I saw my brother off on the plane this afternoon after an intense twelve days, rambled up Hell’s Gate in record time following beautiful girls who just happened to be walking up as well, realized I forgot today’s blogpost, attempted to meet a French scientist in The Bottom, chatted with mi amigo Michael Irish, and at long last, here I be with you, listening to the wind blow fiercely here in St John’s. C’est la vie here on Saba, friends. Small wonder I’m sharing these floaty, cloudscapes over the mountain, eh? Just that kinda mood.
Brother Michael leaves Monday, so after doing a final pair of dives for him with our Sea Saba friends Aaron and Vicky, we spent a quiet Saturday evening at the Vineyard Cottage…aka home…resting up for Mt Scenery tomorrow morning, his final hike of the island. It’s been quick and delightfully fun in the way that all vacations are, and I’m thinking he’ll leave with a little of the fondness I have for Saba and its friendly culture and of course, dynamic vistas above and below the water.
The picture today is an 8am sunrise picture over Core Gut along the Spring Bay trail ridge descent. Lens flare murks up the foreground cactus a bit, but not so much I didn’t think it worth sharing…hope you agree. ‘Til tomorrow, have yourselves a great day!
Saban villages are lovely settings for these red tin roof cottages and houses, their wash white painted shingles, their green gabled shutters. You walk the friendly Road and people young and old greet you with a variety of waves and acknowledgements; I think brother Michael has catalogued ten or more different waves in his visit here. Those of you who havent been, put Saba on up your bucket list and come here one day to witness in person what I’ve tried to convey in this blog, this charming rock and its rugged shores and guts and mountains, its hardworking people.
When two photographers walk together, particularly brothers, often as not, they happen upon scenes or settings where they both see the image to be captured; so it is with today’s picture. We were on our way through The Bottom to hike The Ladder when we turned the corner near the Thomas Dinzey cemetery and came upon this juxtaposition of Saban houses against Paris Hill greenery, a clouded sky above. We both saw it at almost the same time…I snapped a few pics, he snapped a few pics, here’s my favorite of mine. Hope you enjoy it!
I encourage everyone to dig back in the blog archives if you haven’t been following the blog on any regular basis; there’s lots of fun and beautiful pictures of Saba from many perspectives. Interesting to me is that all the sunrises have a different character about them to the point where they become a repeat subject, but I can’t help it; they’re gorgeous to me.
Brother and I dived this morning, and he did his first deep dive, saw his first reef shark and anemone. In the evening, we had pizza at Guido’s in Windwardside for Valentine’s Day din-din, shared with Andrew, a talented underwater photographer and Olly, two of our Sea Saba dive instructor pals, talking about diving, photography, music, and women to the pleasant fizz of El Presidente beer. The walk home was a night full of stars and a bladed crescent moon nestled in a shroud of glowing clouds. Not a bad day on this blissfully quiet island.
Waves Crash Ashore At Spring Bay, Saba, Dutch Caribbean
Yo Ho Ho, And A Hallmark Gift Card In A Bottle of Rum
Waves smashing into every Saban shore, its craggy rocks, its vast ocean square and flat to the distant horizon. If I was a pirate, Saba would be my first choice, too; no wonder Columbus took a quick gander, mistook the perpetual fog on Mt Scenery for a smoking volcano, and headed straight for Statia without landing here.
What’re YOU doing for Valentine’s Day, that most treasured of love and courtship holidays? I’m listening to angsty friends complain about its commerciality, that it’s an invented holiday for card company profits, but not only has it been around since the Middle Ages as a celebration of love, but I think they’re missing the point. Certainly, you should celebrate your significant other all throughout the year, but everyone’s so endlessly busy in day to day life, why not have a holiday just to slow you down a bit and have a good excuse to take some missing quality time together, eh?
Sappy? Maybe, but If V-Day is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. Bless all of you and give your loved one a smooch and a hug today, just because you can.
Can’t help it. Keep finding myself drawn back to the Captain’s Quarters ruins here on Saba, because so much beautiful stuff has grown over it. Do you agree?
