PINEL ISLAND 2025

We've been here in the past and knew we wanted to come back. This time we were staying on the island and drove over to the ferry. We were taking the ferry this time (last time we did the kayaking over).

The cost to ride over on the ferry is $12/pp for a round trip ticket. Beware, the smell is horrible at the ferry due to the sargassum that always seems to lurk in that area.

It's a short 6 minute ride over to Pinel Island.

There are 2 restaurants on the island to pick from: Yellow Beach and Karibuni. Yellow Beach is the first place you come to and right beside the dock. We decided to just plant ourselves there for the day. Chairs would be $35 for 2 and came with an umbrella.

The water wasn't as clear as it was last time (from what I can remember). Maybe because of the sargassum.

The beach area:

Yellow Beach had some interesting things around it...

The restrooms:

Here is the menu to Yellow Beach:

I have to say the food was great! So were the drinks!!

What a beautiful beach:

I did walk over to the other restaurant to have a look around.

They had baskets of fresh Lobster over there in the water.

More of the water and beach area:

If you are interested in snorkeling, the best place to go is on the opposite side of the dock that the ferry drops you off at. They used to have a snorkeling trail but I believe the actual "trail" with markings are now gone and you just go on your own.

Under the bridge you'll find plenty of little fishies!

Once I made it under the dock and over to the other side I started exploring. I really wouldn't call it "good" snorkeling but there were things to see. I immediately noticed this pink tipped anemone. They are so pretty and not your "normal" green anemone's you usually see.

Plenty of Blue Stripped Grunts in the area:

There were some really big one's too. I'm not sure I have seen them this big before:

A Butterfly fish, Slippery Dick Wrasse and a Surgeon Fish:

As I was just floating along slowly (because that's when you see the most) I noticed something green. It was bright green. It was moving. I would appear and then disappear. Something was in the rock and reaching out every so often. I had to know what it was! See the claw?

I waited around for awhile and out popped a Green Clinging Crab! This snorkeling trip is turning out to be quite interesting and I was only a few feet from the shore!

As I was watching him, something else caught my eye on the rock next to it. It was moving right along quickly and would pop in and out of rocks. Yep, it was a Mantis Shrimp.

A Slippery Dick Wrasse was swimming by and he snatched a crab along the way. I watched him tear it apart and eat it. He still has part of it in his mouth.

More very large Grunts. They were really big in this area. The pictures don't begin to show the size of these things!

Here's the normal anemone's that you usually see when snorkeling:

A Red Sea Urchin. Do you know that they can live up to 100 years old?

Some dark Green Star Polyps:

I think this is a Black Sea Bass although it has super pouty big lips like a grouper so I'm not 100% sure. I know I've seen them in the past.

Then I spotted something really colorful and headed that way. I guess this is a Giant Anemone in a beautiful pinkish purple color. It was absolutely gorgeous! It was also ginormous! Like I don't think I have seen one quite this big before. It was over a very large rock and I really wished the pictures would show just how big it was.

A very large Bar Jack fish:

Another Pink Tipped Anemone:

It was a great day snorkeling and at the beach. I highly recommend coming here for the day. It's such a beautiful place!

If you are interested in reading my full review of this place (along with all of our antics) you can find it under my St Maarten land review. I cut these down on the ports board for ease of seeing the places.