After successful years as a real estate developer in South Florida, I decided fourteen years ago to call St Maarten home. I had completed a large project in Boca Raton and was ready to take my boat and travel the Caribbean. After visiting many islands, many months later, it was St Maarten/St Martin which held my attention. Here I found the perfect combination of friendly (and commercially successful) Caribbean people as hosts to a cosmopolitan community of expatriates; I found modern conveniences, allowing for a truly comfortable lifestyle and of course the great beaches and natural features of a tropical island.

It took a while until I understood St Maarten’s other advantages: the very open business climate, stimulated by stable legal systems on both the island’s Dutch and French side. The airport, with daily connections to most major US cities and direct flights to Europe. For business reasons, I had to commute to my native Germany several times per year, and being stationed in St Maarten turned out to be as convenient as Miami has been the years before. And things got better over the years: telecommunications made huge progress, with broadband Internet access being the standard now and allowing cheap Voice Over IP phone service.

There were set-backs as well: Hurricanes Luis in 1995 and Lenny in 1999 were dramatic reminders to stick to tough building codes... and the island’s developers did. I’m impressed that the local administrations were since able to use their limited resources to bury most utilities underground and St Maarten/St Martin is now well prepared to weather a strong storm.