MI CREACION

Before the
road was completed,
trails were
the only way up
and down the
rocky island.
One trail, to the top
of Mount Scenery,
has exactly 1,064
steps. It’s a
three-hour hike.
As a crow — or, here, maybe a magnificent
frigatebird — flies, Saba is about as
close to the swank resorts of St. Barts as
the back parking lot at Disney World is
to Cinderella’s castle. But it might as well
be a different planet. When I check in
to my hotel, one of its patrons is making
good on a bet he lost to the hotel’s manager
— by doing belly-flops in the pool.
“∏his is a normal Sunday night on
Saba?” I ask the manager.
“Oh, it’s not even dark yet,” he says.
He’s right. So I stroll up to a perch in
Windward, the village closest to the top
of Mount Scenery — yes, that’s really
the name of the peak, and it fits. I watch
the day sink into the ocean, while below
me the mountain also drops into the
water. ∏here isn’t a grain of sand in sight.
∏he next morning I see the importance
of Saba’s only road, called,
understandably, ∏he Road. People can’t
walk along a beach, so they walk the road.
Hard to believe the Dutch government
spent 10 years trying to build it. ∏hen
it gave up, which is easier to believe. A
local man named Josephus Lambert
Hassell took an engineering course
by mail and figured out how to finish
it. ∏ook another 20 years because the
whole island is so steep, but he became a
local hero. Until he completed the road
in 1958, everything still moved on trails.
Not easy when the freshwater spring is at
sea level and your house is at 2,500 feet.
I notice nobody complains. Saba is
unto itself more than anywhere else I’ve
been. ∏he island is Dutch (technically,
Mount Scenery is the highest point in the
Netherlands) but they use U.S. dollars.
Development plans get nixed because
parents remember sleeping just fine on
banana leaves. “∏he leaves rustled,” says
Sandra Johnson, “so our parents knew we
couldn’t get into any trouble.”
Residents don’t seem to realize, or
care, that there’s no beach. Glenn and I
drive over the only flat land on the entire
island — big enough for a church, a couple
of tennis courts and a medical school
full of Canadians — and then it’s down
a steep, winding hill (“Yeah, we replace
our brakes a lot,” he says) to Well’s Bay.
Glenn has a surprise for me.
“∏he beach,” he says. So this is where it
is. Or was. Or will be. Right now, it’s wild
waves coming in over rocks.
“∏he sand is out there,” Glenn says,
gesturing at the ocean. “It all comes in
during the summer, and it’s a great beach.”
And how magical is that? A beach
that comes and goes with the season,
appearing and disappearing like the
world’s best slow-motion magic trick.
Nobody’s telling me when it will come
or how long it will stay. Like any good
magic trick, the beach is the island’s
secret, revealed only to locals, and the
select few who happen to be here when
it happens. | Caribbean food secrets >>
bradley smith/corbis; opposite, clockwise from top left: istock (4); neal peters collection; latitudestock/getty images
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