Written on the beach: Happy Bay, St Martin.

The sun competes with the wind for fierceness today. Same shockingly bright blue-green water gleaming under azure sky. Same beach filled with cows, naked people, and partially clothed people – and by filled I mean one or two people, here or there, along a kilometer or more of beach. The small herd of beef stock lounges under the palm trees and Caribbean scrub.

Sailboats bob. Jet skis roar by once an hour, sounding like an emergency, like an air raid. A naked man shooes away the cows coming to check out the WideEyedBeachFunks. He claps energetically, “git! git on!” he tells them. They amble away, looking not too bright. He turns to me all bronze-tan and anatomical. “I’m a farmer,” he says in a Missouri twang. “Thank you,” I tell him, eyes wide behind my incognito sunglasses.

Vacation. Final beach day.