La quarantaine de la bienheureuse was the excuse (again) for the Caribbean trip. It was a holiday in three parts - a couple of nights rest and recuperation in the Dutch part of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin, before a week's diving in Saba, followed by another three nights in French Saint Martin. All in all, highly enjoyable. Part one went like this...
Thursday 20th November
Up before the crack of dawn to catch a connecting flight from Lyon to Paris. Fingers crossed that we haven't forgotten anything during hasty packing the previous evening, after la bienheureuse ends a hectic time at work and I stay up till after midnight printing out first rough draft of book number three.
Partial recovery from less than five hours sleep during the eight hour flight (business class courtesy of air miles) to Saint Martin is ruined by over-indulgence in champagne, wine, etc. Result: both suffer from hangovers before the plane has even landed. A stroll along the beach to a converted bus café to watch the sunset over cocktails, and the five hour time difference unusually allows recovery from hangover to take effect before going to bed.Friday 21st November
Early to bed, early to rise. A full night's sleep, albeit in one to two hour chunks, mean we're up soon after dawn and out early in search of a supermarket to buy breakfast. Croissants, fruit and yoghurt set us up for a stroll along Simpson Bay in the morning, scouting places to dine and buying swimwear for la bienheureuse. Eat a picnic lunch back at our hotel, situated on the narrow strip between Simpson Bay beach and lagoon.
Spend afternoon on the beach watching waves. Added attraction, the planes landing and taking off on the main airport runway mere yards from the beach. Fish dinner at a lagoon side restaurant.
Sat 22nd November
7.45am: Sitting in the smallest room in our little hotel apartment contemplating life when I hear a tremulous call from the bedroom: 'Honey, I've done something very stupid...'
Hastily wiping up, I dash in to find la bienheureuse clutching a wad of tissue to her left eye, which has just been speared by the window winding handle while she bent over to check nothing had dropped under the bed. Visions of a bloody, pulped mess instead of an eyeball, and a cancelled diving holiday flash before my own eyes, but the damage turns out to be not as bad as first feared. Blurred vision and a painfully bloodshot eye apart, la bienheureuse deems herself healthy enough to tell the taxi which turns up at that very moment to take us to the marina rather than the hospital.
Trying my best not to look like a wife-beater, I take care of the check-in and immigration formalities for the boat to Saba, while ma bien-aimée holds an improvised ice pack to her eye. By the time the boat leaves at 9am she is able to dispense with the ice pack and don sunglasses. We are thus able to enjoy the ninety minute, 25 mile trip and look forward to the week on Saba. La bienheureuse even feels confident enough to predict she'll be able to dive the next day.
We arrive in Fort Bay, get our passports stamped dockside, and are met by Garvis, trusty taxi driver for the week. Saba is a volcanic rock of barely 5 square miles. It has one main road, but what a road it is. Winding steeply from Fort Bay (the only dock) across the island and down to the airport the other side (supposedly the smallest 'international' airport in the world), via the quaintly named main town The Bottom (not altother apt as it's at about 250m) and Windwardside (the other main conurbation, population about 400, altitude about 400m), it was built entirely by hand over the course of twenty plus years by the islanders under the guidance of a self taught road builder after Dutch engineers had said it couldn't be done.Garvis drops us off at the offices of Sea Saba in Windwardside so that we can carry out pre-dive formalities before picking us up again to take us up to our home for the week, the Ecolodge Rendezvous. We get out at the end of the road, at the highest point on the island reachable by motor vehicle, and then drag our baggage the further two hundred yards to the Ecolodge.
There, we are shown to our one room wooden 'cottage', with solar powered lighting and shower (no mains electricity at the lodge), private porch and hot tub. We settle in, eat a delicious lunch at the restaurant, and then take turns to laze in the hammock and watch a humming bird buzz around our chalet. Later in the afternoon we undertake the wending downward road to the airport to watch the others arrive on the last flight in. Spectacular landing it was too, runway less than 400m long, perched on a flat(-ish) bit of lava flow a few metres from, and 40 metres above the sea.
Having been told that Winair flights to Saba have a habit of not taking place, and hearing that our boat was the only one to make it to Saba that day, we are relieved to be fully reunited as JeB, Swigs and the builder all duly emerge in 'arrivals', complete with baggage too (of which more later).Garvis ferries us all back up the mountain to the Ecolodge and we celebrate all making it in due fashion, with dinner and margaritas in the Rain Forest restaurant at the Ecolodge. Alcohol and an 18 hour journey soon contribute to drooping eyelids, and everybody's in bed by eight thirty, being lulled to sleep by chirping frogs and crickets. There's diving to consider the next day, after all...
