The Sandy Cruz trail starts just above the town of Hell’s Gate and winds around the north side of the island. It is high enough to be in a damp, dense forest with luscious vegetation. We spent about two and a half hours on the trail. It could be done faster, but you wouldn’t have time to see much. If I had my choice, I would have poked along for four hours or more finding creatures and taking photos. Below are a few shots from our trip. They start with a few birds taken en route to the trailhead. Apparently the great egret turned up on the island after a tropical storm.

On the trail, we saw many of the usual subjects, such as the whistling frog, Saban anole, red-bellied racer and a rat. There were also, of course, many snails and other invertebrates.

Saba rises abruptly out of the water, leaving precious little space for extreme shallow snorkeling. There is, however, an area of tide pools near the airport that is quite suited to our favorite pastime. Below are some above water shots of our expedition to the tide pools. There is also some underwater footage that Madam J has, which I can hopefully post later. Nestled in a rocky outcrop, there were several large tide pools, including one that was big enough to support a variety of corals.

On a day off diving, Yann, Marie and I went to the top of Mt. Scenery, the tallest point on Saba. As mentioned before, it’s mostly a long series of stairs leading up through various types of forest to the elfin cloud forest at the top. On the way up and back we saw many things.

Many of them were snails. I think most of them are from the family Helicinidae.

There were many other invertebrates as well, mostly insects. Although I found few insects on the way up, on the way back I began to notice more of the smaller insects, like leafhoppers and flies. On the trip down I ended up seeing a pretty good amount of diversity, though not large numbers.

I have some reptile photos from the following day, but the most notable vertebrate we found on this hike was a big-eared rat that was walking around with his eyes closed. Yann and Marie gave him some granola bar.

There was also plenty of great scenery, which I did not capture in all its glory. It was still great to see.

Tent Reef is another gorgeous dive site near the harbor. There are actually three moorings at various depths. One thing that is surprising about Saba is how close the dive sites are to the shore, which is due to the steep slope of the island both above and below the water line. The site features lots of overhangs and swim-throughs, as well as sandy patches with loads of garden eels.

Mt. Michel is another pinnacle dive in Saba, peaking about 30 meters under the surface. It had been without a mooring for about two years until a new one was recently added, so it hasn’t been explored much lately. I had the fisheye lens on again, so mostly I took photos of the spectacular sponges.

Before prepping these images, I spent a little time watching some instructional videos from Underwater Photoshop. I have had the DVD for over a year, but hadn’t gotten around to watching most of it. Although I didn’t mess with my images too much, there are some really great techniques covered in the DVD.

It seems I only managed to do a proper terrestrial nocturnal photo shoot once while I was on the island, but I did manage to see quite a few critters right around The Cottage Club. Whistling frogs were dime a dozen around the swimming pool, and my favorites were the Saban anoles sleeping in the bushes.

Between our early afternoon arrival and a Sea and Learn talk about spiders by Leslie Bishop in the evening I had enough time to make it almost all the way up Mt. Scenery and back. I learned a couple days later that I was only about five minutes from the top when I turned back to get to the talk on time.

The Mt. Scenery trail is mostly made of steps, 1064 of them, which take you from the town of Windwardside to the cloud forest. The top of the mountain is 877 meters. From Windwardside, it’s about the same vertical climb as it is from Grand Case to the top of Pic Paradis, the highest point on St. Martin. The vegetation is astounding, and I saw two red-bellied racers, a snake that is only found on a couple islands. Given the lush surroundings, I was surprised that I didn’t see more insects. This would also be rectified somewhat on my next trip up there. They did have a lot of ferns of many varieties, including tree ferns.

Taking a step back for a moment, below are some photos from our arrival on Saba. We opted for the fourteen-minute plane flight, landing on the world’s smallest commercial runway, which looks more like a driveway. Included below are a few photos of our arrival, the view of nearby islands Statia, St. Kitts and Nevis and some shots of the landscape from the cab ride to The Cottage Club, where we were staying.

Yann and Marie arrived in Saba the day after us, so our second day of diving was actually the first time we all dove together. We started the morning off at Third Encounter, another pinnacle dive. I apologize if the photos are a bit boring. There were so many great sponges that I ended up taking loads of photos of them.

Our next dive was at Diamond Rock, presumably named after its whitewash of guano. This dive site was amazing. In addition to the rock that juts out of the water there is a second peak underwater and a sandy bottom about 80 feet down. In addition to the gorgeous underwater landscape, we saw a giant jack, a southern stingray and a hawksbill turtle.

I should also mention that we dove with Saba Deep, and they were really great. We dove new sites almost every dive and they made everything super easy by taking care of our gear, taxi and such. Since it was low season we were also able to opt in to extra dives in the afternoons, even if we were the only people going out.

Several members of Les Fruits de Mer (Madam J, Yann, Marie and myself) undertook an expedition to the nearby island of Saba last week for some diving, hiking and, of course, Extreme Shallow Snorkeling. Over the next few days I’ll be posting all about our adventures.

Saba is a much younger island than St. Martin, I believe about ten million years younger, or about half the age of St. Martin. While both islands are originally volcanic, St. Martin was submerged and capped with limestone, while Saba is basically still just a volcano jutting straight out of the ocean. It’s about a seventh the area of St. Martin, but twice as tall.

This post features some photos from our first day of diving on the island. The world-famous diving is the primary tourism draw of the island. Our first dive was at a site called Outer Limits, which is one of the pinnacle dives. The underwater pinnacles are basically submerged mountaintops off the coast of Saba that rise to between 90 and 110 feet below the surface of the ocean. Although the depth means short dives, these unique formations are a big attraction to divers.

Our next dive was at a site called Ladder Labyrinth, which primarily consists of coral and sponge encrusted underwater lava flows that create a variety of interesting structures. Underwater hot springs leave sulfur patches in the sand, and geothermal heat can be felt if you put your hands into the sand in the right spots.

We were also lucky enough to arrive during the month-long Sea and Learn event, which includes talks by experts and hands-on research opportunities. We went on a dusk/night dive with Graham Forrester to see if we could watch hamlets spawn. Although we didn’t actually see this because there aren’t very many hamlets in the waters around Saba, we did have a great night dive. One highlight was a nurse shark which followed us everywhere, probably because our flashlights helped it find prey.

It was a busy day and a great way to start our expedition!