Upon my arrival last year in December for a vacation from the northeast, I rented a cheap Diahatsu car for a hundred dollars for a week and started to drive across the island. There is one main road which encircles both the French and Dutch sides. There are hardly any traffic lights, and the cities become extremely congested during rush hours. As I got out of the Simpson Bay area by the airport the car’s main brakes began to get softer and softer on the hills.

The island is very curious and unique in that it’s divided in two with a more developed Dutch side and a more rural French side. There are casinos and Ocean liners on the Dutch side while there is hardly a bank machine, except in Marigot on the French side.

As I continued to drive it had become dark and I was lost, I came down upon a hairpin turn on Chamba Hill above the French Quarter by the Fish Pond and suddenly realized there was no brake fluid left in the car and no way to stop. At the last moment I managed to turn into a dirt driveway and back up the hill. There was a parking lot there next to an old plantation house with blue shutters which was a small restaurant. The owner of the restaurant came out on the porch and I explained what happened and asked if I could use the phone to call the rental company. The owner was an friendly man named Tony who had a gracious smile which immediately calmed me down. It seemed as though he ran the place and lived in the back of the house. There was one American couple eating on the porch. Tony gave me his phone and explained that there we was a separate country code to call the other side of the island. I called the number on my contract and they told me it would take about ninety minutes to send over a replacement car because of all the nighttime traffic near the airport.
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