Maho Bay is a must-visit for families, snorkelers, and first time visitors. Remember to bring swimming gear, a towel, and reef-safe sunscreen. Beach facilities include bathrooms and a covered picnic pavilion with grills.
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As compared to the more popular and more heavily photographed Trunk Bay, Maho has a more laid back vibe. The bay was once full of beautiful palm trees that leaned into the ocean but since hurricane maria in 2017 nearly all of those trees are gone. Even still, Maho Bay is a jaw-dropping spot, well worth the visit.
The planes' flight path makes Maho Beach one of the island's most notable attractions, but this stretch of sand would be a lovely spot even without its low-flying attractions. In addition to plane watching, you can enjoy great swimming and snorkeling.
Maho Beach is famed as the spot to go if you like watching planes roar overhead, but it also offers snorkeling, swimming, watersports, and world-class beach bars. St. Maarten's western shore beach offers the excitement of planes flying overhead so low you'll feel like you can touch them.
This is one of the few places in the world where aircraft can be viewed in their flight path just outside the end of the runway. Watching airliners pass over the beach is such a popular activity that daily arrivals and departures airline timetables are displayed on a board in most bars and restaurants on the beach.
Here's the deal with the Maho, planes landing arent so bad, their on top of you before you hear a thing and its over before you realize it and its pretty cool to watch. After 4 or 5 pm traffic is down to almost nil. Planes taking off are much noisier and it can be deafening.
Maho Beach, which is world-famous for its location at the very end of Princess Juliana International Airport's runway, is one of the most unusual beaches on the island of St. Martin. It's a delight for tourists who love watching planes take off and land just above their heads.
You'll be snorkeling in shallow water – between 3' and 10' deep. Along the way you'll discover shallow water rocky outcroppings that are home to a wide variety of corals including gorgonians, purple sea fans, sponges, anemones, and hard corals like Mustard coral, brain corals, Elkhorn and fire coral.
It was a fabulous place. But Maho Bay's lease ran out, it was forced to close, and its owners are still struggling to attract the same crowd of unpretentious tourists to a much smaller number of tents far down the coast of St. John.
The best way to get from St Maarten cruise port to Maho Beach without a pre-booked excursion, is to take a taxi. The journey is way too long to walk, and costs around $15-20 per person depending on how many are in the car. Leave the piers and head to the right, where there's a row of taxis waiting to leave.
The best time when we went which was in December 2016 was early to late afternoon for the big planes. The place was crazy busy but there were quite a few cruise ships in that day. Hope that helps. Helpful?
The family-friendly Sonesta Maho Beach Resort and the adults-only Sonesta Ocean Point Resort in St. Maarten, the Dutch-side of the dual-island nation, have rebuilt and renovated after Hurricane Irma pummeled the dual-nation island nearly two years ago.
Simpson Bay – Once famous for the families who made their living from fishing, Simpson Bay is a long sandy beach just south of the airport on the west end. The sand is soft and the waves are generally calm. This beach is never crowded and offers a wonderful spot to watch the sunsets.
Sunset Beach Bar & Grill has the flight arrivals listed on a surfboard and is a top-rated spot for plane watching near Maho Beach. Tortuga Maho is another nearby restaurant to grab food and watch planes fly over.
Most flights are intended to spend as little time as possible over water, since storms are more common over the ocean than on land. An aircraft would not be safe to fly over the Pacific Ocean due to the stormy weather and frequent lightning strikes that occur there.
Maho Beach is unusually close to the threshold of a runway and is directly under the flight path, resulting in aircraft on their final approach flying over the beach at altitudes of less than 100 feet (30 m) above ground level.
Jet streams, which are a system of air currents that circle the Earth many miles above the planet's surface, are another reason why aircraft don't fly over the Pacific Ocean. Due to Earth's rotation, these air currents often move from West to East.