We rang the booking office (yes we have a phone in St Martin – when you are staying so long and buying half of America’s gross exports – you need one) and they said that they could only make reservations in person so next day off we trot to the office in the Pelican Resort and reserve our seats. The nice lady behind the counter instructs us very clearly and firmly to arrive before 0800 the next morning with our passports to finalise the tickets and the ferry would depart at 0900.
The day of the big trip arrives and we struggle up, get the dinghy down, splash through the bay and tie up at Simpson Bay Marina and walk to Pelican Resort. This is all pretty difficult to do when you’re half asleep (or half of you is half asleep) but we manage to arrive before 0800 to find the office door ajar, but a closed sign on it – it doesn’t open until 0815! Why make us get there before 0800 – is this island time thinking or what? Make sure the tourists get to experience waiting even though the office is efficient or something?
Anyway we get processed and wait....................... and then at 0915, our ferry is called (it is the only one of the day and, like the old Jewish ladies in the Elsternwick cinema, I make my way to the front of the queue dragging Karen behind as I want to get the best seat on the boat, and I come face to face with the Vomit Comet!
To say that the Vomit Comet (you can see I like this name) is an interesting boat or deserving of its name is an understatement. Check it out – ugly huh – like a caravan strapped on pontoons? And this was supposed to deliver us safely and swiftly to Saba...
Once we were inside and settled with our seats (with ventilation) the briefing by the captain gave me no more confidence. He explained that there were only 2 rubbish bins on the boat (fore and aft in the centre of the boat) and that the other 20 or so waste paper bins with liners were for personal use should the trip not agree with one’s stomach..... hence the name.
As it turned out the trip was fast and smooth, and if there had of been a good time to take the big boat to Saba, today was the day as there was no seas to speak of and when we arrived in Saba the mooring field was devoid of yachts almost completely. Oh well, this was our adventure.
As you can see in the above photo, Saba is not your palm lined sandy Caribbean island and is really inhospitable to human inhabitation, being steep to, few “beaches” and very mountainous. It is however a story of man’s pig-headedness in making harsh environments their own. The first hint of this is Ladder Bay, a small harbour with 524 steps up the side of a cliff, up which all materials bought to Saba where man handled until about the mid-1900s.
Now Saba is part of the Dutch Antilles (or was until recently and I am unsure what it status is currently), but in the 40’s they sought assistance from the Dutch Government to build a road across the mountainous island and were told it was impossible, so a local dude took a correspondence course in road building and over the next 20 odd years the locals built their road across the island using only hand tools and wheel barrows... The road up from the port gave us an idea how hard this would have been.
Anyway enough of the history, on arriving on the island and clearing immigration, we met our taxi driver, Gloria – the lady with the smile – and hopped aboard her taxi and commenced a very informative tour that showed us:
1. The hospital
2. The old people’s home (that is attached to the hospital and serviced by the same medical staff)
3. The post office
4. The two banks with their ATMs
And a host of other uninteresting stuff like :
1. the church with the painted ceiling
2. The glass blowing studio
3. The Airport (another piece of tenacious engineering) The story goes that the locals hired a pilot from St Barts to find a piece of the island he thought he could land on, they flattened it and he landed and so began the construction of their airport!
4. Before delivering us to Mount Scenery for the hiking part of the tour. We walked up about 200,000 stairs (ok maybe 200 meters and 50 stairs) before deciding that a trip in the downward direction was more to our liking so we sweated our way back down to town before lunch.
We thought that we would while away the time browsing through gift shops with local embroidery (yeah I’m really into that) and stroll through the museum but the museum was closed and the 2 gift shops took 10 minutes so it was off to the pub! (now that is my sort of tour). We scored the last table outside at Scout’s Place and enjoyed fish and chips in beer batter and a quite lager whilst advertising our friend Ricki’s bar in Grenada for those passing through.
We thought we may have missed something so after lunch we headed back out into town and after 20 minutes of searching we were again back at Scout’s Place enjoying the magnificent scenery and another cool lager.
Gloria arrived abit after the allocated time but hey, we are on island time and we were sure that the Vomit Comet would wait on us…. We hoped.
We arrived back is St Martin safe and sound after a quick trip back, and while I may sound a bit sarcastic in this blog, we had a fantastic day on the island and the tour was very enjoyable. If I was to do it again, I think I would do an over nighter so we could maybe fit in a dive as well.
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Janette Boluch
DATE: 5/18/2011 11:52:05 PM
Loved your blog
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Silke
URL: http://www.la-palma-sailing.com
DATE: 5/19/2011 12:02:35 AM
It's early (very early :o)) morning here on the Canaries, just wanted to shutdown the old computer and got stuck with our post. Just great! Thanks a lot for keeping us updated, loved to hear your voice after such a long time the other day (thanks Skype - even though connection was poor). Anyway looking forward to meeting you next year on Cuba.....Keep on going with your blog. Big hugs Silke XX
