Dear Fellow Diver:
My expectations were modest as I slowly descended
on my first dive off Saba. We'd been briefed that,
like other volcanic islands, Saba's underwater geology
was primarily algae-covered volcanic rock. Coral would
be scarce. Furthermore, this checkout dive at Babylon
allowed Dick and Briar to assess us in an unchallenging
environment. But frankly, the issue for me was more
technical: Would my new Nikon D7000 in its Aquatica housing
work as I hoped?
So I didn't care that the first fishes I saw and
snapped were a familiar yellow-tailed damsel, a little
blue chromis and a coney. The pressure to take perfect
pictures of rare fish was off. I stalked yellowhead jawfish
rising from their holes in the sand and shot banded
butterfly fish, blackbar soldierfish, redband parrotfish,
black durgon, blue tang, honeycomb cowfish, bar jack
-- all in the first 10 minutes. And I also experienced
the unexpected: a bubbling, golden, warm, sandy bottom
heated by Saba's somewhat dormant but active volcanic
foundations. My allpurpose
60mm macro
lens was fine for
the reef fish and
flamingo tongues,
but couldn't capture
the nurse shark
and large sponges.
I didn't need my
Sub-Sea 10x diopter.
Surfacing after
more than an hour
in the 81-degree
water, we went on
to our second dive,
where it was much
the same, yet my impressions were positive, in the manner
of a nice vanilla ice cream cone. Better
still, Sea Saba was true to its word
about letting experienced divers dive
their own profiles.
An unexpected new chapter on Saba
began that night. My partner dined at
Eden, where tables overlooked the lush
outdoors which was lit by torches. My
first surprise occurred when I asked
what dark ales they served, expecting a
Negra Modelo or some such. Instead, our
waitress brought a bottle of Leffe Brune
Dark Abbey from Belgium, a bittersweet,
toffee-colored, malt brew from heaven.
By night's end, we had split a wonderful
grilled fish in a wine-based lobster
sauce, a side of delightful sauerkraut
mixed with grilled bacon and apple bits,
and enjoyed more Leffe Brune. I was not
shocked that the bill was about $110 with
tip, considering what the food's transportation
costs must have been.
For years, I've relished the idea of going to Saba, population 2,000 --
inspired by images of a remote, mountainous, cloud-enshrouded home to the original
King Kong and a listing in the book, "1,000 Places to go Before You Die." My
local dive shop hosted this April trip, which from the Midwest took less than a
day. During the long layover in St. Maarten, I stood on the beach as landing passenger
jets passed only 100 feet or so directly overhead. The second bit of fun
was landing on Saba in a WinAir Twin Otter. The runway is less than 400 meters
long, bounded by sheer dropoffs into the sea at either end. Think landing on the
deck of an aircraft carrier moored alongside a mountain. You can find videos of
this on YouTube.
Big, smiling ex-Londoner John Magor, co-owner of Sea Saba, met us on arrival.
He packed us into a van for the winding trip up the only main road to Juliana's
Hotel, nestled quaintly against the backdrop of cloud-covered Mt. Scenery in
the little town of Windwardside. Its restaurant, pool and Jacuzzi overlooked the
ocean. During the week, I came to appreciate the tasty breakfasts at its Tropics
restaurant, and later its happy hours, a fun, happening local scene.
After I settled into my modest but clean, air-conditioned, ocean-view room,
John briefed my group on the routine. Our gear would remain on board, and the
crew would tend it. A van would pick us up daily at 8:45 a.m. We'd make two dives
and return in the early afternoon. We could dive our own profiles. Snorkeling was
not worth exploring at the sites we'd dive. There were no beaches, so no shore
diving. This was not going to be a 24-7 dive camp, like a Buddy Dive on Bonaire
or CoCoView on Roatan. The afternoons and evenings were going to be topsideoriented,
like it or lump it. (It is possible to arrange three tanks a day.) Our
daily 20-minute drive to and from the harbor provided a mini-tour of the island.
The red-tiled roofs and white walls of buildings reminded me of a European alpine
village set in the Caribbean. The last quarter mile down steep, goat-populated
switchbacks rivaling San Francisco's Lombard Street was always a hoot.
Our boat, Giant Stride, was tied up about halfway down the 200-foot-long
pier. It was a twin-screw 38-footer with ample shelter and safety gear, a flying
bridge and small cabin with enclosed marine head. Although it was outfitted for
25 divers, we dove with about half that number. I exited off the stern platform, re-entering via a T-bar ladder.