Scuba divers new to a location, and particularly new to diving, as my visiting brother is, have no frame of reference for sighting (relatively) rare aquatic life around Saba. They simply think this is what those of us who dive often around here see nearly every dive. In any case, today, our bundle of smiles and energy Sea Saba dive instructor Kelly took us to the windward side dive site of Big Rock Market and 5 minutes later, we spotted bright yellow gorgeous seahorse wrapped around a rope coral, then he let go and started swimming around. Perfectly elegant and moving to be in the water with the little fella. Same dive had two eels (my first spotted and a baby green), stingray, bro’s first shark (nurse), and much much more. Of course, no one had a camera. Gaaaaah – sorry about that.
A very full and foodie crazy day on Saba, rambling down the ridges and across guts and snapping pictures of Spring Bay/Kelbe’s Ridge in the early AM, an afternoon enjoying the splendid lunch made by our friend Marie Petit at her and Bob’s home in Hell’s Gate: a passion fruit-grape-banana smoothie, walnut-spinach-apple salad, seared tuna, grilled tomatoes and spices, capers and cream over mahi mahi.
Homemade Lunch After A Hard Saba Hike, Yum!
Later on, dinner at Brigadoon netted us fennel-tomato-onion sauce over dolphin tail snapper. Finishing up the evening, we chilled with our Sea Saba friend Becca and her man Johnny, who’s a chef at Ecolodge. More premier barbecue fixin’s….and a little suds to wash it down. So many premier cooks on the isle. Food is love, is it not?
As you meander down below Windwardside proper and edge upon the remains of Captain’s Quarters below the hill, there is a square concrete catch basin on your right, just below weathered beams and frames that stand by themselves, undaunted by the years that’ve passed since Hurricane Georges in 1998. I don’t know what it was when the building was there, but the basin has taken on a pond life of its own, guppies darting about, lily like plants and their water reflections, colorful pink coral vine and other beautiful flowers growing wild around it. Every time I go by it, I just put my face up close and watch it for a while, life among the ruins.
Michael Siu On The Sandy Cruz Trail, Saba, Dutch Caribbean
The Joy of Hiking The Rainforest
The locals and expats who live on the island of Saba often cite the Sandy Cruz trail as their favorite. Sandy Cruz traverses the north side of the island across several guts, and does so almost entirely under the cooling canopy of rainforest flora, excepting one short breakout strip that has a 180 degree vantage point to the wide Caribbean.
The other thing about hiking the trails of Saba other than Mt Scenery is that they are more often than not lightly traveled; its possible to spend a couple hours out and see no one, just the chirping of tropical birds, the wind in the giant leaves, the chatter of occasional rain onto the canopy above. On Sandy Cruz, there’s very few biting insects as well and it tends to be cooler, so it’s all the benefits of a jungle atmosphere to love without the mosquito kill slaps to the neck.
If you’ve read my Saba blogposts, I rarely have people as part of my landscape photos, but I caught my visiting brother Michael looking up as we were crossing one particular gut; reminding me not concentrate so hard on the trail that I forget to look up in the rainforest. Some gorgeous interplay of giant ferns, elephant ears and some of the amazing trees on Saba make for a beautiful canopy. You also get a sense of scale in this wet, wonderful wilderness.
In post processing for this picture,I desaturated the overwhelming green of the rainforest to get the red browns of the trail and the swinging vines to pop out around my brother. Michael is an exceptional photographer himself–check out his photos here–and we both dug the result, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.
Novel Update
Forty pages in and a plot line bubble sheet that resembles the doodle drawings of an asylum patient, the book effort continues to form as I forge forward each morning, getting my 500-1000 words in before heading outside for the day. I try not to re-read what I’ve written too much so as to avoid the infinite editing loop and/or get discouraged…this is still the precious draft period, so gotta get it all out of the muse first.
Have a glorious day, folks! It’s back to the ocean depths for my bro and I today.
My brother has arrived on Saba isle for a brief visit and brought a rescue camera so I can continue to bring you my shots of this lovely Caribbean paradise. Three cheers for him!
Today, some stunning cumulonimbus clouds stack like cotton candy above Peak Hill In Windwardside, with a view to the top of the Wash Gut that I climbed up with the scientist last week
A Tangled Mind In Motion 
