St. Martin

The region changes with the ground. Round the western edge the land flattens into the Terres Basses, a low, dry plain of scrub, salt ponds and wind, where the roads run straight and the hills step back to the horizon. Head east and the island rises into green ridges, the air cooler at the top and the bends tighter, with houses perched on slopes and washing hung between them. The shoreline keeps shifting character too. Around the lagoon at Simpson Bay the water is calm and busy with masts, while the Atlantic side breaks in long, unhurried lines. Each stretch feels like a different country, though it is only a few minutes by car from one to the next.

Marigot is the administrative heart, a harbour town of cafés, arcaded pavements and a morning market where fishermen's catch is sold beside bags of local spices and cassava bread. Grand Case, further up the coast, is slower and more intimate: a single curving street of restaurants where the smoke from grills drifts across the road at dusk and the talk is of the day's catch. Ask for a table on the terrace and you will watch the sun settle behind the lagoon while the waiter brings out a bottle of cold rosé without being asked. Inland, the villages keep their own rhythm, with bakeries opening early and church bells doing the work of clocks. A day here means walking more than you planned, eating standing up, and losing track of which side of the border you started on.

The coast, though, is where the place settles into you. Orient Bay's long curve of pale sand is the kind of beach that makes a person forget their phone exists, the water shallow and clear enough to see the ripple patterns on the floor. Further round, the sea turns wilder and the rocks take over, and the wind carries salt up to the lookout points, where the whole island seems to fall away below you in green and grey and blue. You leave with sand in your shoes and a sunburn you did not mean to earn. What stays is the wish to come back and stay longer, to walk the Terres Basses at dawn once more, to sit in Grand Case until the lights come on across the water, and to see whether the island looks any different from the other side.