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Published: August 9th 2007
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It has already been over a week since we came down to this 13 square km island - and things are going well! The first week has been filled with getting to know the locals and the island, carnival, moving house... Work-wise we have been diving and trying to learn everything about the dive boat as we are going to be skippers one day - but we talk more about work stuff in another blog.
To start from the beginning - the trip from Ancaster to Saba
We got up at 0130 in the morning to ensure we have time for a coffee before we started our trip to Toronto. Mo was even up to wave us good bye, Klaus was our driver and took us all the way to departures at Toronto airport. We wanted to be early but we did that so successfully that we had to wait one hour for the check-in desk to open... 😊 Once on our way, it took us a day to get to Saba as we did it the cheap way with 4 different flights. The best one was the 15 min twin otter flight and the cool landing on the 400m
runway at Saba. See this
website for more details. Our only issue was that our luggage was lost somewhere between Toronto and Saba, but hey-ho it showed up at the dive office the next day. One of the bags was broken and two had been inspected somewhere in the US, but everything was there so we have no complaints.
Our first days on Saba We arrived on Thursday evening and the carnival parade was on Sunday so over the whole island there were carnival preparations going on. We went down to the capital ”The Bottom” on Friday night for a salsa night. It was great to see all the people showing up, old and young from all over the world - everybody was there in a lovely mix. There were lots of good drinks of course, but so far we are sticking to a beer from The Dominican Republic, “Presidente” - a good cheap lager and tastier than the popular Heineken!
The Carnival What a blast! They had 6-7 floats with a mixture of “Rio dancers”, free beer float and of course Saba Singing Divers with a Karaoke and a 60-70ties theme. All the participants for the parade
met up at a big parking lot at the bottom and at around 1600 the parade started and made almost three rounds around The Bottom. After this the party continued at the Sports ground in to the wee hours. We did not stay until the end as it had been a hectic day with diving in the morning followed with hours of dancing and carnival partying. It was great fun and we look forward to next year’s event!
No public transportation and a fantastic road There is no public transportation on the island, but all you have to do is stand on the road and wave your hand and somebody will pick you up. We’ll talk more about the road later as it is amazing, but have a look at this video,
”The Rollercoaster” to get a tour.
We have a place we call home The first three days we spent in a cute house on the hill, built in a traditional style with one big room functioning as the lounge, kitchen and bedroom. The bathroom is built on as an extension and is new and modern. Unfortunately we didn’t have too much outdoor area and while living in
the Caribbean we would like to have an outdoor grillin’ spit... So when we learned of a two bedroom apartment with a good outdoor area and a view... we had to have a look. And YES! The flat is in a great location overlooking Windwardside town centre with the highest mountain on the island behind it, the apartment had to be in pretty bad shape for us not to take it. The flat is not as charming as the first one, but much more practical with kitchen, lounge, bathroom and bedrooms as separate rooms... oh and did I mention a fantastic outdoor area AND a guestroom ready for occupation whenever you like too!!
Other Saba Stuff We have been talking about this place for awhile, but for you guys who missed out; Saba is pronounced “Say-ba” and is a volcanic island of 13 square kilometres in diameter and its highest point is 888 meters. Saba is part of the Dutch Antilles, hence a part of the Netherlands, so this is the highest point in the nation! Soooooo the unspoiled Queen (as the island is marketed abroad) has something special! It also has 1400 locals that are all friendly and
chatty. There is almost no crime on the island and three food shops that is stocking fresh food, vegetables and fruit once a week (when the boat can cross over from St. Maarten). Here they don’t talk about how big your house is but how big your cistern is... Nina did not know what a cistern was before coming here but she does now! It is the tank where you are collecting rain water and that is your water..... unless you want to spend lots of money to buy water. For now we have plenty of water, but I am sure we will talk about droughts as the months go on.. 😊
Spk soooon guys!
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Thomas Jojo
non-member comment
nice !
comming as soon as I can. ps: ure link is wrong, here is the right one: http://www.georgiajets.org/Links/FWIW/Saba_Airport/saba_airport.html