"Good morning, good morning," I said as I boarded a bus in St. Maarten recently for the short ride from Maho Beach to Philipsburg.
The five passengers already aboard mumbled greetings in kind as I took my seat.
Bus etiquette is an important part of life on the Dutch-French island of St. Martin. Passengers always thank the driver when getting off the bus.
The vehicles make up a loose conglomeration of approximately 180 privately operated white vans identified by the letter B (for business) on their license plates and signs in their front windows indicating their routes.
The fare is $2, cash only, in local currency or U.S. dollars. Drivers stop wherever passengers want to get on or off.
Taxis have the letter T on their license plates; many are black SUVs, and the fares are much higher.
Sampling the bus system got me around the island well and introduced me to local attractions and people I've missed on earlier trips.
Pinel Island in St. Martin is a popular daytrip for visitors.
It was my first visit to the island since Hurricane Irma hit in September 2017. There's been much recovery and progress since then, but every person I met still had an Irma story to tell.
"My home is gone," a waitress at the Sonesta Maho Beach Resort, Casino & Spa told me at breakfast one morning. "I lost everything, but I'm OK, my kids are OK. We stay with relatives, and I have my job."
Employees at that hotel and its sister property, the adjacent Sonesta Ocean Point, both entirely rebuilt and reopened, benefitted from the Hospitality First initiative, a program developed by the St. Maarten Training Foundation and spearheaded by the Maho Group, owners of the two Sonesta resorts, among others.
The program prevented mass layoffs after Irma by training and helping hospitality workers sharpen job skills.
I met Sheryl Attidor, head bartender at the Point bar at the Sonesta Ocean Point. She's been with Sonesta for 19 years, invented the popular BBC special (a blender mix of Baileys Irish Cream, bananas and Kahlua) and acknowledged that life after Irma "was a challenge, but here I am today."
I took the bus to meet Ras Bushman, a Rastafarian originally from Curacao who has become a St. Maarten local legend since his arrival in 1985.
Bushman, a musician, farmer and restaurant owner, operates the colorful Freedom Fighters Ital Shack, the only vegetarian restaurant on the island.
The small restaurant, whose name refers to the Rasta way of living known as ital, is surrounded by gardens and trees and came through Irma unscathed.
"We were in Ethiopia when the storm came," Bushman said. "People got word to me. It was a sign. With the food that made it through the storm, we fed a lot of people."
The Ital Shack's menu, organic and natural, is presided over by Bushman's wife, Raisa, in a tiny kitchen at the rear of the shack. Small plates are $9, large plates are $12 and fresh juices are $2.
The menu changes daily and features fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices grown by Bushman on farmland he owns on the island.
"I even grow watermelon. Everyone said watermelon would not grow here. I grow it," Bushman said proudly.
Anthony Bourdain included a visit to and a meal with Bushman on an episode of his show "A Cook's Tour" in 2003.
The Ital Shack is open daily Sundays through Fridays. Saturdays are spent cooking for the Redemption Party that takes place every Saturday night, with music from the Freedom Fighters band and Bushman holding court on subjects from the legalization of pot to his excitement over his three grandchildren "with a fourth on the way."
Some of the many flavored rhums produced by Topper’s Rhum Distillery on St. Maarten. Photo Credit: Gay Nagle Myers
My next stop, with transport once again by bus, was Topper's, a popular restaurant and bar since 2006. Its distillery, called Topper's Rhum and five minutes away by car, opened in 2012.
The restaurant is open every day of the year from breakfast through dinner (on Christmas Day, owner Topper Daboul, along with his wife, Melanie, and daughter Marni and their families, opens at 5 p.m., although sandwiches are set out earlier in the day for whoever stops by).
"We have a late-night license for the bar, so we offer karaoke every night after the kitchen closes at 10 p.m.," Marni Daboul said.
Although the restaurant had some equipment damage after Irma,Topper did reopen four days after Irma, setting up a huge barbecue in front of the restaurant, grilling food from his inventory and from locals who had lost power.
Topper's Rhum, a locally made tasting rhum, is the only spirit distilled, blended, bottled and exported from St. Maarten to six countries and 24 states in the U.S. (The spelling helps distinguish rhum, distilled from sugar cane, from rum, which is distilled from molasses.)
A busload of cruise passengers was touring the 6,000-square-foot distillery when I was there. Many were gathered in front of the Rhum on Tap tasting bar, enjoying samples of the many flavored rhums.
On days when cruise ships call, the distillery tour often is a stop for more than 400 passengers.
"The banana, vanilla and cinnamon rhum flavor is the most popular," Melanie Daboul said. With her background in computer science and graphic design, she came up with the colorful bottle designs as well as the various blends.
Although the French side of the island still bears evidence of Irma's unwelcome visit in damaged homes and shops, many with blue tarps covering roofs, there has been much progress.
Grand Case Beach Club has 50 of its 75 rooms back in operation; 52 rooms out of 65 are open at the Esmeralda Resort; the 56-room La Playa Orient Bay reopens July 1; and tourists are packing the six reopened beach bars along Orient Beach as well as several of the bistros and restaurants in Grand Case noted for their fine French cuisine.
With 862 rooms available in hotels, timeshares and guesthouses out of the pre-Irma inventory of 1,096 in St. Martin, the French side is making a steady climb back.
One of the vendors at the Marigot market told me that business has picked up. "We have more visitors now," she said. "When they ask if we are OK, we say we will be."