ne of the most vivid images of our collection of Caribbean whirlwinds happened here on French St. Martin. We were driving along in what was suddenly a very pastoral setting, with fields on either side of us, when one of us looked in the rearview mirror. There, about four feet from our taillights, was a beautiful woman dressed in a Gaultier bustier riding a three-wheeler dune bike. Her long brunette hair whipped behind her Armani sunglasses. She was the last thing we expected to see tailgating us. It was riveting. Realizing that we had to look at the road again to make sure we didn't drive off it, we looked straight ahead quickly and glanced back in the mirror. She was gone. A hallucination, perhaps? No, there she was zooming ahead of us on that bike going eighty miles an hour, her hair flowing behind her like a black swan flapping its wings. Welcome to St. Martin, a brusque Gallic brushstroke in the West Indies.

Split in half and co-governed by France and the Netherlands, St. Martin/St. Maarten is the most populous island in the Caribbean. The Dutch side is a madhouse and much too developed. The slightly larger French side is also manic and overdeveloped, but it's more stylish and is home to some of the best restaurants in the Caribbean. There are no immigration or Customs posts between the two sides, just road markers indicating the boundaries. The island has seen tremendous expansion in the last two decades. Developers have essentially ruined Dutch St. Maarten, and only one beach there, Cupecoy, still remains somewhat in its natural state. The Dutch side is also home to several tatty-looking casinos, the huge Juliana International Airport, and the island's main cruise-ship port, Philipsburg, a capital that has become very similar to Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas (avoidable, except for shopping). Add to this that the Dutch side is still suffering the aftereffects of Hurricane Luis in 1995: closed resorts and a whimpering economy. By contrast, French St. Martin recovered from Luis quickly and, despite its massive development, retains a glimmer of what the island used to be, especially in Grand Case. If you decide to come here, by all means stay on the French side.

Why go to St. Martin at all when there are other, better choices? Certainly there are many Americans who love this cluttered little isle and wing down to their condo or timeshare once or twice each winter. Probably the best reason to come here is to get a taste of France: St. Martin is the most affordable of the French West Indies, there are excellent restaurants, and English is spoken everywhere (the latter is not the case on Martinique or Guadeloupe). You can get air/land packages and charter flights that are very reasonable. Both sides are duty-free ports, so shopping frenzies are a daily event - it's a great place to snag that Rolex or Tag Heuer you always wanted. The other reason to come here is that it's easy to get to - connections on small planes, which eat up precious time, are not necessary from major East Coast cities. The island is also the principal gateway for the smaller satellite islands around it - St. Barts, Saba, St. Eustatius, Anguilla - which makes this a good base for sampling two or three of these islands on one trip. Finally, the French side does get French tourists looking for something different from the other French islands, and of course there are North Americans galore. So the mix is actually quite interesting.