They gave a thorough briefing
before each dive. Our non-Saban
crew was primarily from the U.S.
Our skipper, thirty-something
Nick, was from Wisconsin. Dick,
a world-class Ironman winner in
his mid-70s, was from upstate
New York; Lisa from North
Carolina and Briar, a Kiwi,
looked in their 20s.
Tent Wall and Man O'War,
the second pair of sites, were
beautiful. At Tent Wall, I
dove over and along a ledge
that provided easy navigational
clues. A wide-angle lens paid
off, because much of what I was
looking at seemed King Kongsized,
from barrel sponges as
big as garbage cans to purple
gorgonians wide enough to hide
behind. A nurse shark was resting
on a ledge as I began the
dive. Typical reef fish swam
by: gray and French angelfish,
four-eyed and banded butterflyfish,
a dancing juvenile spotted
drum, blue tang, parrotfish,
coney, even a soapfish. A footlong
Caribbean lobster faced off
with another photographer in our
group, caught in the open on a sandy bottom but unwilling to back down.
This tableau was set against the backdrop of other volcanic island bottoms:
Boulders and rubble painted with colorful dashes of yellow, red and purple, separated
by stretches of sand without much hard-coral-encrusted reef. At Man O'War,
I came across six tarpon which hung in the water column, hovering as I approached
-- a brief moment of haunting beauty.
On my third day, the weather required us to stick closer to lee shores. I
contented myself with more experimentation with my new wide-angle zoom lens. With
a 1.4 teleconverter, I was able to get some unexpected close-ups of a roving
conch and a yellow-face pike blenny poking its head out of its sheltering tube.
Thankfully, Saba's afternoon and evening topside highlights complemented
my ration of diving. I trooped a block up the steep streets to the local town
center. Far from being a sleepy little village, restaurants were bustling, and
people were walking and talking as if on a scaled-down Rush Street in downtown
Chicago. The corner grocery reminded me of the canteen at a large campground:
lots of goodies and treats in the middle of nowhere. Most of the restaurants were
so small that Sea Saba booked us ahead to ensure they would be open for business
and could seat more than 10 people at a time. At Saba's Treasure, dining
at a simple, checkerboard-painted table with plastic lawn chairs, the red snapper
was tasty, and paired with a simple pizza and Caribe beer, it ran $50 for
two. My ribeye with mushroom sauce at Tropics Café Wednesday's "Grill Night" was
one of the best steaks I'd ever had. The Thursday night special prime-rib dinner
at Brigadoon was outstanding, the Mackeson Triple XXX Milk Stout it served was
incredible.
Entertainment ranged from the intellectual to the slightly bawdy. Before
dinner at the EcoLodge, biologist Tom van't Hof delivered a fast-paced, fact-filled
slide presentation covering the ecosystems on Saba. Tom helped establish the Saba
Marine Park, and was founder of the EcoLodge. Trish Chaamma, high-spirited co-owner
of the Brigadoon, was decidedly more risqué. She decided, after dinner over a
complementary special nightcap of her own concoction (rum, vanilla, ginger and cinnamon)
that our group was mature enough to be treated to her line of adult humor
-- one sex-laced joke after another. Early in the week, Becca from Sea Saba guided
us through a slide presentation about Saba, its history and diving. A walk uphill
to JoBean's glass bead shop provided a cultural education in itself. As our tour
arranger, Sea Saba expertly suggested sundry diversions during the week, including
hiking and guided sightseeing.
On the fourth day, Lady Luck smiled: Both weather and Sea Saba were thumbs-up
for a morning dive on Twilight Zone, one of Saba's famous pinnacles. I was in high
spirits finning against the current to the mooring line. The group hung like pennants
in a breeze. The current vanished as I dropped to 104 feet, where a nurse
shark lounging on the bottom greeted me. I made my way around one of the twin
pinnacles, then the other, the wide-angle lens well suited for capturing divers
headed toward the peaks in the 100-foot visibility. I'd been on other seamounts
on different islands, but always in visibility that made it difficult to appreciate
and take in the entire formations from a distance. Here, I could take in the
entire pinnacle, from bottom to top. The geology wasn't the only feature of interest.
Large, colorful fans and corals created foregrounds for magazine-perfect "modeling
opportunities." My time at depth was 37 minutes well spent. I surfaced feeling
a calm but exhilarated dive afterglow. Back on board, talk was of the King of
Qatar, who tipped a local divemaster $1,000 on a recent dive trip aboard Katara,
the king's 400-plus-foot mega yacht -- for a single (canceled) dive.
