Rick laments below that I ruined his Friday with the anchor scar story, so I’ll try to spice up his weekend with a lighter note. The road from Saba’s airport to Fort Bay Harbor is a thing of wonder. It climbs and descends the sleeping volcano through villages like Hell’s Gate, Windwardside, and The Bottom.
People once believed “The Road” could not be built on Saba Island until civil engineer Josephus Lambert Hassell took a correspondence course in engineering and organized a crew of locals to start construction in 1938. Nine years later, the road was complete. The first car would arrive in another four years.
Saba multimedia company JumbieDesign captures the thrill and experience of your first ride at this link here. Music by the Talking Heads. Video by Malachy McGee.
This road brought our expedition ashore from October 19-30. The group included Dr. Thomas Shirley and grad student Morgan Kilgour from Harte Research Institute at TAMU-CC studying crustaceans; myself, Dr. Juan Sanchez from Univ. de los Andes, and Herman Wirshing from RSMAS at Univ. of Miami studying gorgonians; Dr. Paul Hoetjes from Dutch Ministry of the Environment, and Peter Paul Van Dyke from Conservation International were managing, diving, and guiding the effort. Shelley Lundvall from Saba Conservation Foundation and fisheries biologist Dr. Wes Toller have already been living on this island for 6 months as part of the Saba Bank project.
Saba Island image above from a local realtor.
