Point Resort. They pointed us to a parking structure entrance that appeared to be an entrance to a construction site, so we hopped back into the weather-beaten Toyota Corolla and parked. We dragged our luggage over broken concrete, nails, and bolts to a swanky hotel, but had to check in at a room-turned-front desk office.

After nearly no sleep during my redeye and the frustrations up until this point, I finally spoke up about their inability to answer a telephone and the complete lack of signage on how to get into the hotel. The employee halfheartedly apologized. "We are behind the construction schedule after Hurricane Irma," the employee tells me, causing even more frustration. Exponential frustration, if you will.

The employee put bracelets on our wrists and dryly explained how an all-inclusive resort works given this is my first experience.

Once we finally made it to our room, n that moment, all I wanted was a nap, the Brit mercifully agreeing that sleep was the best way to hit reset.

When we woke up, we ventured down to the hotel bar—only to find that they were out of everything we tried to order. So, we settled for some mediocre white wine and decided to head to Maho Beach for that bucket-list experience of planes soaring inches above our heads.

The interesting thing abut that island is that Sint Maarten (the southern half of the island, part of the Netherlands) shares a border with Saint Martin (the northern half of the island, part of France). The island has been divided since the signing of the Treaty of Concordia in 1648, which today remains as one of the oldest treaties still in effect. The original treaty allows for freedom to move between the two sides. While the border is only marked in one location with a landmark, you can't really tell if you're in the Netherlands or France unless you pay attention to the architecture of the buildings.

Maho Beach is on the Dutch side of the island with a hybrid Netherlands-Caribbean architectural vibe.

As we approached the beach, I managed to slice my toe open on a jagged piece of concrete because I was wearing flip flops. Perfect. Blood poured out, but I didn't want to turn back given it was a trek back to the hotel and I didn't realize how badly I injured myself.

The beach was smaller than I had imagined, and the atmosphere was a bit more muted than the YouTube videos I’d devoured. There is a small commercial area on one side of the beach and a small beach bar on the other, which a road/airport fence and the ocean that run nearly parallel. The beach bar features a surfboard where they write the flight schedules so tourists know when the expect low flying aircraft overhead. There aren't many flights, apparently still a byproduct of Hurricane Irma. No online travel blogs warned of this when I did my research prior to booking the trip. Initially, we watch a few small planes land over our heads. Soon enough, however, a Spirit Airlines jet began to take off. I watched, amused, as the jet blast hurled sand, towels, and even people into the ocean. There’s something strangely satisfying about watching people brace themselves against a force so utterly beyond their control. And that’s when it hit me: travel is just like that.

The Brit and I head back to our room where I was able to clean out my wound and add bandages, grateful that I was still carrying around a makeshift first aid kit that I created when I went to Africa the year prior. We changed our clothes, walked back through the construction zone to the beat up rental car, and headed to the Saint Martin, the French side of the island.

The French side.

The trip to the French side of the island did not last long. Everything looked pretty run down. The sun began to set and we questioned our safety, so we stopped to take a few photos of the harbor in Marigot and then turned around and left. Back at the hotel, we ordered calamari to share. Not bad, though the tarter sauce consistency was akin to potato salad.

Travel, like life, has a way of taking your perfectly laid plans, crumpling them up, and tossing them into the nearest jet blast. And there I was, holding on to my metaphorical seatbelt, watching planes launch people into the ocean. Somehow, it was both hilarious and fitting. Maybe that’s the lesson, I thought—you don’t stop the chaos, you learn to laugh in the wind.

Patience, I realized, is a luxury you have to give yourself. Between ruptured eardrums, a wounded big toe, and a hotel still rebuilding itself post-hurricane, things weren’t going according to plan. But maybe the problem wasn’t the plan; maybe it was that I had expected one at all. After all, what is travel if not a series of beautiful disasters waiting to be narrated over drinks later?

Maho Beach as seen from the restaurant with mediocre food and wine at the Sonesta Ocean Point Resort.

Sitting there with the Brit, sharing stories of botched travels, I realized it wasn’t the place or the view that would stick with me. It was this—the mess, the detours, the scraped knees and missed flights. It’s in the unexpected moments that you find the best stories—and the truest connections.

And on that note, we called it a night as we had an early ferry to "champagne wishes and caviar dreams," as Robin Leach used to say on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.