On our second dive, at Lou's Ladder, I experienced my second big buzz of the
day when I hung out with another group of laid-back tarpon for more than 20 minutes.
They were so unaffected by our presence, possibly due to the area's status
as a protected marine park, that one of them literally rested against my head. One
came so close that I could not resist reaching out to touch its muscular body. It
didn't dart away, just casually distanced itself, but remained very close. There
was a definite feeling of magic about the experience.
I was still keyed up from the earlier dives when I jumped in for our night
dive at Tent Wall's white buoy. This formation was easy to follow out and back
from the mooring. Giant basket stars unfolded their arms wide, and cardinalfish
played in the safety
of recesses in the reef's
folds. A black durgon hid in
another crevice, only showing
its pearly whites against the
beautiful spiraling pattern
of yellow and red diamonds
that surrounded its mouth,
"sleeping" in the manner of
a parrotfish. A sponge crab,
whose carapace may have measured
a foot across, backed
away from my lights. I almost
spit out my regulator when an
unabashed octopus came to rest
on another diver's head.
My last two dives of
the week were pleasant, condensed versions of our previous dives. Tedran Wall offered outcrops,
mini-pinnacles and more fantastic sponges,
fans, and soft coral of the sort that make
for great wide-angle photo opportunities you
see in magazines. On a sandy slope where
I spotted two white and blue tentacles of
an unusual segmented worm sticking out of
the sand, and definitely "not in the book"
(Humann and DeLoach's creature ID guide).
We hit Tent Wall Canyon for our last dive
of the week. Here, a shallow canyon some 45
feet deep passes between two 20-foot-high
walls covered in yellow, red, pink and green
sponges, hydroids and algae. Familiar reef
fish such as spotted trunkfish, a French
angelfish, stoplight parrotfish, French
and Caesar grunts, black bar soldierfish,
mahogany snapper, white spotted filefish,
coney, bluehead, red-lipped blenny and trumpetfish were there, though not in great
numbers. But there was another first for me: a very busy dark mantis shrimp, camouflaged
well against its backdrop. Toward the end of the dive, I admired the garden-
like quality of the yellow sea fans, brown soft coral, and yellow tube sponges
on the top, flat shelf of the wall near the mooring. I watched as the divemasters
peered intently at a brain coral. A pair of emblemariopsis blennies nestled into
adjacent parallel grooves of the coral. Anthropomorphizing, they actually looked,
well, happy.
Saba is crisscrossed by well-marked hiking trails, most of them up and down
the mountainside. My wife felt completely safe walking them alone. On our last
day, I climbed Mount Scenery through four eco-zones, ending in cloud forest at the
2877-foot peak. Though enshrouded by clouds much of the time, the views of the
airport and neighboring islands that day were stunning. That afternoon, we took a
driving tour to Hell's Gate, passing a beautiful church, government buildings and
the medical university, and stopping at many pretty overlooks. A previous afternoon's
visit to the local museum helped explain why the island's geography made it
inhospitable to settlement.
The last morning included some sightseeing, as we hiked down to the tidal
pools below the runway before the flight. Looking at the mountainside while taking
off, I left with the pleasant thought that the unexpected gems I found on Saba
made it worth following the road less traveled.
--M.S.
Diver's Compass: My seven-night stay with bundled airfare from the
Midwest, airport transfers, daily breakfast, two dinners, totaled
about $3,700 for a diver/non-diver package . . . there was a $36
Saba Marine Park fee, $60 for nitrox for the week, and a $75 add-on
for the night dive . . . we tipped our captain and dive master $5
each per tank . . . Sea Saba will handle all your on-island reservations
and itinerary . . . Contrary to the stated six-pound carryon
restriction, we were allowed as much weight as we wanted on the
WinAir flight to Saba, as long as it would fit into one carryon;
and they could care less about the duty-free booze we stocked up on in St. Maarten
(at very reasonable prices) . . . Saba is subject to hurricanes from June through
November, but only averages about 40 inches of rain annually . . . After climbing
Mount Scenery, get a free Certificate of Achievement at Saba's Tourist Bureau . .
. U.S. dollars and credit cards were generally accepted, but using cash will save
you the foreign transaction fees . . . AC current is same as in the U.S.. . ..
Web site: Sea Saba - www.seasaba.com; Juliana's Hotel - www.julianas-hotel.com